Beloved

Developing Identity: The Significance of Names

2009-12-11T17:11:00.002-05:00

Ever since reading The Scarlet Letter, I have had the habit of paying close attention to the names of characters in books. While Morrison doesn't form her allegory as historically conscious as Hawthorne does, her characters do have some significance.

"Shackled, walking through the perfumed things honeybees love, Paul D hears the men talking and for the first time learns his worth. He has always known, or believed he did, his value--as a hand, a laborer who could make profit on a farm--but now he discovers his worth, which is no way to say he learns his price. The dollar value of his weight, his strength, his heart, his brain, his penis, and his future" (page 167).

Of the Sweet Home Men, three share first names: Paul D, Paul F, and Paul A. All of the Sweet Home men take on the last name of Garner, except for Halle, whose mother has her own last name. The names in this case show us a lesson about identity, especially that of colored men. Each one shares the name and likewise they share the same race. To whites, they actually all are the same. They are quickly grouped and the only factor that white attention is devoted to is monetary value, which is evidently the only difference in coloreds that whites can see. This goes back to the idea of racism in Beloved. The whites put a price on qualities of a man that should remain priceless, thus reducing him to the same level as an object. With the similar names, Morrison tells the story of colored loss of identity.

"Mr. Garner," she said, "why you all call me Jenny?"
"'Cause that what's on your sales ticket, gal. Ain't that your name? What you call yourself?"
"Nothing," she said. "I don't call myself nothing."
Mr. Garner went red with laughter. "When I took you out of Carolina, Whitlow called you Jenny and Jenny Whitlow is what his bill said. Didn't he call you Jenny?"
"No sit. If he did I didn't hear it."
"What did you answer to?"
"Anything, but Suggs is what my husband name."
"You got married, Jenny? I didn't know it."
"Manner of speaking."
"You know where he is, this husband?"
"No, sir."
"Is that Halle's daddy?"
"No, sir."
"Why you call him Suggs, then? His bill of sale says Whitlow too, just like yours."
"Suggs is my name, sir. From my husband. He didn't call me Jenny."
"What he call you?"
"Baby."
"Well," said Mr. Garner, going pink again, "if I was you I'd stick to Jenny Whitlow. Mrs. Baby Suggs ain't no name for a freed Negro" (page 167).

Baby Suggs name is also significant. Before freedom, she had no name, meaning she had no identity. After Halle bought her, she took on a name that was more personal to her. She refused to be named Jenny, because Baby Suggs was the only thing she had left of her husband. This shows that Baby Suggs' identity is not one chosen by whites. Her first act of freedom was exercised when she picked her name, becoming her own woman.

"Born Joshua, he renamed himself when he handed over his wife to his master's son. Handed her over in the sense that he did not kill anybody, thereby himself, because his wife demanded he stay alive" (page 274).

The above quote describes Stamp Paid. Stamp Paid also created a new identity for himself. Having given his wife to a white master, he figured his "stamp" was "paid". This affected him so heavily, he felt it was his new identity. Stamp Paid paid for his journey to freedom through his wife. Here, Morrison shows us how deeply slavery controls one's sense of self.

"She's never gonna know who I am. You gonna tell her? Who brought her into this here world?" She lifted her chin, looked off into the place where the sun used to be. "You better tell her. You hear? Say Miss Amy Denver. Of Boston" (page 100).

Denver's name came from the last name of a woman who helped bring her into the world. With her birth, her identity was created and Sethe wanted to honor the white angel who helped her through the name of her newborn child. This is an important look into character, because Denver adores the story of her birth. Amy Denver contributed to her character by giving Denver life and ensuring the pregnant mother she found in a field would not die.

"God take what He would," she said. And He did, and He did, and He did and then gave her Halle who gave her freedom when it didn't mean a thing.
Sethe had the amazing luck of six whole years of marriage to that "somebody" son who fathered every one of her children. A blessing she was reckless enough to take for granted, lean on, as though Sweet Home really was one. As though a handful of myrtle stuck in the handle of a pressing iron propped against the door in a whitewoman's kitchen could make it hers. As though mint sprig in the mouth changed the breath as well as its odor. A bigger fool never lived" (page 28).

Although Halle was not named for any other character and did not create his own identity, I think his name still offers some significance. When I see the word on Halle on the pages of Beloved, I do not only see a character's name. I also see the first six letters of one of the happiest words in the dictionary: hallelujah. Hallelujah conveys thanks, for any blessing one might recieve. I think Halle was a 'hallelujah' to both his mother Baby Suggs and his wife Sethe. He was blessing in that he bought his mother freedom and blessed his wife with the rare privilege of having all her children by one man.

"So they forgot her. Like an unpleasant dream during a troubling sleep. Occasionally, however, the rustle of a skirt hushes when they wake, and the knuckles brushing a cheek in sleep seem to belong to the sleeper. Sometimes the photograph of a close friend or relative--looked at too long--shifts, and something more familiar than the dear face itself moves there. They can touch it if they like, but don't, because they know things will never be the same if they do" (page 324).

I don't think I even need to say why Beloved's name is significant, but I will. She got her name from her very own tombstone. More figuratively speaking, she was to her mother beloved. Her death was the result of her mother's love. It was the same mother that drove herself to near death just to please her maimed daughter with showers of love. In the end, Beloved did not turn out to be so beloved, because she faded out of everyone's memory as suddenly as she came in.

Themes from American Literature in Beloved

2009-12-10T23:49:00.003-05:00

"Those white things have taken all I had or dreamed," she said, "and broke my heartstrings too. There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks" (pages 102-103).

