. Spinning .

I was going to put some Faulkner in here because I suspect that that is why I’m disappointed in Morrison’s use of it.  It just doesn’t appear to further story, nor provide useful insight into the characters, even with this next short chapter where all three, Beloved, Sethe, and Denver appear to have a "meeting of minds."

Tell me the truth.  Didn’t you come from the other side?  Yes. I was on the other side.  You came back because of me? Yes.  You rememory me?  Yes.  I remember you.  You never forgot me?  Your face is mine.  Do you forgive me?  Will you stay?  You safe here now.  Where are the men without skin?  Out there.  Way off.  (p.215)

The conversation repeats the visuals of earrings, clouds, iron circle, round basket, water, face and smile, which have already been (to me) beaten to death.  This segment does, however, show an understanding of the three of Beloved’s identity, and a plea for unity. 

It does seem odd that Beloved’s memory is one so strongly of attachment to Sethe without having any of the questions one would normally have of their murderer, nor of the feelings of the death itself as Morrison had presented to us in the opening story:

Who would have thought that a little old baby could harbor so much rage?  Rutting among the stones under the eyes of the engraver’s son was not enough.  Not only did she have to live out her years in a house palsied by the baby’s fury at having its throat cut… (p. 5)

The above was about Sethe, and in the dialogue following, she suggested to her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, that "We could move." 

There is an obvious change in Sethe as she comes to face what she’s preferred to forget–her murder of Beloved in the belief of keeping her children free–but it doesn’t quite ring true to character with this woman.  She has never, as Baby Suggs has, not given full love to her children because of the likelihood of their been sold away or killed.  She thinks of her two boys constantly, and of her baby girl (Beloved) and yet is annoyed by her ghost, and doesn’t show any more than a connection of caring for Beloved when she returns to the house as a "real" young woman.

I think that while the concept of really getting into the heads of Sethe, Denver, and Beloved is good and well-timed, it’s just not as well done as Faulkner might have done it, nor what I have come to expect from Toni Morrison herself.  There was an opportunity here to really hit home with the pain that these characters, as well as too many in history, have suffered, but for me, it fell flat.

Hmmm.  The very next section is from the pov of Denver, Sethe’s daughter.  It tells us nothing new, not really.  It seems that Morrison is now indeed repeating the story, calling up things we’ve been told in the rolling out of the story–which was so strategically done–and giving us the same events to perhaps point out their importance, significance, truth, or something more.

Beloved is my sister.  I swallowed her blood right along with my mother’s milk.  The first thing I heard after not hearing anything was the sound of her crawling up the stairs.  She was my secret company until Paul D came.  He threw her out.  Ever since I was little she was my company and she helped me wait for my daddy.  (p. 205)

We’ve seen the scenario of when Sethe, after having killed Beloved, puts the baby Denver to her breast, her nipple still wet with Beloved’s blood.  We’ve heard a zillion times about the toddler Beloved’s fascination with the stairs (metaphor for a higher plateau of existence, death preferable to a life of slavery?).  And we know that Denver, feeling isolated, enjoyed the company of the child’s ghost.  And all the rest that Denver reveals in this short section.  We also have not only the other character’s understanding of Denver, but have come to the same conclusion about her ourselves from her actions.

Somehow, I’m dragged down by these past two segments of direct communication from Sethe and Denver, as it doesn’t really offer insight, nor inspire feeling above what was there for the characters themselves.  It almost feels as if Morrison has lost steam or not sure where the story is going.

The next short section appears to be from Beloved herself.

Morrison has played nicely with time, getting in backstory through the 3rd person multiple pov and flowing from related incidents seamlessly while jumping around in time.  However, I’ve come to a point in the story where I’m not really comfortable with the writing tactics.

One thing that bothered me was Sethe’s apparent obliviousness to the possibility that the returned Beloved was her murdered child returned.  First, the name should have been a giant tip-off, the fact that the young woman had no history, that she did seem to know some things about Sethe that should have been surprising, her oddness, and of course, her attachment to Sethe.  But finally:

Beloved, she my daughter.  She mine. See.   She come back to me of her own free will and I don’t have to explain a thing.  I didn’t have time to explain before because it had to be done quick.  Quick.  She had to be safe and I had to put her where she would be.  But my love was tough and she back now.  I knew she would be.  Paul D ran her off so she had no choice but to come back to me in the flesh.  (p. 200)

The switch to first person pov, particularly of this character (Sethe) whom she’s held at arm’s length and described as "iron-eyed," coupled with, from the horse’s mouth, the answer to the mystery of the child Beloved’s death, which we’ve just beeen given from another character, is so blatantly telling rather than showing that it jars.  I’d swear, after all the lovely language use and clever unfolding of story via non-linearity, that someone else had written this.  Again, a character that has been somewhat aloof, that has evoked empathy by bearing a painful secret, that I’d come to admire for her determination and loyalty even as we find out what she’s done, comes off here as rather dopey.

