"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.
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