One of the most frequent ideas in Beloved is racism and inequality. There is lots of tension between whites and blacks and in this story, whites antagonize our colored protagonists. However, there are a few exceptions. Throughout the book, white characters like Amy Denver, Mr. and Miss Bodwin, and Mr. and Mrs. Garner are shown in a positive light. After reading the remainder of the novel, I have come up with a theme I think Morrison tries to present in her award-winning novel: For every group of people, there are both angels and devils. By this, I mean that no one can judge an entire group of people based on characteristics of a majority. Each individual is just that - an individual. Not everyone takes on the qualities of everyone else that looks like them. Race is not an ever binding rope that ties everyone together; It merely connects them, not preventing them from branching out with their own beliefs.

"There was no entry now. No crack or crevice available. She had taken pains to keep them out, but knew full well that at any moment they could rock her, rip her from her moorings, send the birds twittering back into her hair. Drain her mother's milk, they had already done. Divided her back into plant life--that too. Driven her fat-bellied into the woods--they had done that. All news of them was rot. They buttered Halle's face; gave Paul D iron to eat; crisped Sixo; hanged her own mother. She didn't want any more news about whitefolks; didn't want to know what Ella knew and John and Stamp Paid, about the world done up the way whitefolks loved it. All news of them should have topped with the birds in her hair" (page 322).

The quote above connects to the theme I found. It describes the depth of white people's actions and also conveys the extent of their torture. Like other pieces in American literature, the crimes against minorities continue to build, escalating into total destruction.

This is a prevalent theme in American literature, because Americans having been writing about ideas such as slavery, discrimination, and forced isolation for years. From the controversial Uncle Tom's Cabin to the emotionally moving Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, and not excluding books like Ashes of Roses which tell stories of other forms of segregation, the dream for equality has been around for centuries. It was in Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. It was in Langston Hughes' poetry. It is in a timeless idea that has incorporated itself into several contemporary literary pieces, including Beloved.

"The day Stamp Paid saw the two backs through the window and then hurried down the steps, believed the undecipherable language clamoring around the house was the mumbling of the black and angry dead. Very few had died in bed, like Baby Suggs, and none that he know of, including Baby, had lived a livable life. Even the educated colored: the long-school people, the doctors, the teachers, the paperwriters and businessmen had a hard row to hoe. In addition to having to use their heads to her ahead, they had the weight of the whole race sitting there. You needed two heads for that. Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. In a way, he thought, they were right. The more coloredpeople spent their strength trying to convince them how gently they were, how clever and loving, how human, the more they used themselves up to persuade whites of something Negroes believed could not be questioned, the deeper and more tangled the jungle grew inside. But it wasn't the jungle blacks brought with them to this place from the other (livable) place. It was the jungle whitefolks planted in them. And it grew. It spread. In, through and after life, it spread, until it invaded the whites who had made it. Touched them every one. Change and altered the,. Made them bloody, silly, worse than even they wanted to be, so scared were they of the jungle they had made. The screaming baboon lived under their own white skin; the red gums were their own" (page 235).

Oh, look how the tables have turned. The whites have become the very thing they despise. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is quite ironic.

Repeated Moments in Beloved

2009-12-10T21:22:00.003-05:00

Morrison does a lot of referring to past events in her book. Once an important event occurs, she refers to it several times. Of the scenes which she does this for are:

when Paul D tells Sethe how many feet she has
when Paul D holds the weight of Sethe's breasts
the last time Paul D saw Halle
the shadows holding hands

At the end of part one of Beloved, Sethe and Paul D get into a fight. Morrison refers to the fight several times in the next few following chapters. She consistently says Paul D 'reminded' Sethe how many feet she had, as if Sethe forgot that she is not an animal, but a human. The importance of this quote is that Paul D points out the wild, uncivilized manner in which Sethe acted. The condescending comment affects Sethe because she had not expected Paul D to be turned away.

"While Stamp Paid was making up his mind to visit 124 for Baby Suggs' sake, Sethe was trying to take her advice: to lay it all down, sword and shield. Not just to acknowledge the advice Baby Suggs gave her, but actually to take it. Four days after Paul D reminded her of how many feet she had, Sethe rummaged among the shoes of strangers to find the ice skates she was sure were there. Digging in the heap she despised herself for having been so trusting, so quick to surrender at the stove while Paul D kissed her back" (pages 103-104).

The above passage is also another reference to the first kitchen scene with Sethe and Paul D. Sethe has a few doubts about Paul D after he holds her breasts in the kitchen. She thinks:

"But maybe a man was nothing but a man, which is what Baby Suggs always said. They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and as soon as you felt how light and lovely that was, they studied your scars and tribulations, after which they did what he he had done: ran her children out and tore up the house" (page 16).

Sethe was taken advantage of and had her breast milk stolen, which may be why Paul D having the responsibility for her breasts is such an important scene. When Paul D first holds her, Sethe is relieved of the metaphoric weight of her past. Right after she talks about what was done to her that final night at Sweet Home, her worries are temporarily relieved. However, after Paul D and Sethe have relations, they spend some time thinking about each other. Paul D studies her back, no longer seeing the beauty in her chokecherry tree. Sethe feels as if Paul D holding her weight was meaningless, because once she allowed him the responsibility, he began to exercise too much control.

While Paul D and Sethe are in the privacy of her bedroom, they discuss a night that was traumatic for them both. While Sethe's milk was being stolen by a nephew of the school teacher, Halle was there to witness it all. Later, Paul D saw him at the butter churn, with butter all over his face.

