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is daughter to abort his child and chases away everyone who tries to stand between him and his family. It is the singing of the blues that enables Trueblood to get himself together. Somehow the blues provides a vehicle for coming to terms with the twisted and painful details of his situation; by expressing himself in this near-tragic, near-lyric form, Trueblood conquers his fearful regret. Therefore, it is music that gives him courage and strength. The courage and discipline that Trueblood discovers in the blues are essentially values that the protagonist must learn by acknowledging his national culture. Mary Rambo, along with Trueblood, with her blues songs, prepares the protagonist for his entry into society and helps him reclaim his Southern heritage. Mary runs the rooming-house in Harlem where the protagonist stays after leaving the factory hospital in a daze. Of Mary, Ellison has written, “Imagine what the country would be without Marys… Imagine, indeed, what the American Negro would be without the Marys of out ever-expanding Harlem.”(Ellison, 1963: 243-244) Wisely, Mary Rambo has transported the southern black blues to the urban north. She sings the blues and uses blues lyrics in her speech. As if to pass along the source of her strength to the hero, weak and worn from the factory hospital ordeal, Mary puts him in bed and she quietly sings, “If I don’t think I’m sinking, look what a hole I’m in” (Ellison, 2000: 221) Much later in the novel, when he is at last freed from illusions, he expresses himself in the language of the blues. His ordeal, he says, were painful but at least they “showed me the hole I’m in” (Ellison, 2000: 495). It is Mary, the blues singer, who cures the protagonist of his injury, both mentally and physically. In other word, it is Mary’s singing of blues songs that make it possible for the protagonist to recover.
 
Ellison has realized his ideal about arts by transferring acoustic music forms into fictional language. Blues, as the representative form of the black culture, provides a historical dimension. All the characters become vivid and tri-dimensional in the light of folk music. Moreover, they develop the theme. On the basis of identity-pursuit, Ellison embodies his political ideals implicitly in the display of blues. To Ellison, blues that contains complicated life experience of the blacks reminds him his real identity. And to a certain extent, it is easy for blues to arouse common black people’s miserable life experience as slaves in the plantation and inhumane treatment by the white people. Blues is created by black people and concerns much about black culture, thus it is the most direct and safe way to express their gloomy experience and unfair treatment, and to give them courage and strength for their searching of identity.
 
3.2 Folklore, a Call for Identity
 
Mentioning black culture, we could not miss the folklore, which “announces the Negro’s willingness to trust his own experience, his own sensibilities as to the definition of reality, rather than allow his master to definite these crucial matters for him.” (Ellison, 1986: 78) Folklore exists in nature, just like a river which never stops flowing; it is handed down by black people from generation to generation. For blacks, folklore not only entertains, but also teaches. In order not to be submissive to the white Americans’ view of life, black people express themselves in folklore, and even e本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。