Transcript Beloved by Toni Morrison

Beloved by Toni
Morrison
•Sixty Million and More
•History through slaves not
white view
•Interior life of those who
didn’t write their story
• “I Can’t imagine American Literature
without it.”
• Beloved can only be reread; it is
immediately incomprehensible and
excessively demanding; must adopt
new strategies of interpretation
• “Bestial treatment of human beings
never produces a race of beasts.”
• Slavery is the jungle planted in them
that destroys and represses memory
• Emotional and psychological scars of
slavery
Biographical Info.
• Born on Feb. 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio
• Real name is Chloe Anthony Wofford
• Only black child in 1st grade and the
only student who could read.
• Cornell University
• Winner of Pulitzer prize for fiction
• See Interview handout
Structure
• “Narrative is one of the ways in which
knowledge is organized. I have always
thought it was the most important way
to transmit and receive knowledge. I
am less certain of that now-but the
craving for narrative has never
lessened, and the hunger for it is as
keen as it was on Mt. Sinai or Calvary
or the middle of the fens.”-Morrison
Structural Unity in a novel
• Structural divisions-Chapters?
Sections? Settings? How?
• Polarization of Characters-Who?
• Repetition of patterns and elementsmotifs
• Resolution of conflict-internal/external
• Narrative point of view-Range and
Depth-Consciousness?
• Beginning and Endings
• Linear/Spatial/Chronological/Causal
Structure-pieces/parts to whole like
slaves-remembering
Part 1-Slavery and Murder-Sethe must
confront the past
Part 2-Despair-Sethe finds atonement for her
sin/murder
Part 3-Restoration/Cleansing/Rebirth-Sethe
and Paul D unburden the past to create a
future together side by side pp. 259,
261,273- “the best thing is not Beloved but
Sethe”
• Repetition-mothers and daughter; violence;
settings; school teacher/community
• Circles and circling the subject/pain away
from the facts, return and circle back to
explain later in the novel-see conversation
in kitchen-the bit?
• See lines in forehead and 124 (p.51 and
202)
• See murder p. 10 and jail p. 42 and
explanation later in novel
• Story circles-Oral tradition where the
storyteller alternates narratives with
repetitions of words, phrases, motifs
and core images
• Community circle/ family/Denver’s
boxwoods-safety
• Pp. 159,161,163,164,210-217
• Beating back the past because the past
has taken possession of present (36, 73,
, 99,162, 256, 274)
Structure/POV
• Episodic unfolds in a series of
revelations or rememories
• By character’s POV/perspective-See
chapters-1st? 3rd?Unclear=communal
history and shared memory-claim past
and share it.
• Denver’s birth p.78 skips to 3rd person
then to Sethe in next chapter and on
p.90 to Suggs and more.
• Key events: Sethe’s escape, murder,
Beloved’s arrival
Time-separation from
past?
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1873-1874-Now
1855-Denver’s birth Ohio to presentSweet Home to 1855
Flashbacks within those years, before
and after from Middle Passage to
Sethe’s arrival at Sweet Home, Baby
Suggs arrival, escapes, births of Suggs
children, Birth of Sethe’s children,
deaths, separations, return.
Settings: Sweet Home, 124, Prison in
GA, Kentucky before freedom, Ohio
before Beloved, the clearing,-After
• Sweet Home and the Garners vs
Schoolteacher-Utopia? Men? “Same loud or
soft.”-p.125,190,195
• 124 was…
• Alfred,GA- Hell pp.107-108- Chain gang“one lost all lost”-p.110
• Clearing=healing, love,
cleansing,connections-p.87-88, 97
• P. 137,148,157, 250-57
Dual Structures and endings
• Paul D’s journey and romance with
Sethe
• Beloved and ghost tormenting Sethe
• Construction and restoration of family
• Destruction of Beloved
• “There is always something more
interesting at stake than a clear resolution in
a novel. I’m interested in survival-who
survives and who doesn’t and why…. I do
not want to bow out with easy answers to
difficult questions.” -Morrison
Function
of
the
Settings
• To show universal presence of evil
• the degradation of the human spirit and
the personal struggle to overcome it
• the inability to escape the horrors and
consequences of the past
• mental, spiritual, and physical
enslavement
• the subjugation of a culture
• loss and separation from oneself
• Importance of community/chain gang
Vocabulary
• Nigger, Negro, Negress, coloredpeople,
whitepeople, whitefolks, whitegirl, and
whiteboy.