"There is also my husband squatting by the churn smearing the butter as well as its clabber all over his face because the milk they took is on his mind. And as far as he is concerned, the world may as well know it. And if he was that broken then, then he is also and certainly dead now" (page 83).

At the butter churn is the last place anyone ever saw Halle. Witnessing what happened to Sethe broke him; it drove him crazy. Whenever Sethe recalls Halle, she has the image in her head of him at the churn. This is heartbreaking for her, because ever since she left Sweet Home, she has maintained hope that Halle would come find her. With Paul D revealing the final time he saw Halle, Sethe knows there is no chance that he has survived.

On the way to the carnival, Sethe takes note of the shadows that belong to her, Denver, and Paul D. They are holding hands, which she takes to mean that there really is a life for her and Paul D. She smiles at the thought that the three of them will be happy together. After Paul D's departure, Sethe has a different interpretation of the shadows.

"Obviously the hand-holding shadows she had seen on the road were not Paul D, Denver and herself, but "us three." The three holding on to each other skating the night before; the three sipping flavored milk. And since that was so--if her daughter could come back home from the timeless place--certainly her sons could, and would, come back from wherever they had gone to" (page 214).

While Denver, Beloved, and Sethe go ice skating, Sethe reevaluates the situation with the shadows. She believes that the three shadows did not include Paul D, but included Beloved, which is a sign that her family may be restored. Throughout the whole novel, Sethe's family is broken apart. Her children are all in different places, with the exception being Denver. The shadows are important because to Sethe it means that her children will find their way back and her family may once again be whole.

Character Study: An Examination of the Main Characters

2009-12-09T18:13:00.002-05:00

The characters in Morrison's book have interesting personalities. It is clear that the events they have gone through in their lives have shaped their development. I have included textual evidence, followed by my perception of the characterization:

Sethe:

"Once, long ago, she was soft, trusting. She trusted Mrs. Garner and her husband too. She knotted the earrings into her underskirt to take along, not so much to wear but to hold. Earrings that made her believe she could discriminate among them. That for every schoolteacher, there would be an Amy; that for every pupil there was a Garner, or Bodwin, or even a sheriff, whose touch at her elbow was gentle and who looked away when she nursed. But she had come to believe every one of Baby Suggs' last words and buried all recollection of them and luck. Paul D dug it up, gave her back her body, kissed her divided back, stirred her rememory and brought her more news: of clabber, of iron, of roosters' smiling, but when he heard knews, he counted her feet and didn't even say goodbye" (page 222).
her

Sethe is the main character of the story. I choose the above passage for her characterization, because it quickly sums up everything that has happened to Sethe since we first began to get to know her. It shows that her character is no longer able to trust, because she was taken advantage of and hurt earlier in her life. It also reveals the symbol of the earrings she was given by Mrs. Garner. There is some part of Sethe that believes there are good and bad white people and she must differentiate between the two groups. In the paragraph, it is also revealed how easy it was for Sethe to forget lessons of the past when Paul D walked in. He came into her house and, rather than believing he would be turned away by her past, she thought that he would bless her with his love for a long time. The passage also talks about Sethe's secret that drove Paul D away, which shows that she has a conflicted existence. Her life is affected heavily by a tough choice she made years ago and it scares others away from her. Sethe's character, as stated in a previous post, is hard to classify. I think she is a protagonist, but she made one questionably wrong decision so others refuse to love her. Her actions don't automatically make her a bad person.

Denver:

"Shortly afterward Sethe and Denver tried to call up and reason with the baby ghost, but got no where. It took a man, Paul D, to shout it off, beat it off and take its place for himself. And carnival or no carnival, Denver preferred the venomous baby to him any day. During the first days after Paul D moved in, Denver stayed in her emerald closet as long as she could, lonely as a mountain and almost as big, thinking everybody had somebody but her; thinking even a ghost's company was denied her. So when she saw the black dress with two unlaced shoes beneath it she trembled with secret thanks. Whatever her power and however she used it, Beloved was hers. Denver was alarmed by the harm she thought Beloved planned for Sethe, but felt helpless to thwart it, so unrestricted was her need to love another. The display she witnessed at the Clearing shamed her because the choice between Sethe and Beloved was without conflict" (page 123).

This passage exposes the loneliness to Denver's character. When she was a child, her two brothers were scared off by the ghost of their baby sister. Her grandmother Baby Suggs passed away just a while after that. All her life, she has wanted company and the only company ever given to her was of a ghost. This passage shows that she needs a feeling of companionship and will sacrifice other things, such as her willingness to help Sethe, in order to maintain it. It also shows her uneasy feelings towards her mother. As evident later in the book, Denver is angry with her mother for attempting to kill her children. She is also fearful, only staying with Sethe to ensure her mother does not suddenly let her emotions overcome her once more.

Baby Suggs:

"It started that way: laughing children, dancing men, crying women and then it got mixed up. Women stopped crying and danced; men sat down and cried; children danced, women laughed, children cried until, exhausted and riven, all and each lay about the Clearing damp and gasping for breath. In the silence that followed, Baby Suggs, holy, offered up to them her great big heart.
She did not tell them to clean up their lives or to go and sin no more. She did not tell them they were blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek or its glorybound pure.
She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it" (page 103).

This passage captures the power of Baby Suggs. She is almost like a preacher of the gospel. She makes people dance, laugh, and cry. Baby Suggs is also characterized by having a big heart. She is a warm person who others adore. As a former slave, she has lots of ideas about freedom. The freedom she believes in is not just freedom from slavery; it is freedom from everything else in the world that could possibly tie a person down. In this passage, Baby Suggs is developed because her ability to speak to large groups is shown. Another one of her infamous quotes is also revealed. Baby Suggs is an insightful person, who has a reason behind everything and shares her ideas with Sethe. She's a wise old woman who is finally able to enjoy freedom after many years of not being able to attain it.

