2. Beloved (1987)
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Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019)
Later
known as Toni Morrison, was born in
Lorain, Ohio. She was the daughter of a shipyard welder and a religious woman
who sang in the church choir. Morrison had a sister, Lois, and two younger
brothers, George and Raymond. Her parents had moved to Ohio from the South,
hoping to raise their children in an environment friendlier to blacks. Despite
the move to the North, the Wofford household was steeped in the oral traditions
of Southern African American communities. The songs and stories of Chloe
Wofford's childhood undoubtedly influenced her later work. Although Toni
Morrison's writing is not autobiographical, she fondly alludes to her past,
stating "I am from the Midwest so I have
a special affection for it. My beginnings are always there.... No matter what I
write, I begin there.... It's the matrix for me.... Ohio also offers an escape
from stereotyped black settings. It is neither plantation nor ghetto."
Toni Morrison's writing was also
greatly influenced by her family. Her grandparents had relocated from to Ohio
during the national movement of blacks out of the South known as the Great
Migration. After leaving their farm in Alabama, Morrison’s mother’s parents
(Aredelia and John Solomon Willis) moved to Kentucky, and then to Ohio. They
placed extreme value in the education of their children and themselves. John
Willis taught himself to read and his stories became inspiration for Morrison's
Song of Solomon (1977).
Morrison was an extremely gifted
student, learning to read at an early age. Morrison, who attended Hawthorne
Elementary School, was the only African American in her 1st grade classroom.
Because she was so skilled, Morrison was often asked to help other students
learn to read.
Morrison's parents' desire to protect
their child from the racist environment of the South succeeded in many respects.
However, she began to experience racial discrimination, as she and her peers
grew older. She graduated with honors in 1949 and went to Howard University in
Washington D.C. She graduated from
Howard in 1953 with a B.A. in English. She went on to receive her M.A. in
English from Cornell in 1955.
After a teaching stint at Texas
Southern University, Toni returned to Howard University and met Harold
Morrison. They married, and before their divorce in 1964, Toni and Harold
Morrison had two sons. It was also during this time that she wrote the short story
that would become the basis for her first novel, The Bluest Eye.
In 1964, Morrison took a job in
Syracuse, New York as an associate editor at Random House. She worked as an
editor, raised her sons as a single mom, and continued to write fiction. In
1967, she received a promotion to senior editor and a much-desired transfer to
New York City. Between 1971 and 1972, Morrison worked as a Professor of English
for the State University of New York and worked as an editor for Random House.
The years 1976 and 1977 saw Morrison
working as a visiting lecturer at Yale. In 1983, she left Random House. The
next year she took a position at the State University of New York in Albany.
In 1987 Toni Morrison became the
Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Council of Humanities at Princeton
University. She is the first African American female writer to hold a named
chair at a university in the Ivy League. The next year she became the
eighth woman and the first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize in
Literature.
Morrison is a major architect in
creating a literary language for Afro-Americans. Her use of shifting
perspective, fragmentary narrative, and a narrative voice extremely close to
the consciousness of her characters reveals the influence of writers like
Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner: two writers whom Morrison, not
coincidentally, studied extensively while a college student. All of her work
also shows the influence of African-American folklore, songs, and women's
gossip. In her attempts to map these oral art forms onto literary modes of
representation, Morrison has created a body of work informed by a distinctly
black sensibility while drawing a reading audience from across racial
boundaries.
Novels:
1.
The Bluest Eyes 1970: The novel is
set in Lorain, Ohio in 1941 (Morrison's hometown), and tells the story of a
young African-American girl named Pecola Breedlove (foster child) who grew up following the Great
Depression. she is consistently regarded as "ugly" due to her
mannerisms and dark skin. Her mother’s name is Pauline “Polly” Breedlove. Her
brother is Sam Breedlove. Pecola is a tenant in the house of Nine-year-old
Claudia MacTeer and her ten-year-old sister Frieda who live with their parents.
Pecola was raped by her father Cholly Breedlove. Pecola
plants marigold seeds, and believes if the marigold seeds grow, the baby will
live. In the end, however, the seeds do not grow and Pecola's baby dies. Pecola
goes mad by grief and spends the rest of her days
talking to her imaginary friend about her big blue
eyes. The novel was well received by critics but failed commercially
2.
Sula 1973- About
friendship between two Black women Sula Peace
and Nel Wright (major characters). Shadrack, a paranoid shell-shocked WW-I veteran,
invents a National Suicide Day to be held annually on January 3. Chicken Little
is the little boy who drowns when Sula accidentally playfully swings into the
river. Sula is described as having a
birthmark over one eye that darkens over the years as she matures and Sula's
close friend Nel thought it looked like a rose. Tar Baby (Pretty Johnnie) is a
coward white man in the novel.
3. Song of Solomon is a 1977 novel- This
next novel dealt more fully with black male characters. It is about the life of
Macon "Milkman" Dead III, an African-American man living in Michigan,
from birth to adulthood, as he discovers his heritage. As Ruth Dead (his
mother) still breastfeeds him when he is four years old, so he got the nickname
"Milkman". It is both commercial and critical success.
4.
