Study on Florens' Inferiority Feeling in "A Mercy"

DOI

10.2991/icadce-16.2016.74How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Toni Morrison; A Mercy; inferiority feelings; compensation; transcendence

Abstract

As the first African-American woman who won the Nobel Prize for literature, Toni Morrison has always been yelling and fighting on the miserable position of the black people, especially the black women. Apart from the racial discrimination as her previous novels, her latest novel A Mercy (2008) transcends the race and sex, and puts concern on all the people under the slavery system. Under the oppression of slavery, people suffer not only physical affliction but also spiritual torture. Being discriminated by the society, people under slavery are entrapped into the inferiority feelings. They try to escape the inferiority feelings by all means. However, according to Alfred Adler, without social interest, the efforts they have made gain no improvement. On the contrary, their inferiority feelings grow more serious. Only with the social interest and the devotion to making contribution to others and the society, can people transcend the inferiority feelings with their self-value fulfilled. This thesis tries to analyze the inferiority feelings of the characters in A Mercy according to Alfred Adler's inferiority theory to prove that the self-accomplishment builds on the love that people give instead of the love they ask for.

Copyright

© 2016, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Yang Yang
PY  - 2016/05
DA  - 2016/05
TI  - Study on Florens' Inferiority Feeling in "A Mercy"
BT  - Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference on Arts, Design and Contemporary Education
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 323
EP  - 329
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icadce-16.2016.74
DO  - 10.2991/icadce-16.2016.74
ID  - Yang2016/05
ER  -