Paul D:

"Not even trying, he had become the kind of man who could walk into a house and make the women cry. Because with him, in his presence, they could. There was something blessed in his manner. Women saw him and wanted to weep--to tell him that their chest hurt and their knees did too. Strong women and wise saw him and told him things they only told each other: that way past the Change of Life, desire in them had suddenly become enormous, greedy, more savage than when they were fifteen, and that it embarrassed them and made them sad: that they secretly longed to die--to be quit of it--that sleep was more precious to them than any waking day. Young girls sidled up to him to confess or describe how well-dressed the visitations were that had followed them straight from their dreams. Therefore, although he did not understand why this was so, he was not surprised when Denver dripped tears into the stovefire. Nor, fifteen minutes later, after telling him about her stolen milk, her mother wept as well" (page 20).

The above passage was taken from the beginning of the book, when Paul D was first introduced. Immediately after his coming, Denver broke out in tears. Sethe was next to become emotional in his presence. Paul D's being allows women to open up and release the tears they are holding in. He has an inviting personality and something about his presence is comforting. With this in mind, it is no wonder that Sethe expected other things of him. Like any other human, Paul D has his limits and could not deal with Sethe's past.

Halle:

"She said she was always a little scared of my daddy. He was too good, she said. From the beginning, she said, he was too good for the world. Scared her. She thought, He'll never make it though nothing. Whitepeople must have thought so too, because they never got split up. So she got the chance to know him, look after him, and he scared her the way he loved things. Animals and tools and crops and the alphabet. He could count on paper. The boss taught him. Offered to teach the other boys but only my daddy wanted it. She said the other boys said no. One of them with a number for a name said it would change his mind--make him forget things he shouldn't and memorize things her shouldn't and be didn't want his mind mess up. But my daddy said, If you can't count they can cheat you. If you can't read they can beat you" (page 245).

Halle hardly has any action in the plot and any thing that he does is in flashbacks, because he is probably dead. However, he is an important character because he was the "somebody son" that gave his mother freedom. Besides his being a hard worker, Halle was a loving, intelligent guy. He was an all around great guy, because he appreciated and loved Sethe, set his mother free, and even loved materialistic objects with an odd passion. Halle is not expected to be alive, because he was too loving and the scene with the school teacher's nephew stealing Sethe's milk evidently broke him.

Schoolteacher:

"He was a little man. Short. Always wore a collar, even in the fields. A schoolteacher, she said. That made her feel good that he husband's sister's husband had book learning and was willing ot come farm Sweet Home after Mr. Garner passed. The men could have done it, even with Paul F sold. But it was like Halle said. She didn't want to be the only white person on the farm and a woman too. So she was satisfied when the school teacher agreed to come. He brought two boys with him. Songs or nephews, I don't know. They called him Onka and had pretty manners, all of em. You know, the kind who know Jesus by His first name, but out of politeness never use it even to His face. A pretty good farmer, Halle said. Not strong as Mr. Garner but smart enough. He liked the ink I made. It was her recipe, but he preferred how I mixed it and it was important to him because at night he sat down to write in his book. It was a book about us but we didn't know that right away. We just thought it was his manner to ask us questions. He commenced to carry round a notebook and write down what we said. I still think it was them questions that tore Sixo up. Tore him up for all time" (page 44).

Schoolteacher is not a good guy. He has several scenes in the book, from the stealing of Sethe's milk to the killing of Sethe's child. He is an intelligent white man, which is why Mrs. Garner seeks his help. However, he abuses the power he is given and uses any opportunity to teach the slaves lessons, often with violence. He also writes about the slaves and how they react to different things, which shows the inquisitiveness inside his evil.

Beloved:

"In the dark my name is Beloved."
Denver scooted a little closer. "What's it like over there, where you were before? Can you tell me?
"Dark," said Beloved. "I'm small in that place. I'm like this here." She raised her head off the bed, lay down on the side and curled up.
Denver covered her lips with her fingers. "Were you cold?"
Beloved curled tighter and shook her head. "How. Nothing to breathe down there and no room to move in."
"You see anybody?"
"Heaps. A lot of people is down there. Some is dead" ( page 88.)

Beloved is the title character of the book, although she is probably not the main character. Her character is very important, because she is supernaturally connected to the child Sethe murdered. In the above passage, Denver asks Beloved questions about where she is from, thus revealing Beloved's true identity. Her character is bent on attaining Sethe's love and never again being taken away from her.

The Controversy of Sethe's Decision: The Unclear Line Between Right and Wrong

2009-12-08T17:37:00.002-05:00

"Beloved, she my daughter. She mine. See. She come back to me of her own free will and I don't have to explain a thing. I didn't have time to explain before because it had to be done quick. Quick. She had to be safe and I put her where she would be. But my love was tough and she back now. I knew she would be. Paul D ran her off so she had no choice but to come back to me in the flesh. I bet you Baby Suggs, on the other side, helped. I won't never let her go. I'll explain to her, even though I don't have to. Why I did it. How if I hadn't killed her she would have died and that is something I could not bear to happen to her. When I explain, it she'll understand, because she understands everything already. I'll tend her as no mother tended a child, a daughter" (page 238).

At the end of part 1, Morrison finally lets us readers know Sethe's haunting secret: She killed her daughter.

Roughly one paragraph later in part 2 of the book, Beloved's secret is revealed to more than just the suspecting reader; Sethe learns that Beloved is the daughter she murdered.