Tar Baby (1981)- 4th published novel- This novel portrays a love affair
between Jadine and Son, two Black Americans from very different worlds. Jadine
is a beautiful Sorbonne (University of Paris) graduate and fashion model. Son
is an impoverished, strong-minded man who washes up at the Streets' estate on a
Caribbean island.
5.
Beloved 1987: It won the Pulitzer Prize. Sethe is a former
slave and principal character (who lives with her daughter Denver in 124,
Cincinnati. Here, the number 3, i.e., Beloved is missing!) haunted by the Ghost
of her daughter named Beloved, who was killed by her in order to escape from
the slavery at farm named Sweet Home run by a cruel man named
schoolteacher. Sethe fled, although she was pregnant, delivering the child
along the way with help from a white woman named Amy. After her escape to
Cincinatti with her four children, Sethe enjoyed only twenty-eight days of
freedom before she was tracked down by her old master. Rather than allow her
children to be returned to slavery, she attempted to kill all of them,
succeeding only in killing the baby girl (Beloved). Rejected by her master and
also saved from hanging and was released to raise her remaining three children
at 124, Cincinnatti. The ghost of the dead baby (Beloved) began to haunt the
house. The two sons, Howard and Buglar, left after encountering the ghost. Denver
is terribly lonely but is also afraid to leave the yard even though she is
eighteen years old. Two visitors come to 124. The first is Paul D, a man who
was a slave with Sethe back at Sweet Home and the second visitor is a girl
named Beloved who is the ghost of the dead baby come back to life but unable to
speak like an adult, and dressed in strange clothes. Paul D eventually leaves
when he learns that Sethe murdered her own child. Beloved settles into the
house like a parasite, growing ever stronger as Sethe grows weaker. At the end,
Denver takes the help of community to exorcise the ghost. Beloved is a haunting
and dark novel, full of gothic elements. Opening line: “124 was spiteful. Full of Baby's venom”(opening
line); “You
got two feet, Sethe, not four” (Paul D to
Sethe)"; “You your best thing, Sethe.
You are.” (Paul D to Sethe)";
“Today is always here, Tomorrow, never.” (Sethe to Denver); “Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.”
(Sethe to Denver); . She is not so afraid at
night because she is the color of it. (Denver to Beloved about
Sethe)
6.
Jazz (1992)- historical
novel. Majority of the narrative takes place in Harlem during the 1920s
and the narrative extends back to the mid-19th-century American South. Joe
Trace, a door-to-door cosmetics salesman and the murderer of his young lover,
Dorcas. Violet Trace (nicknamed violent), an unlicensed beautician, married to
Joe.
7.
Paradise (1998) novel- 7th novel- Paradise completes a "trilogy"
that begins with Beloved (1987) and includes Jazz (1992). Morrison wanted to
call the novel War.
Set in Ruby peaceful all-black town in Oklahoma.
Novel is divided into 9 sections, and they are named for specific characters.
Story is centred on how the men of Ruby town become intent on destroying the
Convent town women.
8.
Love (2003) is the
eighth novel, tells of the lives of several women and their relationships to
the late Bill Cosey, a charismatic hotel owner.
9.
A Mercy (2008) is Toni
Morrison's ninth novel. It is the story of a European farmer, Jacob Vaark; his purchased wife,
Rebekka. Florens, a slave on the Vaark’s farm and Lina, a labour, survived smallpox plague.
10.
Home (2012)- is the
tenth novel. Set in the 1950s. Story of 24-year-old war veteran Frank Money and
his trauma from serving in the Korean War.
11.
God Help the Child 2014 is the 11th
novel. Original title is The Wrath
of Children,
Non Fiction
Works:
1.
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992)- her first book of literary criticism, on
the 'non-white Africanist presence and personae' in the works of Poe,
Hawthorne, Melville, Cather and Hemingway.
2.
The Origin of Others(2017), published
in the U.S. by Harvard University Press with a Foreword by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
3.
The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and
Meditations (2019)- published
by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S.; Collection of 43 pieces of writing, structured
into three sections: "The Foreigner’s Home", "Black
Matter(s)" and “God's Language".
Plays
1.
N'Orleans:
The Storyville Musical (aka New Orleans) (1982) with Donald McKayle.
2.
Dreaming
Emmett (1986)
3.
Desdemona
(2011)
Poetry
1.
Five Poems (2002)- with
illustrations by Kara Walker
Short Story
1.
"Recitatif"
is Toni Morrison's first published short story. It was initially published in
1983 in Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women, an anthology
edited by Amiri Baraka and Amina Baraka, and is the only short story by Morrison.
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Context:
Beloved is Toni Morrison's fifth novel, published in 1987. Beloved
became a best seller and received the 1988
Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Its reception by critics was overwhelming, and
the book is widely considered Morrison's greatest novel to date. Beloved could
be called a foundation story (like Genesis or Exodus) for black America.
Mythic in scope, Beloved is an attempt
to grapple with the legacy of slavery.
Beloved is related to events surrounding the Civil War, especially the The Fugitive
Slave Act 1950, part of the Compromise of 1850, which treats escaped slaves as property, and allowed
southern slave owners to travel north and reclaim any slaves that had escaped
from their ownership. Moreover, the entire novel is inspired by the true
story of Margaret Garner, a slave in Kentucky who escaped with her
family across the Ohio River in 1856. Slave catchers found her and she
killed her two-year-old daughter, rather than seeing her daughter become a
slave. Garner was then taken back into slavery. Morrison had come across an
account of Garner titled "A Visit to the Slave Mother who Killed Her
Child" in an 1856 newspaper article published in the American Baptist,
and reproduced in The Black Book, a miscellaneous compilation of black history
and culture that Morrison edited in 1974.
