Thesis: The cruelties of slavery were not over after emancipation, and in Beloved, to my
particular liking, the deep psychological suffrage of former slaves is told
through
flashbacks to past tragedies, memories, and nightmares.
Introduction: Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987) was her fifth novel, and consequently the
most
controversial work she had ever written. Morrison was working as
a senior editor
at the publishing firm Random House when she was editing a
nineteenth century
article which was in a historical book and found the basis of this
story. A direct
connection between Morrison and this novel is best demonstrated by
Morrison's
statement of " I deal with five years of terror in a pathological society,
living in a
bedlam where nothing makes sense". This novel is set during the
mid-nineteenth
century and reveals the pain and suffrage of being a slave before and
after
emancipation through deeply symbolic delineation's of continued emotional and
psychological suffrage.
I. Stanley Crouch
A) " For Beloved, above all else, is a black face holocaust novel" (pp. 38-43).
B) "That Morrison chose to set the Afro-American experience in the framework of
collective
tragedy is fine...she lacks a true sense of the tragic" (pp. 38-43).
C) Morrison has an ability to organize her novel in a musical structure, using images
as motifs.
D) Morrison wants her reader's not to experience the horrors of slavery, but rather
realize the
sins that were committed against them, and simply feel sorry for them.
II. Ann Snitow
A) "...she harps so of the presence of Beloved, sometimes neglecting the mental life
of her
other characters" (pp. 25-6).
B) " If Beloved fails in it's ambitions, it is still a novel by Toni Morrison...full
of beautiful
prose, dialogue as rhythmically satisfying as music...and scenes so clearly
etched they're
like hallucinations" (pp. 25-6).
C) Morrison sets herself apart from other writers by rejecting irony.
D) The novel revolves and searches for, but never gets any closer to the people that
are
numbed with overwhelming grief.
III. Rosellen Brown
A) "The rhythm of black speech in Morrison's control is complex and versatile, and
with it she
makes third person narrative sound as intimate as a back porch conversation, and
confidences in the first person sound like a dream" (pp. 418-21).
B) "Beloved brings us into the mind of the haunter as well as the haunted" (pp.
420-21).
C) Morrison manages to bring about images and specific memories like stones, and
these I
images and memories disappear and resurface over and over.
D) The audacity and the energy in this novel lies within the pain and ambivalence of
it's
characters toward their memories, and even more so, their forgetting.
IV. Kevin Pesnell
A) Beloved as a family saga.
B) Suffrage of slaves and the viewpoints of many.
C) Haunting memories of a murdered child.
D) Overall writing ability, summation.
Kevin Pesnell
English 102, Section 15
Professor K.
March 18, 1996
The Psychological Suffrage of Former Slaves
Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987) was her fifth novel, and consequently the most
controversial work she had ever written. Morrison was working as a senior editor at the
publishing firm Random House when she was editing a nineteenth century article which was
in a historical book and found the basis for this story. A direct connection between
Morrison and this novel is best demonstrated by Morrison's statement of " I deal with
five years of terror in a pathological society, living in a bedlam where nothing makes
sense". This novel is set during the mid-nineteenth century and reveals the pain and
suffrage of being a slave before and after emancipation through deeply symbolic
delineations of continued emotional and psychological suffrage.
Stanley Crouch stated " For Beloved, above all else, is a blackface holocaust novel"
(38-43). He believed that by including sadistic guards, murder, separation of family
members, a big war, failed and successful escapes, and losses of loved ones to the
violence of the mad order, Morrison was attempting to enter American slavery into the
martyr ranks of the Nazi's abuse of the Jews (Crouch 38-43). Also, Crouch stated, "
...she lacks a true sense of the tragic" (38-43). He supported this by stating " ...it
shows no sense of the timeless and unpredictable manifestations of evil that preceded and
followed American slavery" (Crouch 38-43).
However, Crouch realizes that Morrison has real talent, in that he believes she has the
ability to organize her novel in a musical structure by using images as motifs. He also
felt that the characters in the novel served no purpose other than to deliver a message.
Crouch believed that Morrison did not want her readers to experience the horrors of
slavery that others did, but rather just to tally up the sins that were committed against
the darker people and feel sorry for them. Furthermore, he presumed that this novel was
designed to make sure that the view of the black woman being the most scorned and rebuked
of the victims of society, doesn't weaken.