Towards the last chapter of part one, things start getting fishy for Paul D. Stamp Paid, an old friend of Baby Suggs, feels it his obligation to tell Paul D what kind of woman he is with. After their talk, Paul D comes home to a heated argument with Sethe that results in him leaving 124.

It is hard for Paul D to understand why Sethe did what she did. He believes there were other ways to save her children; She believes the only way for her to save them from slavery would be to kill them. Paul D then reminds her of how many feet she has, a scene referred to several times later in the book. He says, "You got two feet, Sethe, not four" (page 194). He then spares her the harshness of goodbye, telling her to leave him dinner as he walks out the door, knowing his return will not be soon.

What Sethe did was not a savage action. Although she was looked down upon in her community from then on and had the extreme luck of finding a job after the incident, she never felt shame or regret for her behavior. It is difficult to judge someone's actions when such important factors, like motherhood and first-hand slave experience, come into play.

As a mother and former slave, Sethe felt it was her duty to protect her children from the horrible life she was forced to endure. This is not an unadmirable quality. However, murder was an extreme that should not have been taken. Since she gave her children lives, meant to be safe, she felt it was her right to take their lives away once their safety was at risk. In a way, she protected them because slavery was a much worse experience than death itself.

What Sethe did not understand is that once you bring a child onto this earth, the decision to take her life is no longer yours. Paul D was right - there could have been another way. Slavery evidently ended a few years before the first scene in the book takes place, meaning Sethe's children would only have to go through a few years of the enslavement. However, there is no way she could have known this information. If she had, her actions may have been different.

Sethe's actions, in my opinion, are not completely justified, but that judgment is tough to make. I have no children and thankfully, I've never been a slave. I can't tell anyone who has gone through what I have not what is right and wrong. I can't, because this is a tough decision, influenced by the conditions in which she was raised.

Different people reacted to her decision, mainly not understanding her reasoning. They also don't understand because they were not placed in her situation, so they can't make an accurate prediction as to what they would do in her situation. I think in some ways, her actions are justified, meaning I can sympathize with her and understand why she did it. However, as a believer of nonviolence, I can't allow murder to be an excuse to not let your children become slaves. I am on both sides of the fence; I cannot clearly label her as a Satanic creature or a heroic mother. But if I had to choose, I would lay Sethe's decision to murder her children (and her success in the murder of her older daughter) in the 'wrong' pile.

Finding the Antagonist of the Story

2009-11-24T17:44:00.001-05:00

I am almost halfway through the novel, but there is not a clear antagonist in it. There is Beloved, who, although chokes Sethe and comes on to Paul D, consistently shows the love she has in her heart. While she is more than a tad bit eerie, I can't quite label her as 'the bad guy'.

There's also Paul D, who is always on the move and hurts Sethe's heart when he tells her about Halle, but falls more and more in love with her each day. Once again, I can't positively call him the antagonist because of the love he has for Sethe.

Maybe it's a competition for Sethe's heart: Beloved vs. Paul D. Or perhaps a battle for Beloved: Denver vs. Sethe. In such a clear cut match, one must be labeled a protagonist, the other an antagonist. However, I don't think that's it either. The competition they face they are not fully aware of. Each vying character wants to feel loved, but in such a battle, winners and losers are not required to be designated.

The antagonist could also be the baby ghost, but Sethe has already said it is a sad spirit, not an evil one. Also, Denver enjoys its company. Since its presence is missed, it must not be so much of a burden to be called an antagonist.

In every good novel, someone must play the role of antagonist. And since this is clearly (or at least, in my opinion) a very good novel, there has to be one. It is possible that I have not yet discovered the intended 'bad guy' of the book yet or maybe that I have overlooked more major evil characteristics in someone who has already been introduced. However, I have concluded that this story's antagonist is more than just one person particularly. It is a group of people: white people.

Also, with every good argument, there is a call for textual evidence:

"Those white things have taken all I had or dreamed," she said, "and broke my heartstrings too. There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks" (pages 104-105).

Morrison spends a lot of time describing the actions of white people, whether they be cruel plantation owners, an equally cruel schoolteacher, boys looking to take advantage of a colored woman, or those few white people who actually wish to help. It has commonly been stated over the past nearly 200 years that slavery is immoral. Morrison depicts the immorality in slavery, by describing the living quarters of blacks and the severity of their beatings.

I find it strange that Baby Suggs would blame only white people for the bad luck in the world. Thinking about it more, it makes sense. Baby Suggs has been deprived of all eight of her children due to the inherent superiority of the white race. Her children have either been sold as slaves or driven away by the coldness in racial discrimination. Her house is also haunted by a baby's ghost. It is a ghost of a baby who died at the hands of her mother so she would not have to go through the cruel punishment of slavery.

I'm not saying I agree with the ideas in the book, although I do side with them at times. In the real world, white people are not the enemy. In the skin color-conscious world of Beloved, it would be hard to say white people are not the enemy. They have consistently deprived the characters of all the joys of life they can take: children, love for themselves, innocence, quality of life, and, most of all, freedom. Even when slavery has been abolished, the whites still manage to restrict the colored characters of many of their liberties.

Morrison does not so much characterize white people. In fact, the only white people she's mentioned so far are the kind Amy Denver, the Garner family, and the schoolteacher and his nephews. With Amy Denver and Mrs. Garner as the exceptions, she antagonizes the whites in her novel.

