Book Review : ‘Beloved’ by Toni Morrison - Slavery Acted Upon the Male Body, but It Also Invaded the Female Body

                      

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‘No more running-from nothing. I will never run from another thing on this Earth. I took one journey and I paid for the ticket, but let me tell you something, Paul D. Garner: it cost too much!’

Review of the book in one word -

Consummate : Perfectly, highly skilled reached the zenith of art

Introduction

Book’s Name - Beloved

Author’s Name - Toni Morrison

Genre - Magical Realism, Classic, Fiction 

Book Content Warning - Racism, Violence,Sexual scenes/violence

Synopsis - Spoiler Alert!

I first read BELOVED for my University Paper that focused on the American-African diaspora. I was astonished then and years later I find myself swept into the same emotional glimpse as that of Sethe’s life. But let me tell you, I wish I knew about Beloved earlier.

First published in 1987, Nobel-laureate Toni Morrison’s Beloved is set in one of the blood-soaked periods of American history. It talks about the acute suffering of bond slaves and the lasting effect their dreadful past has on them and their descendants. 

Read this book and you will be changed. Read about Sethe, read about Beloved, read about Denver, read about Paul D. Morrison writes of the legacy of motherhood, re-memory, slavery and systemic racism, she writes of the epic survival of these structures. 

She writes a woman so brutalized by violence, taking the lives of her own children seems tolerant and humane in comparison. Read this book and don’t (won’t!) ever forget it. 

So, Beloved is truly an unforgettable book that was beautiful and spooking and terrifying and horrifying and revolting and moving and poetic and big-hearted and high-minded, ahh! and whatnot. 

It really was distinctly one of those novels that you read and it doesn’t just lightly sink in or float away, but instead settles deep in your bones and takes up residence as if it’s a happy guest, though heavy. Take this one gradually and embrace everything that Morrison offers amidst these pages.

Book Blurb

‘Beloved’ is written using a stream of consciousness style, the most dense book I’ve ever read, which allows the reader to truly feel transported into the minds of the narrators. I think it’s important to walk into this book knowing that this book is not written in a cut and dry manner, but in a way that the value each and every sentence carries mimics how people process emotions and information internally.

The motif of ‘Beloved’ seems dark and there are many scarring and sometimes violent events discussed throughout the text. It’s important to accept that these are examples of some of the very real felonies that happened to bond slaves. This text is incredibly important and regardless of being a work of fiction, the message is indeed a reflection on actual events from America’s past. 

This book isn’t just dark, this book is real. The darkness doesn’t come from Sethe or what she did, the darkness comes from the system that forced her actions, that enabled her trauma.

‘Sixty million and more’: her rubric acknowledges the uncountable, unrecorded and unnamed lives which were eradicated, destroyed, disrupted and lost to the horrific practice of slavery. The novel opens in 1873 but progresses back and forth in memory to 1855.

Often the story moves to-and-fro between a character’s life similar to how someone tells a story and fluctuates as they remember events linked to the story from their past. It takes a bit of time to get used to, but I think that it’s incredibly important for the reader to familiarize with the characters.

The Plot

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‘You are your best thing’

This book goes far beyond its own plot. While I had predictions for the expectation of her character “Beloved”, before it was perforce revealed, her purpose in this story can only be recognized as the reader runs along Morrison’s words, as the sentences go on. Such changes throughout the book are regular, as Morrison flips between perspectives, time periods, emotions and themes.

Morrison employs the technique of a ghost story, using gothic ingredients in the beginning, then having the dead come back in the flesh, to epitomize the past haunting the present, coming back for recompensation.

This shows that Morrison writes so far beyond just a simple-plot line. Her tales are written off the pages, they tell stories much larger than even the dense and dark sentences she surrounds us in.

Psychological analysis

Morrison chooses to narrate the ‘Beloved’ through a finite cast of narrators. The reader is escorted through the story beside Sethe, her daughter Denver, and Paul D., who were slaves at Sweet Home with Sethe.

Each narration demonstrates for the reader the various impacts slavery has had on the Black community and their ancestors. The detrimental and lasting effects of being treated so inhumanely radiate off of the pages in each personal reaction and those that are passed down through generations.

Basically, I argued in my university paper that in the story, the unknown, the unknowable, and the misunderstood are fearsome and exciting, and nothing was (or is?) more terrifying to the reading public than the mystery of motherhood, mystery of the female body. 

Sigmund Freud made famous discussions about the topic of the female body: ‘how much right a woman has to control it, how much medical attention and consideration should be given to a woman’s body, maternity, breastfeeding, black women maternal mortality, postpartum depression, the list goes on and on and on.’ 

Balancing such a thematically heavy book with so many different emotions is a laborious task, but Morrison handles it with ease. Sometimes, reading books like this can feel like a roller coaster, with tone changes coming straight away and without warning, but in Beloved, everything seemed to be a natural progression.

Famous quotes

1. “Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.”

2. "Devil's confusion. He lets me look good long as I feel bad.”

3. “Everything depends on knowing how much,” she said, and “Good is knowing when to stop.”

4. she said, 'in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard...”

The Bottom Line

This story was heavy. It was dark and hard. It was one where I had to break off and resettle myself because the topics and images could be really overwhelming. I wanted to read books that challenged me and made me ponder, so this book definitely ticked off those boxes, but it also had the bonus points for being fairly stunning. It is worth the hype.

This book is like laying in the middle of a meadow full of warm, dry grass that settles just perfectly to your body. Sun slightly shimmering, clouds slowly moving by, why would you ever want to leave? 

My ratings for the book - 5 on 5

Get your copy from Amazon - Beloved 

Written By - Prakriti Chaudhary