Morrison explores themes of love,
family, and self-possession in a world where slavery has only recently become a
thing of the past. Beloved is the ghost
of Sethe's murdered child (It represents the power of the legacy of
slavery), returned after 18 years for unclear reasons, embodied as a full-grown
woman at the age that the baby would have been had it lived. Part history, part
ghost story, part historical fiction, the novel also seek to understand the
impact of slavery, both on the psychology of individuals and on the larger
patterns of culture and history.
Beloved also presents a powerful
account of the foundation of black. The institution of slavery destroyed much
of the heritage of the Africans brought to the Americas; the novel partially
recounts the creation of a new people and culture, a people displaced and
forced to forge a new identity in the face of brutality and dehumanization.
Beloved is the book which Morrison
continued her narrative experiments. The structure is fragmentary, and written
with great psychological intimacy, closely tied to the consciousness of each
character and weaving suddenly between past and future (between Cincinatti and
Kentucky). More time is spent describing past events than the action of the
current moment, than the present. The novel is often repetitive, telling the
same stories of the past again and again, giving more information with each
repetition. All of the characters of the novel, former slaves and the children
of former slaves, suffer a troubled relationship to their own past.
The question of the rightness of
Sethe's terrible act is a difficult onemoreover, it is a question that the
novel does not attempt to answer in a definitive way. Morrison is more
concerned that we understand why Sethe did what she did, as well as the ways
that her decision has haunted her ever since. The novel effectively conveys the
brutality and dehumanization that occurred under slavery, putting Sethe's act
in context without necessarily condemning it or excusing it.
The book's epigraph is from Romans
9:25 (King James Bible): "I will call them my people, which were not
my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved."
The novel is dedicated to "Sixty Million, and more" -referring to the anonymous Africans and their descendants who died as a result of
the Atlantic slave trade (died during the transatlantic crossing). The novel
reminds us of their suffering, and invites the reader to contend with the past
and the legacy of slavery.
In 1998 it was adapted for a film
starring Danny Glover (Paul D) and Oprah Winfrey (Sethe). The film met mixed
critical response and was a box office failure, a testament, at least, to the
uniquely literary qualities of the novel.
Three Part Structure:
The novel is divided into 3 parts and 28 sections/
chapters. Toni Morrison did not
name/numbered these chapters. However, we can identify these chapters with page
breaks. This division of chapters highlights the narrative progression. The
differing first sentences of each part reflects the shifting emotional
atmosphere and the changing dynamic of the story.
|
Part |
No
of Chapters |
Significance |
Opening
line of each part |
|
I |
18 |
Eighteen years since Sethe's act |
124 WAS
SPITEFUL |
|
II |
7 |
Seven letters in "Beloved" |
124 WAS LOUD |
|
III |
3 |
Three surviving children |
124 WAS QUIET |
Opening line: “124 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of a baby’s venom.”
Closing line:
Paul D: “You your best thing, Sethe.
You are.” His holding fingers
are holding hers.
Sethe: “Me? Me?”
Short Summary
In 1873, Sethe and her 18 year old daughter
Denver live in 124, Bluestone Rd., (but referred to only as
"124") in a rural area
close to Cincinatti. They are
ostracized from the community for Sethe's past and her pride. Eighteen years
have passed since she escaped from slavery at a farm called Sweet Home. After the death of Mr
Garner, Sweet Home was run by a cruel man known as schoolteacher, who
allowed his nephews to brutalize Sethe while he took notes for his scientific
studies of blacks. Sethe fled, although she was pregnant, delivering the child
along the way with help from a white woman named Amy. Sethe's husband,
who was supposed to accompany her, disappeared. After her escape to Cincinatti
with her four children, Sethe enjoyed only twenty-eight days of freedom
before she was tracked down by her old master. Rather than allow her children
to be returned to slavery, she attempted to kill all of them, succeeding only
in killing the baby girl. Rejected then by her master, who saw she was no
longer fit to serve, Sethe was also saved from hanging and was released to
raise her remaining three children at 124.
The ghost of the dead baby began to
haunt the house. The two sons, Howard and Buglar, left after having
particularly frightening encounters with the ghost. Baby Suggs, the
mother of Sethe's husband, Halle, died as a broken woman soon after the boys
fled, eight years before the start of the novel. Baby Suggs had been a great
positive force in Cincinatti's black community, regarded by many as an
inspiring holy woman. After what happened to Sethe, she gave up her preaching
and retired to bed, asking only for scraps of color. Years after her death,
Denver and Sethe continue to live in the house alone. Sethe works as a cook,
and Denver spends her days alone. Denver is terribly lonely but is also afraid
to leave the yard even though she is eighteen years old.