• Man without skin-Yoruba
• Disremember (choose not to remember)
and rememory (haunting feeling; a memory
that recurs unexpectedly when one doesn’t
want to remember
• “Remember in pieces or choose not to
because if we did we couldn’t get up and go
to work in the morning.”
• Disremember (choose not to remember)
and rememory (haunting feeling; a memory
that recurs unexpectedly when one doesn’t
want to remember
• Real events and recurring memories always
there p. 37
• Denver desire to know about past but Sethe
keeps it from Denver
• Denver goes deaf when asked about prison
• Beloved forces Sethe to talk about past and
Paul D to feel the past and Denver to learn
• Lady Jones-Chp. 26- helps Denver and
Community heal and grow through
memories
Style-Jazz?
• Simple and clear
• Musical/poetic-songs
• Ornate and visual to let horrible things
be seen clearly and simply
• Shifts and solos
• Repetition of melody
• Theme and variation
• P.25-27 and pp.200-217
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Style Analysis Passages
Illiteracy- Newspaper clipping, Title
Margaret Garner
Frederick Douglass
Sojourner Truth
Historical Background-origin, middle
passage, trade, treatment, Nat Turner,
Conflict, Emancipation, Northern
Migration
• “This is not a story to pass on.”
Biblical Allusions
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Romans 9:25- “Beloved”
Loaves and Fishes
Joshua-Stamp Paid
Isaac and Abraham
The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Lot’s Wife/Sodom and Gomorrah
Pride goes before a fall
The Spirit is willing, the flesh is weak
Sufficient unto the day is evil
Don’t study war no more
Symbolism
• Water-birth, baptism, life, middle passage,
thirst for freedom-Ohio River Jordan
• Scar (Chokecherry tree), choke the fruit, on
back can’t see but it’s there like memory of
slavery-genealogy
• Birds-Hawk like Sethe; Hummingbirds like
needles p.157-angry dead? Free?
• “At Yo Service”statue-Bodwins
• Renaming=Rebirth-Suggs, Stamp Paid
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Trees-intermediaries
between God and Man
The clearing brings healing
The sin of cutting trees
Sycamores noticed over hanging-p.6
Denver’s boxwoods-p.28
Brother?-p.21
Follow trees to freedom-p.112
Georgia-small tree p.222
Beloved on a stump
Symbols
• The bit, animal, Schoolteacher, the
chart, “real men,” the # of Sethe’s feet,
Sixo-forbidden to speak/need to speak
• Stolen Milk,Butter, Breasts, Nursing,
Milk and Blood
• #3-124-history of house shadows and
skating, unholy trinity of mother,
daughter and Beloved/Paul MICROCOSM for real world that
holds the pain and love of a culture
• #28-cycle/freedom
• Ribbons-white,red,black?
• Colors-Black, White,Orange, Pink,
Lavender, Freedom, Green, Grey,
Life/Death?-Baby Suggs
• Red-Roses but smelling dead,
Blood, Rooster, Velvet
• Winter/Ice-paralysis/death p.174
• Jungle planted in them by whites to
keep them enslaved-Stamp Paid
• Newspaper clipping/mouth
Rape/Emasculation
• Literal and metaphor- “dirty” a person and a
culture
• All men are emasculated and dehumanized
• Mother and child bond destroyed
• Many references to sexual abuse/pain/rape-p. 70,
215,241,251
• Beloved as succubus/vampire
• Paul’s tin box “whiff of contents”-p. 73, nothing
can pry it open-p.113, ocean deep-p.264
Love/Hunger/Heart
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See Baby Suggs Sermon p.87
Red Heart and heart p.23
Heart Beating upon Freedom
Love too thick-p.164-5, 203
Make space, make room for love p.29
Love is a serious disability p.251-59
The best thing?