So I suppose I’m questioning the character development a bit.  Sethe is tough, she’s been through a lot, she’s seen and experienced beatings, murders, and worse.  And yet, here she is telling us the whole thing as if jeepers, ya know, I kinda thought that was Beloved but got distracted by Paul D, and now he’s gone but hey, that’s Beloved, and her and Denver and me, we’ll do just fine.

Between the change in pov, the telling, and the odd turnaround in character, this portion bugged me a lot.

Tending towards following story and ever-mindful of writing style and use of language, I’ve learned as well to find metaphorical meanings and symbolism withing fiction.  Last night at our writers group meeting I’d asked a member what he was planning on using for his Ethnic Literature course in Fall, and one was Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude and one was one of Toni Morrison’s other novels. 

While I’m mindful of the historical and cultural significance within novels, I never really looked at them or read them in this context.  After all, it is fiction based on mostly factual knowledge, and even textbooks and non-fiction are not always considered to be accurate or true. 

In Beloved, there is of course a history of the black slave in America, but then again, it is manipulated by Morrison–as is the right of any fiction writer–for dramatic effect.  What happens to Sethe and her family and friends is all based on some handed-down narrative of true events, but for all this misery and horrorible events to happen within this one small group is a stretch.  That’s okay, it makes for great story, and the consolidation of many, many experiences into a few brings more power to the shame of slavery our country should feel. 

When looking up the link at amazon.com for Beloved, I happened to read a few of the reviews.  One, by Ilana, claims the book is overrated in writing style, dislikes the prose, but especially feels that the author is attempting to be too deep and steeps her meanings in metaphors and symbolism that require too much of the reader.  Again, while I love finding the deeper layers, I do not feel that Morrison’s story is so hidden from the reader as to be such an annoyance.  Frankly, it can be read and accepted at face value, and to me, Morrison seems to explain too much once she’s ready to tell us the secret she’s hinted at for a good portion of the book.

But there are many ways of reading, and this is where Barthes bases his values on the reader’s input to story.  For even in the simplest form, that of a single word such as "yellow" is interpreted differently by each of us.

Did you see lemon, sunflower, or gold?

This is perhaps the easiest reading of the novels I’ve been through lately, and I believe that’s due to Toni Morrison’s writing style that I can totally appreciate as both reader and writer.

It went on that way and might have stayed that way but one evening, after supper, after Sethe, he came downstairs, sat in the rocker and didn’t want to be there.  He stood up and realized he didn’t want to go upstairs either.  Irritable and longing for rest, he opened the door to Baby Suggs’ room and dropped off to sleep on the bed the old lady died in.  That settled it–so it seemed.  It became his room and Sethe didn’t object–her bed made for two had been occupied by one for eighteen years before Paul D came to call.  And maybe it was better this way, with young girls in the house and him not being her true-to-life husband.  In any case, since there was no reduction in his before-breakfast or after-supper appetites, he never heard her complain.

It went on that way and might have stayed that way, except one evening, after supper, after Sethe, he came downstairs and lay on Baby Suggs’ bed and didn’t want to be there.  (p. 115)

In this way, Morrison shows us a change in Paul D that he himself is not yet aware of.  While they are still having sexual relations (before-breakfast, etc.), he has been falling asleep at night in the rocker. It is a break in routine that is a gradual pulling away from Sethe(?), the house(?) or simply his own nature.  In repeating the first line in the paragraphs (with a minor change) Morrison emphasizes the meaning, the non-change that must change.

There is a wonderful weaving of time, different segments of past and present, that slowly reveals the mysteries of the ghost, Beloved, and the horrors are fed to us bits at a time, as if Morrison isn’t sure that with the evils that these people have endured can be handled in the acceptance either by her character or her readers all at once.  And yet, from the very first page the worst imaginable has been told–the death of a baby.