In 1873, two visitors come to 124. The first visitor is Paul D, a
man who was a slave with Sethe back at Sweet Home. Paul D, like Sethe, is
haunted by the pain of the past. He witnessed and suffered unspeakable
atrocities before the end of the Civil War brought him his freedom, and he has
survived by not allowing himself to have strong feelings for anything or
anyone. He has particularly dark memories of time spent in a prison for blacks,
where he worked in a chain gang by day and was kept in a box in the ground at
night. The second visitor is a girl
named Beloved. It gradually becomes clear that she is the ghost of the
dead baby come back to life, at the age that the baby would have been had it
lived. Awkward, unable to speak like an adult, and dressed in strange clothes,
Beloved seems vulnerable at first but proves to be powerful and malicious. Her
purposes initially seem benign and are never fully understood, but by the end
of the novel her presence is deeply destructive for the living people of 124.
Paul D becomes Sethe's lover, staying
for a time despite friction between him and the two young girls. Beloved
despises him, and she tries to divide Sethe from Paul D. Paul D eventually
leaves when he learns that Sethe murdered her own child. Sethe, on discovering
Beloved's identity, believes she has been given a second chance. She tries to
make amends for the past, but the girl's needs are devouring. The ghost does
not forgive Sethe for her actions. Beloved settles into the house like a
parasite, growing ever stronger as Sethe grows weaker. Sethe's sanity begins to
unravel, and Beloved only grows more demanding. Denver is forced to go to the
community for help.
A group of women, led by Ella,
a former agent of the Underground Railroad, go to 124 to exorcise Beloved's
ghost. The ghost is forced to leave, but Sethe's spirit has been nearly broken.
Paul D returns to her, vowing to help Sethe heal herself. Denver, Paul D, and
Sethe will build a new life, one in which they learn to deal with their painful
past while focusing on the future. The final line of the novel "It was not a story to pass on" reminds
the painful story which is impossible to forget.
Timeline of the story
Pre-1843: Baby Suggs' Early Life
·
Baby Suggs is enslaved
in Carolina.
·
1835: Baby Suggs gives
birth to Halle.
1843–1849: Arrival at Sweet Home
·
1843: Halle (age 10)
and Baby Suggs are sold to the Garners and taken to Sweet Home.
·
1847: Halle buys Baby
Suggs' freedom. She moves to Ohio to work for the Bodwins.
·
1848: Sethe (age 13)
is sold to the Garners and arrives at Sweet Home to replace Baby Suggs.
·
1849: After a year of
deciding, Sethe chooses to be with Halle. The Garners allow them to marry.
1850–1854: Birth of Sethe’s Children &
Schoolteacher's Arrival
·
1850: Howard, Sethe
and Halle’s first son, is born.
·
1851: Buglar, their
second son, is born.
·
1853: Mrs. Garner
falls ill, and Mr. Garner dies. Schoolteacher arrives and takes control of
Sweet Home.
·
1854: Beloved, their
first daughter, is born.
1855: Sethe’s Escape & the Infanticide
Incident
·
Sethe is pregnant with
Denver.
·
Sethe, Halle, Paul D,
Sixo, and others plan to escape.
·
Sethe sends her three
children (Howard-5yr, Buglar-4yr, and Beloved-9 months) to Baby Suggs.
·
Sethe is caught and
assaulted by Schoolteacher’s nephews. Halle witnesses this from hayloft and
mentally breaks.
·
Sethe escapes alone
and delivers her baby (Denver) with the help of Amy Denver.
·
Sethe goes to Ohio,
where she joins Baby Suggs.
·
Paul D is caught,
beaten, and sold to Brandywine.
Infanticide Incident:
·
27 days after Sethe's
arrival, Stamp Paid brings blueberries, leading to a feast at 124.
·
The next day, Stamp
Paid comes back to cut wood. Sethe hears that slave catchers are coming.
·
Sethe gathers her
children and runs to the shed.
·
In an act of
desperation, Sethe kills Beloved and attempts to kill her other children.
·
Schoolteacher sees the
broken family and leaves.
·
Sethe clings to her
dead child, and Baby Suggs takes the body. Sethe and Denver are taken to jail.
Aftermath:
·
The community
ostracizes Sethe and 124.
·
Sethe sleeps with mason
to pay for Beloved’s tombstone, which reads "Beloved."
·
124 becomes haunted by
Beloved’s spirit.
1856–1864: Paul D’s Journey & Family
Disintegration
·
1856: Paul D tries to
kill Brandywine and is sent to a chain gang in Georgia.
·
He and other prisoners
escape and find refuge in a Cherokee camp.
·
Paul D leaves and
travels north, eventually settling in Delaware.
·
1862–1863: Denver
briefly attends school.
·
1863: Howard (age 13)
runs away.
·
1864: Buglar (age 13)
runs away.
·
Baby Suggs dies,
leaving only Sethe and Denver.
1873: Beloved’s Return & Sethe’s
Decline
·
Paul D arrives at 124
and reconnects with Sethe.
·
Paul D fights off the
ghost of Beloved.
·
Paul D, Sethe, and
Denver go to the carnival.
·
When they return, a
mysterious young woman (Beloved) appears at 124.
·
Denver and Sethe take
a liking to Beloved, and she moves in.
·
Beloved unsettles Paul
D and later chokes Sethe with her spirit.
·
Paul D moves around
the house, avoiding Beloved.
·
Paul D is seduced by
Beloved in the shed.