According to Ann Snitow, " ...she harps so on the presence of Beloved, sometimes
neglecting the mental life of her other characters" (pp. 25-26). She believed that by
sacrificing the other character's vitality until the very end, the novel is left hollow
in the middle. However, Snitow did state " If Beloved fails in it's ambitions, it is
still a novel by Toni Morrison, still therefore full of beautiful prose, dialogue as
rhythmically satisfying as music...and scenes so clearly etched they're like
hallucinations" (25-26). Snitow compares Morrison's writing style to Dickens, in that
she believes that each of them are great, serious writers.
Also, Snitow believes that Morrison sets herself apart from other writers by rejecting
irony. She sees the novel as mixing the grotesque with passion and romance; not just
irony or zaniness, which is what is normally mixed in contemporary fiction. Furthermore,
Snitow believes that the novel revolves and searches for, but never gets any closer to
the people that are numbed with overwhelming grief. Overall, Snitow's critique of this
novel can be best illustrated by her statement " This novel deserves to be read as much
for what it cannot say as for what it can" (25-26).
Rosellen Brown stated " The rhythm of black speech in Morrison's control is complex and
versatile, and with it she makes third person narrative sound as intimate as a back porch
conversation, and confidences in the first person sound like a dream..." (420-21). Brown
believed that this novel may be Morrison's most visualizable of all her novels. Also,
Brown stated that " Beloved brings us into the mind of the haunter as well as the
haunted" (420-21). Brown believes that this is an invitation that no other American
writers has offered.
According to Brown, Morrison manages to continually bring about images and specific
memories like stones, and these images and memories disappear and resurface over and
over. She believes that Morrison places these memories within the novel until the entire
novel is like a tight verbal net from which no feeling can escape attention.
Furthermore, Brown believed that the audacity and the energy within this novel lies
within the pain and ambivalence of its characters toward their memories, and more so,
their forgetting. Overall, Brown thought that Beloved was an extraordinary novel with
language that is at the same time loose and tight, colloquial and elevated, which makes
this novel stunning.
I believe that Beloved was a vividly irregular family saga that is set in the mid-1880's
in Ohio. By that time, slavery had been diminished by the Civil War, but the horrors of
slavery lied within the memories of those that were subjected to it. Morrison has the
ability to describe the physical horrors and torments that the slaves endured in a kind
of delicate way that still made my nerves twitch at the thought of such cruelties. The
story does not simply tell us how one slave felt, but rather it reveals the ways in which
individuals, families, strangers, slaves, and even the caregivers viewed slavery.
The story is somewhat of a ghost tale because it revolves around the spirit of a
mother's baby daughter's ghost, whom she murdered in order to save her from what she
thought was going to be a life of inhumane cruelty. This supernatural entity is what
makes the story so intriguing and interesting. This entity, named Beloved, is haunting
and frightful at times, but Morrison manages to write in such a way that the reader is
not frightened at the mere appearance of the ghost, but rather is nervous and intrigued
by what message the ghost will bring forth.
Overall, I believe that Toni Morrison's Beloved is one of the most thrilling novels that
I have read. Morrison has the ability to write about unthinkable atrocities without
making the readers sick to their stomachs. Furthermore, I enjoyed the story being
presented in the form of flashbacks to past tragedies, memories, and nightmares. The
only negative thing that I can say about this book is that after finishing the book,
there are a couple of unanswered questions: What will happen to Denver, who is starting
a new life at the end of the novel, and more importantly, what has happened to Sethe's,
the mother, sons. Whether or not the reader is interested in slavery, this novel will
captivate almost anyone because it is not only a tale of slavery, but it is also a tale
of human beings' mistakes and their consequences that we must pay for them.
WORKS CITED
Brown, Rosellen. "The Pleasure of Enchantment." The Nation October 1987: 418-421.
Crouch, Stanley. "Aunt Medea." The News Republic, October 1987: 38-43.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Maine: Thorndike, 1987.
Snitow, Ann. "Death Duties: Toni Morrison Looks Back in Sorrow." VLS 58 (1988) :
25-26.
|