ABSTRACT:Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison released her ninth novel, A Mercy, which set in the New Continent in the 17th century. The era of peremptory working became the cornerstone of the prosperity of United States and slavery was not equated with race. The whole novel broke the mode that only concerning about the black’s fate, Morrison has focused on different races under slavery for the first time.
As modern people attach too much importance to the physical and emotional life, spiritual life is shrouded by material desire, and then gradually fades away. This thesis analyzes the theme of A Mercy: transcending enslavement. To discuss the essence of enslavement: slavery as a metaphor of human existence, which means the lack of freedom. Slavery could occur in any level besides slavery system itself, slavery is not determined by color, race or class. One is free or slaved only depends on his inner and spiritual world.
The philosophy of existentialism as a way of life considered that modern society made people far away from individualism and then became stereotypical, so they advocated that people should strengthen concern on themselves. Actually we are not others, we have our own choice. This thesis based on the concept of freedom of existentialism, makes a contrastive analysis of the main characters Jacob and Florens in A Mercy. The purpose of this thesis is to awaken people’s consciousness, to inspire people’s self-reliance awareness, as well as to eradicate the servile imprint so that people will have a deeper understanding of freedom and subjectivity.
Keywords: A Mercy Toni Morrison Existentialism Enslavement
摘要:诺贝尔文学奖得主托尼•莫里森于2008年推出了她的第九部作品《慈悲》,该小说背景设置在17世纪末北美殖民地初期,强制性劳作成为美国繁荣基石，蓄奴制还没有和肤色画上等号的那个年代。整部小说打破了以往作者只关注黑人命运的模式，莫里森也首次将关注集中到了蓄奴制下不同种族的人们。
由于现代人太过注重物质情感生活，精神生活在浓厚的物质欲望中逐渐迷失。因此本文分析了《慈悲》的主题：超于奴役。来揭示奴役的本质：奴役作为人类生存状态的隐喻，意味着自由的缺失，除了奴隶制本身，奴役可以发生在任何层面，奴役不是由肤色、种族和阶级所决定的，自由抑或奴役的状态取决于自己的内心世界和精神世界。
作为一种生活方式的存在主义哲学认为现代社会使人远离个体主义而使人墨守陈规，因此他们提倡人们应加强对自身的关注。我们实际上不是他人他者，我们是自己的选择，本论文以存在主义的自由观为理论基础，对小说《慈悲》中的主要人物雅各布和弗罗伦斯进行对比分析。旨在唤醒人们的觉悟，激励自强的意识，根除奴性的烙印，超越奴役，回归自我，使人们对自由与主体性有更深的了解和认识。
关键词：《慈悲》 托尼·莫里森 存在主义 奴役