Paul D’s Departure:
·
Stamp Paid shows Paul
D a newspaper clipping about Sethe killing her child.
·
Paul D confronts
Sethe, and after their fight, he leaves 124.
Sethe’s Obsession with Beloved:
·
Sethe, Denver, and
Beloved go ice skating.
·
Sethe becomes obsessed
with Beloved, neglecting herself and Denver.
Climax & Conclusion (1873)
·
Denver, realizing the
danger, seeks help from the community.
·
The community women
exorcise Beloved.
·
Beloved disappears
mysteriously.
· Paul D returns to Sethe, offering her comfort.
Beloved Character List
Sethe (had eyes of iron)- Born
on a distant plantation that she barely remembers, Sethe is the child of an
African-born slave woman whose name she never knew. As a young teenager, at the
age of 13, she was brought to Sweet Home, where she took a man named Halle
Suggs for her husband. She had four children, pregnant with the fourth when she
fled Sweet Home on foot and alone. When schoolteacher, the brutal master at
Sweet Home, tracked her down, Sethe attempted to kill her children rather than
see them returned to slavery. Sethe has a troubled relationship with her own
past, often not willing to speak about it but obsessively reliving it in her
own head. Scars on the Sethe's back, resembles Chokecherry
tree. Amy Denver tells Sethe that the scar is like a Chokcherry
tree.
Beloved- Beloved
is the ghost of Sethe's third child, murdered to protect her from
schoolteacher. Her real name is never known. She is the embodiment not only of
the baby's ghost but also the legacy of slavery. She represents the power of
the past to intrude into the present. Beloved is named posthumously after the
first two words said at the funeral- Dearly
Beloved- which she mistook as referring to the dead. "Dearly
Beloved," however, actually refers to the people at the funeral. Sethe
paid for the child's tombstone by having sex with the mason, ten minutes for
seven letters, which was enough for the word "Beloved."
Paul D Garner- Paul
D was one of the Sweet Home men. He was sold to Brandywine after the escape
attempt. He has also suffered horribly, and has reacted by shutting away any
deep feelings. He shows up at 124 and tries to make a life with Sethe. He
describes that his heart is "tobacco tin", and "nothing in this world could pry it open."
(but Beloved is not of this world.) He is powerless against Beloved, who
seduces him as a way of controlling him and dividing him from her mother. After
nearly twenty years of freedom, he is still unsure of the source of his manhood
and his humanity.
Denver- Sethe's
daughter. She is the grown up daughter of Sethe who was born during Sethe's
flight to the North. Denver is eighteen years old and terribly lonely. She has
not left the yard of 124 by herself for twelve years. She has a possessive need
for Beloved, and initially will do anything to please her. But she is also a
very dynamic character; by the end of the novel, she is transformed into a
strong and independent young woman with a new understanding of her mother. She
is 18 years old at the beginning of the novel.
Baby Suggs (Jenny Whitlow) - Halle
Suggs mother and Sethe's mother-in-law. The Bodwins gave Baby Suggs 124
Bluestone Road, and she began to work as a cobbler. According to Mr
Garner, “Jenny Whitlow" was her
legal name, the one on her bill of sale. Suggs was her husband's name, and she
was always called as Baby (So, Baby Suggs). Halle Suggs (her son) bought
her freedom. But freedom transformed Baby Suggs, into a kind of holy woman for
Cincinatti's black community. She preaches at a place called ‘Clearing’.
Sethe's tragedy, however, broke Baby Suggs' spirit, and she spent her last days
bed-ridden and somber. She had 8 children from 6 fathers. She dies at 70 (sixty
years a slave and ten years free) in the beginning of the book, 8 years
before the main events. The "nigger with the flower in her hat" is Baby
Suggs.
Halle Suggs- Halle
Suggs was Sethe's husband and the father of all of her children. Halle vanished
at the time when he was supposed to flee to the North with Sethe; later, it is
discovered that he witnessed Sethe's brutalization at the hands of
schoolteacher and his nephews. When Paul D last saw Halle, he had gone insane.
Halle treated Sethe in brotherly way. Halle had bought Baby Suggs' freedom with
money earned by hiring himself out every Sunday for five years.
Schoolteacher - Mr.
Garner's brother-in-law. Schoolteacher was a cruel and sadistic master,
interested in ways to break the wills of his slaves. He conducted a
pseudo-scientific study of the slaves, treating them in his study the way a
biologist treats lab animals. His nephews held Sethe down and stole her milk
while schoolteacher took notes. When it was discovered that Sethe told Mrs.
Garner what they had done, schoolteacher had one of his nephews whip Sethe,
giving her the distinctive scars on her back.
Amy Denver - A
former indentured servant, and a poor white girl She has enough hair for four
or five heads. Amy helped Sethe to escape to the North, saving Sethe's life and
helping to deliver her baby in a boat. Amy was trying to get to Boston so she
could buy carmine colored velvet. Sethe's daughter Denver is named after her.
Mr. and Mrs. Buddy - Amy
Denver's master and mistress. Mr. Buddy, as vicious as a slave overseer, is
said to "whip you for looking at him straight."
Howard and Buglar - Sethe's
sons and her two older children, she tried and failed to kill them when
schoolteacher came. The two boys fled years ago after particularly frightening
encounters with the ghost. Sethe has recurring dreams of her boys walking away
from her, unable to hear her as she calls for them to come back.