There are a few places, however, where I feel Morrison falls just a bit into overtelling; explaining something that we’ve finally guessed at by ourselves.  Marquez has done this, but I found his to be done in a more simple and forthright manner, perhaps because it was suddenly clear (in case we didn’t catch it) in one short statement rather than going on for pages.  For example, in explaining, this far into the book, once more about Denver’s sense of immediate self and her resentment of the past in which she doesn’t share. 

But Morrison is easy to forgive.

Sethe’s little girl, Beloved, had been sent ahead with her two boys to safety at Baby Sugg’s before she herself escapes the slavery of Sweet Home.  She is pregnant and safely delivers another little girl, Denver, before she reaches refuge, not knowing what has happened to her husband Halle in their flight.

When the novel opens, we are told that the house where Sethe and Denver are living is haunted by Beloved, who has been murdered some time after their arrival.  We don’t know how, but are instead given horrors that Sethe and her people have lived through, that we can only imagine and like Sethe herself, don’t know if we want to know more.  Paul D has some answers, and he rids the house of Beloved’s spirit as he himself moves in.

Then, Beloved returns:

A fully dressed woman walked out of the water.  She barely gained the dry bank of the stream before she sat down and leaned against a mulberry tree.  All day and all night she sat there, her head resting on the trunk in a position abandoned enough to crack the brim in her straw hat.  Everything hurt but her lungs most of all.  (p. 50)

She is taken in by Sethe, Denver and Paul D., and while the name "Beloved" itself should be a tip-off, it is only Denver who understands that this strange young woman is her sister, Sethe’s murdered baby.

But is there more to it?  While we can believe in ghosts or not, justify the coincidence of the name and accept overactive imaginations for the spirit of Beloved in haunting their home, there may be much more to what Beloved represents that is over and beyond the character.  Is she the ever-constant presence of the suffering and misery of the black American’s past?  Is she something different for each of the characters; comfort for Sethe, companionship and a sense of past for Denver, who was born into better times and feels isolated from what the others share, or, in becoming reality, and at the age she would be had she lived, does Beloved become as well a link in time that parallels the generations?

Until, I think, we find how Beloved has died–and this background is slowly coming out of Sethe–we may only speculate on her appearance and place in the story.

Morrison’s narrative story, her use of language is both stark and colorful.  It seemed as though the reading flowed on language, causing me to stop and marvel, but driving me onward with story.  Something like this:

How Sethe was walking on two feet meant for standing still.  How they were so swollen she could not see her arch or feel her ankles.  Her leg shaft ended in a loaf of flesh scalloped by five toenails.  But she could not, would not stop, for when she did, the little antelope rammed her with horns and pawed the ground of her womb with impatient hooves.  (p. 30)

What else can I say?

Realized that I’ve reached page fifty and haven’t written anything about this Toni Morrison novel yet.  It is because I was into the story, the writing, the people so deeply that I didn’t want to stop without finding out more.

The characters: Sethe, the female protagonist, obviously has had a hard life, losing all but one of her four children, has escaped slavery and sorrow and is happy enough "getting by"; Dakota, her daughter, a child of transition, her mother being pregnant with her when she ran away to start a new life, is lonely and isolated from others, seeking companionship in secrets; Paul D, one of the men from back home who has returned to move in with Sethe and shares her understanding of the way things were; Baby Suggs, Sethe’s mother-in-law, now dead, but still strong enough in character to affect the others; and of course, Beloved, Sethe’s dead baby girl who haunts their home.

I love the way Morrison starts the novel out with Beloved, making her real before we have any chance to question her, and so we accept Paul D’s first meeting with her:

Paul D tied his shoes together, hung them over his shoulder and followed her through the door straight into a pool of red and undulating light that locked him where he stood.

"You got company?" he whispered, frowning.

"Off and on," said Sethe.

"Good God."  He backed out the door onto the porch.  "What kind of evil you got in here?"  (p. 8)

Morrison doesn’t fool around, she’s told us that this spirit is "in a house palsied by the baby’s fury at having its throat cut,…"   By the way, even while we’re hit by a slew of names, they appear to be a bit off-kilter to me:  Sethe comes to mind as a masculine name rather than for this this woman; Denver is her daughter’s name–odd I would think for Southerners; Paul D reminds me of "my brother Darryl and my other brother Darryl"; Baby Suggs for the old grandmother.  But the bestest of all:  Here Boy, the dog.

There’s so much going on, that’s happened before, that comes back to haunt as intensely as the ghost of Beloved itself.

Next necessary review:  the writing, oh!