Rhetoric Study: The Impact of Morrison's Rhetorical Techniques

2009-11-24T16:48:00.002-05:00

"'Here," she said, "in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don't love your eyes; they'd just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flat it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face 'cause they don't love that either. You got to love it, you! And no, they ain't in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don't love your mouth. You got to love it. This flesh I'm talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I'm telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they'd just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver--love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize" (pages 103-104).

I choose the above passage to analyze for rhetoric because, not only does it stick out due to the passion it carries, but it contains a number of effective literary devices. The quote is said to a large crowd of colored people by Baby Suggs, during her Saturday gatherings at the Clearing.

Morrison incorporates several rhetorical devices into the selected piece:

Apostrophe
Climax
Repetition
Emotional appeal

There are probably more that I have not listed, but the above items are to be the topic of my blog today.

The author, here speaking as an orator, uses apostrophe to connect to the audience. She repeatedly says "O my people" and then describes another part of themselves that the colored people listening to her should love. This is effective to the audience, because Baby Suggs talks to them more directly, saying that white people don't love each of the individuals in her presence. She focuses on an inner-love in this piece, requiring that her audience love their own bodies, so despised by white people. As a reader, Morrison's use of apostrophe is equally as effective. It successfully held my attention to the speech because the author may have very well been saying those things to me. The device also carried intense emotion, which is enough to incite self-love for those deeply-deprived of love and also for those deeply-deprived of a reason for love.

Morrison also uses climax in Baby Sugg's speech. For example, she says "Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty." The rising severity of the verbs in that sentence convoke an additional emotion response. It is both sad and painful. To comfort the listeners, Baby Suggs tells them to love themselves. She also uses climax in the sentence "Put a hand on it, grace it, stroke, it and hold it up." The climax there is in the different steps Baby Suggs advises her listeneners to take to begin loving their unappreciated bodies. This technique makes her argument stronger and makes the response from the audience reasonable.

Morrison repeats several short phrases in Baby Sugg's speech at the Clearing. Among the repeated phrases is "what you...they...". This is used to show the listeners a chain of cause-and-effect. What the colored person does, the white person ignores. Repeatedly, the chain goes on. Here, Baby Suggs shows her audience that the white reaction to their actions is consistently awful. She inspires a black action: self-love; so that the mistreatment will not hurt them. Morrison uses this pattern a lot in the above passage. She lists what feed need, what backs need, and what shoulders need. By doing this, Baby Suggs encourages her audience to spite the majority of whites with a subtle reaction. They must give themselves back what the whites have taken away.

The piece is heavily characterized by emotional appeals. All of the devices serve emotional purposes. It is emotional not only for the listening characters, but also for the reading persons. Morrison powerfully conveys her message of love. The piece is emotional because of the hurt and pain in the actions and expectations of whites (especially in "they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight"), but also because of the rejoicing Baby Suggs calls for.

Image Study: A Visual Interpretation of Motifs in Beloved

2009-11-22T21:58:00.015-05:00

The Chokecherry Tree:

"A chokecherry tree. Trunk, branches, and even leaves. Tiny little chokecherry leaves. But that was eighteen years ago. Could have cherries too now for all I know" (page 18).

The above image was taken from the movie adaptation of Beloved. To the right, is a photograph of an actual chokecherry tree, taken from an online catalog.

Forever on Sethe's back are several scars in the formation of what appears to be a tree. These scars came from a beating Sethe underwent while she was six months pregnant with Denver. When Sethe told Mrs. Garner that boys had stolen her breast milk, the school teacher helping out with the farm she worked on ordered one of the boys to beat Sethe, leaving the patches of dead skin on her back.

Amy Denver is the first person to notice the shape of the scars left on Sethe's back. She remarks by first giving an awed description and then says "What God have in mind, I wonder" (page 93).When Paul D first comes to 124 he undresses Sethe and feels the chokecherry tree. While reexamining it after he and Sethe first became intimate, he thinks:

"And the wrought-iron maze he had explored in the kitchen like a gold miner pawning through pay dirt was in fact a revolting clump of scars. Not a tree, as she said. Maybe shaped like one; but nothing like any tree he knew because trees were inviting; things you could trust and be near" (page 25)...

I believe the chokecherry tree on Sethe's back symbolizes pain and the tribulations of her life. This pain is not something that Sethe can feel anymore, partly because she won't allow herself to and partly because it is physically impossible for her. She rarely lets herself feel the hurt she has experienced and only when Paul D touches the chokecherry tree does she self-inflict emotional pain and allow herself to trust and remember the details of her past. When people see her back, they see pain. Amy Denver imagines how awful the person who 'planted' the tree on Sethe must be, because even she, who has experienced several whippings as an indentured servant, has never dealt with a beating so severe. Some, like Paul D, are revolted by the ugliness, while others, like Amy, are simply awed by the beauty in pain.

Color:

"Suspended between the nastiness of life and the meanness of death, she couldn't get interested in leaving life or living it, let alone the fright of two creeping-off boys. Her past had been like her present--intolerable--and since she knew death was anything but forgetfulness, she used the little energy left her for pondering color.
"Bring a little lavender in, if you got any. Pink, if you don't""(page 4).

The above picture is a lavender field and to the right is an African quilt. These two selected pictures represent the image of color in the novel.

Color is one of the motifs in Beloved. I believe it represents forgetfulness. Baby Suggs is able to use color as a means of forgetting her past. Likewise, Sethe does the same thing:

"Sethe looked at her hands, her bottle-green sleeves, and thought how little color there was in the house and how strange that she had not missed it the way Baby did. Deliberate, she though, it must be deliberate, because the last color she remembered was the pink chips in the headstone of her baby girl. After that she became as color conscious as a hen. Every dawn she worked at fruit pies, potato dishes and vegetables while the cook did the soup, meat and all the rest. And she could not remember remembering a molly apple or a yellow squash. Every dawn she saw the dawn, but never acknowledged or remarked its color. There was something wrong with that. It was though one day she saw red baby blood, another day the pink gravestone chips, and that was the last of it" (pages 46-47).

