Essentialism and Self-Identity Construction in Toni Morrison’s “Sula”-Take Sula and Shadrack as an Example

Northeastern University, No. 11, Lane 3, Wenhua Road, Heping District, Shenyang, Liaoning, 110819 China

^* Corresponding author: 20220485@stu.neu.edu.cn

Abstract

From around the end of the First World War to the mid-1960s, as the voices of the exploited and oppressed black groups were drowned out by white supremacist ideas, black people generally suffered from racial discrimination, and the stereotypes brought about by social essentialism impact of impressions. The construction of identities of marginalized black groups becomes a matter of concern. For Toni Morrison’s novel “Sula”, the existing research has obtained the image analysis of the characters in “Sula”, the symbolic meaning in the novel, the construction of character identity, and the embodiment of traditional culture in “Sula”. However, few studies have combined essentialism and identity construction and Sula’s and Shadracket’s analyses. Therefore, this thesis explores the embodiment of essentialism in “Sula”, as well as Sula and Shadrack’s resistance to essentialism and self-identity construction and combines theoretical analysis and textual analysis. Sula used her unique and heterogeneous behavior to break through the shackles of social essentialism on black women. In contrast to most black women, she constructed her self-identity in a different way from most black women, which can be better understood using Plato’s “cave theory”. Shadrack created “World Suicide Day” to resist the uncertainty of death and the prejudice brought by social essentialism and used Sula as a “mirror” to re-construct his identity, which can be used in Lacan’s “mirror stage” theory to explain.