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Author: Toni Morrison
Language: English
Genre:
American literature
About the Author
Toni
Morrison known as Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, she was an American novelist,
essayist, book editor, and college professor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye,
was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon brought her
national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Review
In ''Beloved,'' Ms. Morrison turns away from the contemporary scene that has been her concern of late. This new novel is set after the end of the Civil War, during the period of so-called Reconstruction, when a great deal of random violence was let loose upon blacks, both the slaves freed by Emancipation and others who had been given or had bought their freedom earlier.
But there are flashbacks to a more distant period, when slavery was still a going concern in the South and the seeds for the bizarre and calamitous events of the novel were sown. The setting is similarly divided: the countryside near Cincinnati, where the central characters have ended up, and a slave-holding plantation in Kentucky, ironically named Sweet Home, from which they fled 18 years before the novel opens.
"Beloved"
is such a unified novel that it's difficult to discuss it without giving away
the plot. We never know this child's full name, but we - and Sethe - think of
her as Beloved, because that is what is
on her tombstone. Sethe wanted
"Dearly Beloved," from the funeral service, but had only enough
strength to pay for one word.
"Who would have thought that a little old baby could harbor so much rage?" Sethe thinks, but it does; breaking mirrors, making tiny handprints in cake icing, smashing dishes, and manifesting itself in pools of blood-red light. As the novel opens, the ghost is in full possession of the house, having driven away Sethe's two young sons.
Old Baby Suggs, after a lifetime of slavery and a brief respite of freedom - purchased for her by the Sunday labor of her son Halle, Sethe's husband -has given up and died. Sethe lives with her memories, almost all of them bad. Denver, her teenage daughter, courts the baby ghost because, since her family has been ostracized by the neighbors, she doesn't have anyone else to play with.
All
the main characters in the book believe
in ghosts, so it's merely natural for this one to be there. As Baby Suggs says, ''Not a house in the
country ain't packed to its rafters with some dead Negro's grief. We lucky this ghost is a baby. My husband's spirit was to come back in here? or yours?
Don't talk to me. You are
lucky.'' In fact, Sethe would rather have the ghost there than not there. It is, after all, her admired child, and any
sign of it is better, for her than nothing.
"Beloved"
is written in an anti minimalist prose that is by turns rich, graceful,
eccentric, rough, lyrical, sinuous, colloquial, and very much to the point. Here, for instance, is Sethe remembering
Sweet Home:
In this book, "Beloved" is from the Bible, her beloved, which was not beloved.'' Taken by itself, this might seem to favor doubt about, for instance, the extent to which Beloved was really loved, or the extent to which Sethe herself was rejected by her own community. But there is more to it than that. The passage is from a chapter in which the Apostle Paul ponders, Job-like, the ways of God toward humanity, in particular, the evils and inequities visible everywhere on the earth.
Paul
goes on to talk about the fact that the Gentiles, hitherto despised and
outcast, have now been redefined as acceptable.
The passage proclaims, not rejection, but reconciliation and hope. It continues: ''And it shall come to pass,
that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people; there shall they be called the children of
the living God.''
But
her brain was not interested in the future.
Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to
imagine, let alone plan for, the next day.
. . .
Other people went crazy, why couldn't she? Other people's brains stopped, turned around, and went on to something new, which is what must have happened to Halle. And how sweet that would have been. From ''Beloved.''
Why
this book:
It
features gritty infanticide, racial language, horrific sexual assaults, and
even references to sex with animals. Beloved is indeed the 26th book on
the American Library Association's Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books for
2000-2009 and has been challenged for its violence, sexuality, and more: But
teens are mature enough to handle the challenges this book presents. At this
age they can decide for themselves what they think about disturbing personal
and historical events.
My
Ratings for this book 9.5/10
You
can easily order a copy of it from Amazon- Beloved
Written By - Govinda Kumar
Edited By - Anamika Malik
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