Abstract and Key Words

Abstract:   It is acknowledged that Beloved, the best known work of American black female writer Tony Morrison, is given too much significance. And the blacks always as a theme are discussed by many readers, for the works of Tony Morrison are mainly about the blacks. In this paper, more attention is given to the self-awareness of Sethe in Beloved. Through the process of analysis, the awakening and the loss and the return of the self-awareness of Sethe are revealed. In fact, the self-awareness is a key to freedom physically and psychologically for all of the black.

Key words:  Beloved; self-awareness; Sethe

摘要: 众所周知，《宠儿》作为托尼•莫里森的巅峰之作被赋予了多重内涵。本文以黑人女主人公塞丝在自我意识觉醒，再缺失和再回归为主线，论证了黑人在白人的社会里自我意识逐渐清晰的过程，以及黑人自我意识的回归实际上是黑人们获得身心自由的关键所在。其中，不可忽视的重要一点就是黑人必须意识到团结的重要性。这种合作精神对黑人奴隶获得自由起着至关重要的作用。

关键词：宠儿，自我意识，塞丝

1. Introduction
Tony Morrison is the only Afro-American woman writer who wins the Nobel Prize for literature. It confirms her renown and makes her one of the most influential writers in American history. Beloved is one of her best-known works. Since the publishing of Beloved, it has drawn intense response from many scholars. They appreciate this classic novel from different views. Some scholars regard time in Beloved as a huge framework with multiple layers. It mainly consists of two big layers ——the present and the past, which in turn are composed by some smaller layers. Meanwhile, some scholars are trying to find out what Beloved symbolizes actually. She symbolizes the shadow of white people left to the independent slaves or the dead black people themselves who are not willing to leave. What indeed stops slaves to fight for freedom, the white people or themselves? This paper takes the main character Sethe as a symbol of all black community to explain the key to freedom——self-awareness. In Beloved self-awareness and freedom cannot be separated because both of them have great effect on each other. The reason why Sethe runs away from Sweet Home is that she is longing for physical freedom. When she is trapped in the memory of past, what she pursues is the psychological freedom. Finally, with the help of the black community, she walks out of the shadow of the past and lives a normal life, and she totally owns freedom. There are lots of barriers on the way for Sethe to pursue freedom; she needs help from others that she neglects all the time. In the process of fighting for freedom, there are several generation fighters for it.