The last color Sethe can remember was in such a strong scene that she is unable to remember anymore occurrences of color. She needs more images to block out the mental image of her dead child and, just as Baby Suggs had, can use color as a way to block out the haunting past.

The quilt is used as a picture because, in the novel, it holds the only exception to a room ridden of color. This little bit of color amongst so much darkness is, in my view, an escape from Sethe's conscious. If she allows herself more pondering of color, she will be able to suppress the terror of her past.

Feet & Eyes:

"People I saw as a child," she said, "who'd had the bit always looked wild after that. Whatever they used it on them for, it couldn't have worked, because it put a wildness where there wasn't any. When I look at you, I don't see it. There ain't no wildness in your eye nowhere" (page 84).

The feet above are strange. They are shaped abnormally and also have two many toes. I used this image because the feet show something about the person they belong to. The eyes to the right provide a portal. You can take a long look into the eyes, because there is something intriguing that draws you in.

Morrison spends a lot of time talking about one's feet when they are introduced to the story. In the opening scene, Sethe is barefoot. When Beloved is brought into the story, Sethe notices her feet. When Sethe makes her journey to freedom, her feet are swollen and nearly dead.

I think feet represent life's journey. More specifically, they show the circumstances of one's past, such as where and how long he has traveled. This is important because it characterizes people as old and experienced versus new and innocent.

Morrison also takes note of people's eyes in the story. Whether the eyes be wild or express passion as they have done for Sethe and Paul D, they play an important role in character. Eyes are often regarded as the way to see into someone's soul. Morrison uses eyes to determine her characters' passions, fears, and hopes.

The River & Night:

"A fully dressed woman walked out of the water" (page 60).

"Who like him, had hidden in caves and fought for food; who like him, stole from pigs; who, like him, had slept in trees in the day and walked by night" (page 78).

The river and night both symbolize a form of passage. Beloved emerges from the river from her dead life onto her new, living one. Also, Paul D can only travel at night from his enslaved life to his of freedom. These two images show the ways someone can change their lives, whether they emerge as living beings or as freed men.

Velvet:

"Boston. Get me some velvet. It's a store there called Wilson. I seen the pictures of it and they have the prettiest velvet. They don't believe I'm a get it, but I am" (page 40).

When she discovers Sethe lying in the cold field, Amy Denver reveals she is on her way to Boston to find velvet. She also says that no one believed she would get it but is determined.

I think velvet represents desire and also extreme measures that one will get to achieve their dreams. It also shows hope. The characters describe velvet as such a wonderful thing, but none of them have ever seen it. However, they expect that they will sometime. This is important because by concentrating on an object, they can endure most of what life throws at them.

Title Ambiguity: The Double Denotation of Beloved

2009-11-22T17:14:00.010-05:00

"Ten minutes, he said. You got ten minutes I'll do it for free.
Ten minutes for seven letters. With another ten could she have gotten "Dearly" too? She had not thought to ask him and it bothered her still that it might have been possible--that for twenty minutes, a half hour, say, she could have had the whole thing, every word she heard the preacher say at the funeral (and all there was to say, surely) engraved on her baby's headstone: Dearly Beloved. But what she got, settled for, was the one word that mattered. She thought it would be enough, rutting among the headstones with the engraver, his young son looking on, the anger in his face so old; the appetite in it quite new. That should certainly be enough. Enough to answer one more preacher, one more abolitionist and a town full of disgust." (page 5).

Behold! The first occurrence of the title word in the story. Approximately 5.5 pages into the novel, it seems as though Ms. Toni Morrison has granted her readers the simple pleasure of knowing the meaning behind the title of the book. However, being a Morrison novel, nothing is ever as it seems in Beloved.

While still indulging in the brief pleasure Morrison has allowed us, we find it in our abilities to begin piecing together the puzzle of the novel. Regretfully, Sethe choose those 7 letters to forever mark the gravestone of her dead baby girl (the same dead child whose spirit we find out, one paragraph later, is haunting 124). With this knowledge gained, we figure this is a suitable title for a book that tells the story of a house haunted by a "sad, not evil" ghost. Unfortunately, we haven't solved the mystery of the title just yet. In fact, this pleasure is only an illusion; there is more to come on the significance of 'Beloved'.

Obviously, there is a reason I bring up this instance in the plot 67 pages into the novel. Almost 60 pages after our revelation of discovering the origin of the title, we gain a little bit more insight. A mysterious girl shows up in the novel and upon being discovered by Paul D, Sethe, and Denver on their way home from "Colored Thursday" of the carnival, our characters engage in conversation:

"You from around here?" Sethe asked her.
She shook her head no and reached down to take off her shoes. She pulled her dress up to the knees and rolled down her stockings. When the hosiery was tucked into the shoes, Sethe saw that her feet were like her hands, soft and new. She must have hitched a wagon ride, thought Sethe. Probably one of those West Virginia girls looking for something to beat a life of tobacco and sorghum. Sethe bent to pick up the shoes.
"What might your name be?" asked Paul D.
"Beloved," she said, and her voice was so low and rough each one looked at the other two. They heard the voice first--later the name.
"Beloved. You use a last name, Beloved?" Paul D asked her.
"Last?" She seemed puzzled. Then "No," and she spelled it for them, slowly as though the letters were being formed as she spoke them.
Sethe dropped the shoes; Denver sat down and Paul D smiled" (page 67).