Hunger-swallowed, eaten, tasted,
empty, full pp.57,31,118,9
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Symbols
Paul A, F, D, Etc. “Sweet Home”?
Halle, Stamp Paid, Sixo
Crawling-already and Here Boy
Baby Suggs/Jenny/ Nothing
Bridge
Sethe choosing her man
Breeding/Stud/Pregnancies
Nephew over-beating Sethe-her inhumanity like
a horse not a human
• Seven-O
• No bad luck in the world but Whitefolks
• Only Men according to Garner?
3 generations of women in Novel
• Baby Suggs and Sethe’s mother-Free to
Slavery, lost 8 children
• Sethe-Slavery to Freedom; Replaces Suggs
at age 13, Free but enslaved at 124 for 18
years until the carnival-then Beloved
appears-Why?
• Denver-Born in River,Freedom to Future,
Literate,-Healing of Community/AmericaSchoolteacher opens possibilities of
language unlike Sethe’s Schoolteacher
• How is each affected by Sethe’s choice?
Theme Seeds
• Love-What is love? Can one love in this
environment? Love too much? Love small?
• Loneliness/Alienation/Dehumanization/Infa
ntalization- “I call myself nothing,” Name
changes?
• Angry Dead/Past/Rememory/Dealing and
accepting the past
• Community/Family/Loss
• Morality/Banality of Evil/The jungle
• Whites and Blacks affected by Slavery
• “Serious work of beating back the past”
Who Is Beloved? What Is Her Function?
Growth? Destuction?
• Murdered daughter, Sethe’s mom, effects of
Slavery, the past, ghost, woman kidnapped,
middle passage, others? Collective memory
of slavery, all disremembered and
unaccounted for?
• Going to pieces, grows like baby, water,
crying, greedy for attn, choking Sethe, My
face, glowing, pregnant and flourishing
while Sethe is dying
• Thirst for stories of past/strangles Sethe
• Paul D- “reminds me of something, loke
like I’m supposed to remember.” –p.234
• Beloved enslaves others like Paul D,
Sethe, and Denver
• Beloved forces Sethe and Paul D to
confront the past, to remember, and to feel
what they’ve denied- “ Red Heart-Ocean
deep place”
• Denver learns of Sethe’s past from
Beloved-earrings, songs, scar, etc.
• Paul D learns of Sethe from Stamp Paid
because of Beloved
• The Community becomes united to
exorcise Beloved to right the wrong of not
• Beloved pieces together the past for all
including the reader
• Morrison pieces together and corrects
misleading info. about slavery for a
common good
• Handprints in a cake to footprints
appearing at end. Silver Fish? It is a
hard story to retell but it must be told
to bring healing like it did to those in
novel like Denver, Paul, Sethe,
Community, etc.
Sethe’s Choice to murder?
“Ultimate gesture of a loving mother...
to kill my children is preferable to
having them die.”
• It means nothing without the historical and
cultural context. Blame slavery.
• “Trying to outhurt the hurter.” Paul
doesn’t agree and doesn’t understand. He
thinks whipping is worse than stealing
milk.
• We feel connected to Sethe (POV) telling
us why and how pp. 162-193
• Baby Suggs gives up preaching victory
and love of body, mouth, heart.
• Dirty you so bad you couldn’t like
yourself no more.” “Jungle whitefolks
planted in them”
• Are blacks to blame for working so hard
to disassociate from whites? Another
slavery?
• The Definers denied freedom, power,
motherhood, feeling, thinking, self, life.
• Community for being jealous?
Chapters 19-23 and other
difficult sections?
• 19-Stamp Paid hears “unspeakable
thoughts” put to words
• 20-Sethe
• 21-Denver
• 22-Beloved-her words like her body are
broken dislocating foreign- Hot thing?
Brand, spiritual possession, life?
• 23-all 3 voices-Stream of Consciousness
• See text for other questions and clarification