Mr. Garner- The
old master of Sweet Home, Mr. Garner was generous by the standards of slave
owners, and insisted that his slaves were the only male slaves in Kentucky who
were real men. His "enlightened" slavery, however, proves to be a
sham after his death and was full of contradictions and hypocrisy even in his
life. He died due to stroke.
Mrs. Lillian Garner- Mr.
Garner's sickly wife. She brought schoolteacher to Sweet Home after Mr.
Garner's death. She spent the last months of her life bed-ridden and very ill.
She gave a pair of crystal earrings to Sethe.
Sixo - One
of the slaves at Sweet Home. Sixo is "indigo
with a flame-red tongue." His dark color, his nighttime
dancing, his folk knowledge, and his "knowing tales" indicate he is
probably a first-generation slave brought over from Africa. He stopped speaking english because he felt there was
"no future in it". Sixo was one of the planners behind
their flight to the North. He regularly visited a woman who lived thirty miles
away, dubbed the Thirty-Mile woman (Patsy). He was close to Paul D
during the time of Sweet Home, but Schoolmaster ordered him orders that Sixo be
burned to death during their escape attempt. When he dies, he dies laughing,
with his own rebel shouting: "Seven-O!
Seven-O!," the name of his soon-to-be baby growing in the
Thirty-Mile Woman's womb.
The Thirty-Mile Woman (Patsy) -
Sixo's lover who joins the group running from Sweet Home and escapes capture
when the others are caught.
Paul A Garner, Paul F Garner - The
brothers of Paul D. All three brothers were at Sweet Home for most of their
lives. Paul F was sold to unspecified
owner. Paul A plots to escape, but caught and hanged.
Ella- A
woman who was an agent on the Underground Railroad. She took Sethe on the final
leg of her flight to the North. When Ella was a girl, she was shared by a white
man and his son. After Sethe killed her child, Ella becomes one of her harshest
critics. Later, she softens her opinion, and organizes the woman to go and
exorcise Beloved from 124. Ella is revealed (only to the reader) to have
committed infanticide herself. When she gave birth to a child who was the
result of repeated rape by a white man and his son, Ella refused to care for it
because she considered such forced motherhood to be demeaning, and the baby
died.
Stamp Paid (Joshua) - Born
with the name of Joshua, Stamp Paid changed his name after his wife was taken
to the bed of their master's owner. Stamp felt he had paid all of life's debts
in that year. His name also refers to his role as a messenger and envoy for the
Underground Railroad- the thing that guaranteed that the thing being sent (the
people escaping through the Railroad) would make it to the destination. His
name is a badge of honor; like Sethe's scars. By rejecting names given to them
by whites, Baby Suggs and Stamp Paid make themselves the definers. Stamp worked
as an agent for the Underground Railroad for many years. When schoolteacher
came for Sethe, it was Stamp who saved Denver's life. He is a friend to the
family and also to Paul D.
Vashti - Stamp
Paid's wife who, while a slave, was forced to become her master's mistress.
Lady Jones -She
is educated at coloredgirls’ normal school in Pennsylvania. She teaches the
black children of Cincinatti how to read and write. She is mixed-race, with
gray eyes and yellow hair that she
despises. She was once Denver's teacher. When Denver flees 124 looking for
help, she turns to Lady Jones.
Sethe’s Mother(unnamed, simply called as
‘Ma’am’) -Sethe's links to her own mother are painful. Sethe
vaguely remembers her own mother. Although her mother did not get to raise her,
conditions led both of them to the act of infanticide. Since her mother was always engaged in field
labor, they both could barely share any affectionate moments as mother and
daughter. Sethe mentions that when her mother was
hanged, she ran to her dead mother, but Nan, another enslaved woman, pulled
Sethe away from her mother’s body. Nan told Sethe that the two women (Nan and
Sethe’s mother) had come across the sea in the same slave ship. The white
crewmembers had raped them repeatedly, but Sethe’s mother “threw away” the
children she had by the white men. Sethe was kept because she had a Black
father, for whom she was named. Sethe was the only child her mother
kept, the only one she named. In fact, Sethe's named after her father,
the only man her mother ever put her arms around. Sethe does not know the name
of her own mother, and she has forgotten the language of her childhood.
Nan -Nan
was the one-armed woman who nursed children back at the plantation where Sethe
was born. Nan is a sort of surrogate mother to Sethe, breastfeeding her after
the "whitebabies" are fed. Sethe has more memories of Nan than of her
own mother.
Brandywine- Brandywine
is the man who bought Paul D from Sweet Home. Paul D is later taken away from
Sweet Home like an animal, with an iron bit in his mouth, sent to prison in
Alfred, GA, for trying to kill Brandywine.
Nelson Lord- Denver's
schoolmate at Lady Jones' school who ends Denver's education by asking her
about Sethe's past. He asks Denver whether or not Sethe murdered one of her
kids and brought Denver to prison with her. It's this question that halts her
hearing for two years and ends her schooling. His question brings to the
surface all of Denver's fears of her mother, and intensifies her focus on the
ghost. Denver meets him again later in the story when she is seeking help
outside of 124, and he tells her to take care of herself.
