Honors - Beloved by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison develops the theme of the destruction of slave’s own identity in his novel “Beloved” by his use of symbolism, motifs, and climax. The reason why the his book explores the depths of slave identities is because long ago slaves weren’t looked at as humans. They were not given the same rights or respect they deserved and they were treated as animals. In “Beloved” Sethe has trouble finding who she really is. Paul D, Denver, and even Baby Suggs all had the same struggle to find out who they really were and what their importance and contribution to the world was.

In “Beloved” trees are an important symbol played throughout the whole story as primarily sources of healing, comfort, and life. Sethe has a scar on her back that resembled a chokecherry tree from when she was molested by two boys who held her down and drank her breast milk, as the school teacher let them whip open her back which left her a scar. “A chokecherry tree. Trunk, branches, and even leaves. Tiny little chokecherry leaves. But that was eighteen years ago.” Paul D finds his freedom from following flowering trees towards the North, and Sethe found her freedom by running off into a forest when she was pregnant with Denver. Another symbol was Paul D’s Tin tobacco box which was described as his heart. “It was some time before he could put Alfred Georgia, Sixo, schoolteacher, Halle, his brothers, Sethe, Mister, the taste of iron, the sight of butter, the smell of hickory, notebook paper, one by one, into the tobacco tin lodged in his chest. By the time he got to 124 nothing in this would could pry it open.” After all of Paul D’s bad experiences at Sweet Home and his prison camp, he believed that the best thing he could do was to lock up his feelings and memories in the “tin box”. By putting away his emotions he feels as though he could hide from them to protect himself from further psychological damage. A third symbol was the color red (which included orange and pink) that had different meanings throughout the novel. “It was clear why Baby Suggs was so starved for color. There wasn’t any except for two orange squares in a quilt that made the absence shout.” “Now I know why Baby Suggs pondered color her last years. She never had time to see, let alone enjoy it before. Took her a long time to finish with blue, then yellow, then green. She was well into pink when she died. I don’t believe she wanted to get to red and I understand why because me and Beloved outdid ourselves with it. Matter of fact, that and her pinkish headstone was the last color I recall.” Color was important to them because it resembled a sense of hope like Amy’s search for the red velvet. However it also resembled death when it came to Beloved’s pink headstone, or how Denver drank Beloved’s red blood as long with her mother’s breast milk.

A main motif had to do with the supernatural world told in “Beloved”. Beloved herself was claimed to be Sethe’s baby’s ghost who returned to her. When Beloved disappeared in the end, it was almost as if she was never there. “They forgot her like a bad dream. After they made up their tales, shaped and decorated them, those that saw her that day on the porch quickly and deliberately forgot her. It took longer for those who had spoken to her, lived with her, fallen in love with her, to forget, until they realized they couldn’t remember or repeat a single thing she said, and began to believe that, other than what they themselves were thinking, she hadn’t said anything at all. So, in the end, they forget her too.” Beloved can also be interpreted as Sethe’s dead mother. In Chapter 22, Beloved remembers memories that correspond to those that Sethe’s mother might have had of her passage to America from Africa. Beloved had a strange matter of speaking and seems to wear a “perpetual smile”, which are both traits that we later find out Sethe’s mother had as well. There were also many other connections that had to do with ghosts such as when Sethe began to get choked even with no ones hands on her throat. Yet, when she was able to breath again, bruises were left on her neck. Sethe believed that it was because of Grandma Baby even though she had passed away. “‘Somebody choked me,’ said Sethe. ‘Who?’ Sethe rubbed her neck and struggled to a sitting position. ‘Grandma Baby, I reckon.’” Many events in the novel involve the presence of a ghost that pushes the limits of ordinary understanding.

The story of Beloved isn’t told during one time frame, it is told between the immediate and distant pasts which ties the whole story together. Since the novel follows two different stories, one told through flashbacks reoccurring throughout the book, and the other taking place in the novel’s present, there are two different climaxes because of it. During the flashbacks, the climax for the plot takes place near the end of chapter 16, when it the story finally reveals the circumstances of Sethe’s daughter’s death that occurred 18 years ago when she attempted to murder her children to save them from a life of slavery. The way the story is told gives the reader little hints of what happened, but they don’t get the clear understanding until chapter 16. “Little nigger-boy eyes open in sawdust; little nigger-girl eyes staring between the wet fingers that held her face so her head wouldn’t fall off; little nigger-baby eyes crinkling up to cry in the arms of the older nigger whose own eyes were nothing btu slivers looking down at his feet. But the worst ones were those of the nigger woman who looked like she didn”t have any. Since the whites in them had disappeared and since they were as black as her skin, she looked blind.” In the present, the second climax happens at the end of the novel during the “exorcism” of Beloved who was believed to be the murdered daughter.

In conclusion, all the events that led from the symbols, to the motifs, and the climaxes all reveal the haunting pasts and “rememories” of the Sethe and the slaves. In cases where students were taught to compare slaves human and animal traits, and being brainwashed to believe that slaves weren’t people. This destroyed their identities so they had to rediscover who they are and what they deserve, as people.