Beloved - What would YOU do to protect your children?

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Ah, the 25th review on Beloved. Why should you read this review? Because you like me! Um, I’m sure you aren’t buying that one. Well, I’m going to try to give you a different perspective than the other 24 reviews already written over this book. Besides, I have a craving to write a review and I might as well do it on Beloved while it is still fresh on my mind.

I’m taking American Literature this semester and Beloved was the first book we read – we covered the whole book within five days and then we moved on to the next book. Quite frankly, I feel that this book is not one to be read and discarded in a mere five days. There are two ways of reading Beloved, no way is “the right way”, and each character deserves special attention because each is so different from the other.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 based on Beloved and six other novels. Her other novels include Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Sula and Paradise, among others. Sula was nominated for the 1975 National Book Award in fiction. Song of Solomon won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was appointed to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Council of the Arts.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Beloved by Toni Morrison
ISBN : 0-452-28062-1

Beloved, a widely read novel, has won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1988. There are many different versions of this book, my version is paperback, 275 pages long. Beloved has also been turned into a movie with Oprah Winfrey but I have yet to see it. I would also like to point out that this book has been banned from schools (as I found out in another class – we were taking a poll to see which books students had been prevented from reading). This book is very graphic – it tells of murders, sex, rape and slavery-related situations with great detail. You might find yourself sickened at the extent of the details, as I did; however this is intricate to the story and to the reader understanding the facts. Beloved is based on a clipping that Morrison found about the true story of a slave who ran away with her children and then tried to slit their throats when they were captured (she managed to kill one of them) rather than see them enslaved.

CHARACTERS:

This novel incorporates several characters but the four that I am focusing on are the four characters that can be found throughout the entire novel. Each one is complicated and if I were to give you full details on each one, the plot would be spoiled.

Sethe:
Beloved is told primarily from Sethe’s perspective – this is Sethe’s story first and everyone else just happens to be affected by it. Sethe is an ex-slave who escaped with her four children, one unborn. The husband, Halle, didn’t manage to escape so she is left to live with her mother-in-law.
Sethe is haunted by the soul of her baby girl, the one that didn’t live. Shortly after Sethe escaped, she heard people coming to capture and enslave her once again. She runs into a shed with her children and kills one of them. The gravestone simply reads “Beloved”.

Denver:
Denver is the only remaining child of Sethe – her other children have left. She befriends Beloved from the start but then grows suspicious of the growing relationship between Beloved and Sethe, one that is pushing Denver out of the picture. She is the only one remotely thinking clearly in this family, which she must to do to save them all.

Paul D.:
Paul D. is a friend of Sethe’s from Sweet Home (where they were enslaved). He finds Sethe many years later and they marry. However, Paul D. is wary of Beloved, he does not like her and wants her out of their house. He isn’t quite sure who, or what, she is. He plays an important role in telling Sethe what happened that night that they escaped that she doesn’t know about, what went wrong.

Beloved:
There really is no way to describe Beloved, but I will try. You will have to draw your own conclusions, however. When Sethe, Denver, and Paul D. arrive home from a carnival one day they find a girl, Beloved, sitting there. She talks funny, has no memory of what has happened to her, and they are at a loss as to who she is. She forms a bond with Sethe and wants Paul D. out of the house.

THE STORY:

This story, part of which is told in flashbacks, focuses on the lives of Sethe and Denver, a family escaped from slavery, trying to establish their life. Paul D., a friend of Sethe who escaped with her, enters their life and marries her, trying to help them settle down and put the past behind them. But then one day they come home to find a girl waiting for them – Beloved. Beloved is the same age that the daughter that Sethe killed would be if she were still alive. How can the four of them live together, one a ghost (?), and go about their lives?

Beloved focuses on slavery, shocking the reader with various accounts of events that Sethe endured. It also focuses on the importance on family, how sometimes all we have is our family and without them we would be lost. And lastly, Beloved focuses on forgiveness and acceptance – learning to forgive and accept yourself for who you are is essential for others to do the same. As the character Paul D. says, “you are your best thing.”

I mentioned that there are two ways to read this story. One way is to read it as a ghost story – taking the characters and the plot for what they are. If you are looking for easy reading, this would be the way to read it, though you may find yourself trying to create reasons as to how ghosts could possibly exist.

The other way is to read it symbolically. This is the way we were forced to examine the book in class, which I found difficult and would take several readings to fully understand. However, if you focus on Beloved as a ghost but as a burden – a burden that Sethe is taking and must let go – then you will read the book in a whole new light.

MY EXPERIENCE:

This was a hard book to read, not only for the content but for the style of writing. At times I had to force myself to keep reading, but at others I couldn’t stop. The grammar isn’t topnotch – a lot of you editors would get frustrated at the book and give Morrison an NH, I’m sure! However, this book could not and should not be written any other way – when you are reading the dialogue from an uneducated ex-slave, you cannot expect her to be grammatically correct. So just keep in mind that Morrison meant to write this book this way and you’ll be fine.

The structure of this book is also confusing at times. Morrison jumps around without warning – one moment you’re reading about a character and suddenly the character is remember past events. It takes a bit of practice but eventually you can sort out the two. There are a few chapters towards the end of pure dialogue without any indication as to who is saying what. But if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll be able to figure it out.

Even though this book was hard to read, I enjoyed it. I would recommend this book to anyone, as I think it’s essential to read about slavery and the effects it had on people. Isn’t there a saying that says that if we do not learn about the past, it could repeat itself?

CONCLUSION:

This book is not suitable for young readers, obviously, perhaps high school aged and up. However it is perfect for most kinds of people – for those interested in reading ghost stories and for those looking for deeper meaning. I definitely plan on keeping this book on my bookshelf to read when I have free time. I am fairly sure that I will get a better understanding, or even a different understand, of this book after reading it a second time. I urge you all to read this book. You may think you know all there is to know about slavery. Beloved will give you a completely different understanding and you will be changed by it.

Thanks for reading! I have tons of homework and a Poli Sci test on Tuesday so think happy thoughts for me please!
-arihamilton

Special thanks to joecooper for helping me with the title.