Janey Wagon- Coloured
girl, Servant to the Bodwins. She spreads the story of Beloved's return through
the black community. She was working for the Bodwins when Baby Suggs first
arrived, and she is still working for them when Denver is looking for work
decades later.
Edward Bodwin and Miss Bodwin- Brother
and sister, they are former abolitionists of Scottish origin and try to be
helpful to the black community. They own 124, Bluestone Road, but
they give it to Baby Suggs and helped Suggs to find work as
Cobbler. They also saved Sethe from hanging and helped her to find job as cook
in a restaurant. Edward Bodwin witnesses the exorcism of Beloved. They believe
that “hated slavery worse than they hated
slaves.” At Bodwin’s house, Denver observes a blackboy’s image
with a message “At Yo Service.” At the end of the novel, Miss Bodwin
plan to send Denver ro Oberlin College. Miss Bodwin, the whitewoman, brought
Christmas cologne for Denver and Sethe, oranges for the boys and good wool
shawl for Baby Suggs
Whitlow -
Baby Suggs's former owner in Carolina who named her Jenny Whitlow on the bill
of sale.
Hi Man -
The black convict in the Georgia prison with Paul D who signals that other
inmates can rise from their kneeling position, shuffle off on their common
chain, and begin the day's work.
Reverend Pike - A minister of the Church of the Redeemer.
Sawyer - A Cincinnati restaurant owner who offers work to Sethe.
Brother-
Paul D's old tree, which he named
"Brother"
Here
Boy (= a dog)- It never entered the house (124) after having
been injured by the baby ghost. Finally disappeared after the arrival of
Beloved (ghost). Sethe asks Denver, where Here Boy has gone to, Denver answers
that he has disappeared for good.
Mister- Name
of the rooster
Themes, Motifs, Imagery and Symbols
Eyes
of iron
Sethe is constantly described as having eyes
of iron, and her refusal to run anymore shows some of her determination-as does
the story of her successful escape from slavery while pregnant.
Trees
The tree is often an image of protection,
comfort, pleasure and shelter throughout the book (Paul D's tree at Sweet Home,
Sethe’s memories of beautiful tress in SweetHome; Denver's boxwood room, the
flowering trees Paul D follows to the North in a flashback later in the novel).
Denver's time in the green room reveals her painful loneliness, and is yet
another example in the book (along with Paul D's old tree, which he named
"Brother") of trees providing comfort to human beings. The tree on Sethe's back (chokecherry tree)
suggests the need to aestheticize painful experiences and it symbolizes the
legacy of slavery. Through language and imagery, the scars from Sethe's pain
and humiliation become a tree in bloom, a source of life and shelter.
Colour
Amy’s quest for carmine (red) velvet is
reminiscent of Baby Suggs desire for colored cloth. Small pleasures, such as
the simple pleasure of looking at a colored piece of fabric, were for both Amy
and Baby Suggs a deep relief after a life of hardship.
Sex
History is what has brought Sethe and Halle
together, and together in bed, they can think nothing of the future: they
return obsessively and repeatedly to memories of their past, shared and
otherwise. The sex in the present has been disappointing, not nearly as sensual
as Paul D's memory of the corn he ate on the first day Halle and Sethe made
love. This preoccupation with the past and the disappointing sex in the present
emphasizes the power of the past, its constant intrusion into the present, its
burden on the characters, its ability to shape/undermine characters perceptions
of present events. When Paul D and Sethe have sex, they have thirty years of
Paul D's fantasies of her as a burden; no sex can live up to that kind of
pressure.
Ownership
Ownership is an important theme throughout the
book: for the ex-slaves, to feel that something belongs to them, whether a
place or a person, is a loaded issue. Sethe stays in the house partly because
she feels a bond to the place: it is her own, ghost and all, even if the deed
to the property is not officially hers. All who visit know it is her home, and
she cannot forget that she was never able to own anything as a slave. Even
more significant is the idea of "laying claim" to another person.
Sethe remembers that Halle treated her in an almost brotherly way, and
not as a person who laid claim. Sethe and Halle were unable to lay claim to
each other because even their own lives were not their property. Even though
the Garners were generous masters lives of the slaves were not their own. Part
of slavery's legacy is this inability to lay claim: one cannot say "my
mother,""my husband,""my daughter" with a feeling of
security, because they cannot belong to you if they are the property of another.
Relinquishment
of selfhood
The slaves feel that they have no self of own.
Denver and Beloved find the Self lodged in the identity of another. Denver
conflates her own identity with the identity of Beloved, just as Beloved
conflates her own identity with Sethe's. She cries and feels that "she has no
self," showing how absolutely dependent she has become on
Beloved's presence and approval. Beloved, in turn, sees herself as one with
Sethe. When she sees "her face," she means the face of her
mother-which, in her mind, is equivalent to herself. (Like infants). The novel
also powerfully conveys the feeling of suddenly owning oneself, of having been
a slave and then being free.
Absence
of names
The unnamed Baby (Beloved) is named indirectly
and posthumously. Denver is named after a white girl, Amy Denver. Thirty-Mile-Woman and Stampaid (Joshua) are
other examples. Babay Suggs’ old master never called her by any name at all.