The two denotations of Beloved provide several similarities. For one, there is a mention of a wagon ride for both: The baby, before dying, rode in a wagon in her escape; Beloved must have just hitched one. Beloved's hands are soft as new, just as the baby's hands would have been. Later discovered, Beloved is around 19 or 20 years old--about 2 years older than Denver. The baby was 2 years old when Denver was born. Sethe also recognizes the similarities (or maybe just reacts to the significance of Beloved's name).

I believe that Beloved and Sethe's dead baby may have something else in common. Morrison has already made evident the supernatural elements in her story; maybe this is an additional item meant to spook the reader with its eeriness.

Once again, what at first seems to be the reason for the novel's single-word title may not exactly be it. The connection between these two 'Beloved's is obvious but can only be revealed with time and patience. I have finally reached that point in the novel where I cannot put it down because of its increasing buildup of suspense. The eeriness, intriguing as it is, is making me overly anxious. My mind is full of ridiculous questions, but in Beloved, nothing is too ridiculous to withhold from asking:

Is Beloved a reincarnation of Sethe's dead child? Paul D (who, despite my earlier predictions, does not seem to be going anywhere) did in fact drive the baby's spirit out, so could it be that the baby is coming back in a more physical form?
Why did she rise out of the water? (That part of the chapter reminded me of the corpses rising from the lake in a scene of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.)
How long will she stay? Will she form a 'sisterly' bond with Denver?

Among the most unresolvable questions, why haven't I read a novel by Toni Morrison before? She is a modern literary genius, with her plot twists and inscrutably peculiar writing style; the praise for her work is not to be rendered meaningless.

The Introduction: A First Look at the Writing Style of Toni Morrison

2009-11-21T18:41:00.017-05:00

"124 was spiteful. Full of baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims. The grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen years old--as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered it (that was the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny hand prints appeared in the cake (that was it for Howard). Neither boy waited to see more; another kettleful of chickpeas smoking in a heap on the floor; soda crackers crumbled and strewn in a line next to the door-sill. Nor did they wait for one of the relief periods: the weeks, months even, when nothing was disturbed. No. Each one fled at once--the moment the house committed what was for them the one insult not to be borne or witnessed a second time. Within two months, in the dead of winter, leaving their grandmother, Baby Suggs; Sethe, their mother; and their little sister, Denver, all by themselves in the gray and white house on Bluestone Road. It didn't have a number then, because Cincinnati didn't stretch that far. In fact, Ohio had been calling itself a state only seventy years when first one brother and then the next stuffed quilt packing into his hat, snatched up his shoes, and crept away from the lively spite the house felt for them" (page 3)

This is the opening paragraph to Toni Morrison's prize winning book Beloved. Right away, the reader is snatched into the home at 124 Bluestone Road, Cincinatti, Ohio. With no forewarning, the reader is brought into the story, not expecting the conflicts to be shown, although not clear, within the first page of the novel. Everything is a mystery; there are so many questions: Why is 124 (which we shall presume to be a house upon the first reading) so spiteful and so full of baby's venom? Why would a baby even have venom? What did Howard and Buglar run away from exactly? Where is the proper introduction? Why can't my questions be answered already?

Evoking questions from the reader so early in the novel achieves one of Morrison's many purposes. As stated in the foreword of the book she "wanted the reader to be kidnapped, thrown ruthlessly into an alien environment as the first step into a shared experience with the book's population--just as the characters were snatched from one place to another, from any place to any other, without preparation or defense" (xviii).With just that, no preparation or defense, Morrison takes us into the home of Sethe, a runaway slave made to live in a house haunted by the spirit of her dead daughter and ridden with the regret for settling for just the word 'Beloved' on the child's tombstone.

With incomplete sentences, several instances of misplaced punctuation, and an unorthodox introduction, Morrison seldom follows any of the conventional rules for novel writing. The prose is characterized by shorts phrases like "Full of baby's venom" and "Twenty years. A life time" (page 28), placed in paragraphs to fool readers to believe they are perfectly suitable sentences. It is also composed of what were formerly two words and have now been written as one, of which include 'whitewoman', 'Redmen', and 'coloredpeople'. Morrision's stylistic prose suggest that the mere adjectives of the individuals engulf them entirely and become their identities. This characteristic suits the time period of which the story takes place, because in the days of slavery and racial discrimination, a man could be no more than his color to the world.

The writing style of Toni Morrison is simple, but deviant from that of comparable contemporary writers. She leaves no time for readers to become acquainted with her characters and, without any written sign of hesitation, introduces them to the strange circumstances of the plot and her peculiar prose. What at first appears to be a simplistic form of writing is actually a more complex, premeditated style. The prose of Beloved is parallel to the dialect of its characters and the structure of the plot (such as the absence of a more ordinary introduction) correlates with the occurrences of the characters' lives. Real life seldom happens in an organized fashion and Morrison's prose likewise does not follow any standards.

Slowly but surely, I am getting used to Morrison's odd style. I will admit I did have to reread these first 33 pages in order to fully comprehend the action in the plot. For example, upon my first reading I missed the eagerness in Paul D's eyes when Sethe invited him to stay. I also misunderstood the description of the scars on Sethe's back, which although referred to as a chokecherry tree are just a bit of dead skin caused by a beating. I can't wait to see if Paul D will prove Baby Suggs old saying true, that "a man ain't nothing but a man" (page 26), or if he will be an exception and actually stick around 124. Seeing as the house is haunted by a dead baby, I highly doubt he will prove anyone wrong.