Baby Suggs refused to go by her newly discovered name (Jenny Whitlow), keeping
instead the name her husband gave her, the name she has been called by other
blacks for all of her life. Sixo, perhaps the most absurd name in Beloved,
epitomizes the dehumanisation of slavery in Beloved (derived from number given
to him). Other Characters at SweetHome
like Paul A, D, F to demonstrate same dehumanisation through enumeration. The "nigger
with the flower in her hat" is Baby Suggs
Chapter wise- Summary
Part One, Chapters 1- Summary:
Opening line of the novel: “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom”
The year is 1873, and Sethe, a former
slave, lives with her 18 year old daughter Denver in "124," a house in rural Ohio. The house is haunted by the ghost
of one of Sethe's children. Note: In house number
124, number 3 is missing (that is the third child, Beloved). Beloved was killed
by her mother Sethe, but now returned as ghost and haunting the house. Denver
is the only living child who is still with Sethe; the two boys, Buglar and
Howard, had fled by age 13 after having particularly frightening encounters
with the ghost.
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).
Baby Suggs,
Denver's paternal grandmother, died 8 years ago, shortly after the boys left.
Baby Suggs was a weathered woman, unsurprised by the fleeing of the boys,
insisting only that Sethe and Denver should bring bits of color into the house,
especially during the gray Ohio winters. Baby Suggs was unmoved by the disappearance
of her eight children.
Beloved's narrative moves quickly
between past and present, frequently shifting forward and back in time and
through the memories of characters. Sethe's family life is still haunted by the
dead child and the memories of slavery. The power of this past is embodied in
the ghost of Sethe's baby.
The spirit of the dead baby is
persistent and often malicious (years ago, the baby crippled the family dog, ‘Here
Boy’). Sethe paid for the child's tombstone by having sex with the mason,
ten minutes for seven letters, which was enough for the word
"Beloved." The way the child died is hinted at, as we are told that
Sethe can remember the feeling of the baby's blood.
Eighteen years have passed
since Sethe escaped from Sweet Home, the farm where she was a slave. Sweet Home
was originally run by Mr. Garner, but after he died and Mrs. Garner became ill,
a cruel man called schoolteacher came to run the farm. The actions of
schoolteacher were the catalyst for Sethe's flight.
Today, Paul D, the last of the Sweet
Home men, turns up on Sethe's doorstep. He was one of five men: Paul D Garner,
Paul F Garner, Paul A Garner, Halle Suggs, and Sixo. All the men, back in those
days, were in their twenties. Back at Sweet Home (in Kentucky), Sethe
was originally bought to replace Baby Suggs, Halle's mother. Halle had bought
Baby Suggs' freedom with money earned by hiring himself out every Sunday for
five years. Sethe arrived at Sweet Home, a young woman with "iron eyes and a backbone to match." The
men waited a year while Sethe chose which one of them she would have for her
partner. Desperate for women, the men dreamed of Sethe and had sex with calves
while they waited. She finally chose Halle, sewing herself a dress so that
their legally and religiously unsanctified marriage would have some feeling of
celebration to it.
Sethe invites Paul D into the house.
Paul D immediately encounters the ghost, in the form of a pool of red light.
Sethe explains that the mysterious happenings in the house are the doing of her
dead baby's ghost. In the world of the living, Denver receives Paul D with
apprehension, feeling left out of the rapport and the shared history between
her mother and this new male guest. Denver breaks down and says that she can't
stand living at 124 anymore: no one comes by, not only because of the haunted
house, according to Denver, but because of Sethe. Paul D's presence somehow
allows this breakdown: he is described as the kind of man in the presence of
whom woman feel comfortable crying. When Paul D asks why they don't leave,
Sethe is adamant: she will not run from anything ever again.
She tells Paul D about the tree on
her back, a cluster of scars in the shape of a chokecherry tree. The
tree on Sethe's back suggests the painful experiences, unlike the beautiful
real trees at Sweet Home.
Right before she fled from Sweet Home,
Sethe sent her two sons and her daughter up to Cincinatti, where they were left
with Baby Suggs. Sethe was pregnant with Denver, but the third child, the girl,
still needed Sethe's milk. Sethe tells Paul D that schoolteacher's nephews took
her milk, and when she told Mrs. Garner about it schoolteacher found out and
responded by having one of the boys whip her. The scars are still there.
Paul D touches Sethe's breasts and the
ghost becomes violent, shaking the entire house. Paul D tries to fight back,
shouting loudly and smashing up parts of the house in the process. The rumbling
stops. The ghost's presence can no longer be felt, and Denver resents Paul D
for having gotten rid of it; the ghost was the only other company Denver had.
Part One, Chapter 2- Summary:
Sethe and Paul D have sex, which is
disappointing for both of them. Paul D has longed for Sethe for thirty years,
and the experience has been quick and unexciting. Paul D, looking at Sethe,
dislikes the way her breasts lay flat on her and is repulsed by the clump of
scars on her back, refusing now to accept the comparison between the scars and
a tree. He remembers the trees of Sweet Home and the shelter they once provided
him; under a special tree he called Brother, he rested in the shade with his
friend Sixo, one of the slaves at Sweet Home. On a few of the rare free days
the men had, Sixo used to take long treks to see a woman thirty miles
(Patsy) away. Consequently he was the one Sweet Home man not sick with
longing for Sethe
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