Carmen Gillespie's Beloved Essay

Carmen Gillespie’s article of Beloved emphasizes the obstacles of finding true identity that are undergone by former slaves who have gained their freedom but are “haunted by their memories of their earliest and formative experiences as someone else's property.” (Gillespie 1) The article first introduces the readers to Beloved’s representation in the novel of how she can be seen as “a personification of all the trauma and catastrophic human cost of the Middle Passage and slavery” (1) and what altered the urge to write this story, which was based on a true story of Margaret Garner, a slave who tried to kill her children in order to keep them from returning to slavery. In addition, to start off the critical commentary, Gillespie breaks down the title of the novel into three parts, the word be and love and the letter d. Through her description of the word be, one main question of the novel is highlighted, “what does it mean to be a human being and then, particularly, what does it mean to be a human being when one's primary humanity is denied.” (2) In the beginning of the novel, Sethe is faced with the decision to choose who she wants to be married to from the male slaves in Sweet Home and is expected to be

able to adapt to being married and happy while being enslaved.

Gillespie brings up the significance of the crystal earrings given to Sethe by Lillian Garner which are supposed to signify to Sethe’s “endorsement of the marriage and of Sethe's ability to choose a husband even though enslaved.” (2) As Sethe grows to be a mother with children, she realizes that the freedom of decision that was given to her before was just an illusion, since her life including the other slaves’ lives are “completely dependant upon the wiles of one man, Garner.” (3) This is also when Sethe realizes the reality that she “is not allowed to "be" at Sweet Home,” (3) which in this case, sweet home is considered to be another phrase for having to make one’s own decisions which planted the idea of her escaping sweet home and re-discovering her identity in 124. After the return of school teacher, Sethe attempts to kill her children for the reason of her not wanting anyone to have control over her life or her children’s lives. I entirely support Gillespie’s assertion of Sethe’s faith in after life, that she “does not see death as an end to life” (4) but as a way in “assisting their passage into another state of being.” (4) The second part of Gillespie’s analysis of the title is based on the word love in Beloved. This love is founded on two kinds of love, the motherly love, and the adult love. Sethe’s absence of her mother since childhood marks her in “profound ways and affects her own ability to mother and her perceptions of motherhood.” (6) All that Sethe cared about as a mother, according to the novel, is getting “[her] milk to [her] baby girl” (Morrison 11) and that “nobody is going to nurse her [baby] like [herself].” (11) Her motherly love is what caused Sethe to be “motivated to survive” (Gillespie 6) to feed her children. In addition to that, Baby Suggs’s experience of having eight children whom have been lost also provides “insight into the complexities of mother love during slavery,” (7) which through her losses, “primary relationships between human beings is made plain.” (7) As of adult love, Paul D and Seth’s stories through the novel “ask whether it is possible for two individuals, traumatized and violated by experiences that are beyond their control” (7) to be able to forget the past and love each other. In order for them to achieve love, they have to be able to “integrate that trauma” (7) rather than denying their past. The last concept that Gillespie covers about the title is the letter d, which represents the past, that in order for the characters to move forward, they would have to confront the horrors of their past. The letter d usually “functions linguistically in English to signify past tense.” (8) Beloved, who in this case represents the bonds left of the past, is the reason why Sethe, Paul D, and Denver are unable to move forward and look into the future.
Gillespie’s transition into the analysis of style in the book had a very smooth flow of going from talking of the human experience and how the past lives in the present to the “disinterest and richness of the natural world” (10) to the “fragmented nature” (10) of a human’s mind. The way Gillespie tries to add her style analysis accurately references the work of Beloved by Toni Morrison of how although everything in the novel is presented in fragments, the story reveals itself in a way so that “the responsibility for the coherence and meaning of the novel belongs to the reader.” (11) I enjoyed the analysis of Gillespie in the way of how she tied the structural fragmentation to the point that “all human beings experience existence in starts and fits rather than as a smooth and continuous linear narrative.” (11)
The most thought-provoking point in this scholarly article that I wouldn’t have thought of is Gillespie’s reference to Toni Morrison’s link between night and sexuality. That since “restrictions [are] imposed during the day by slavery, the night is the only time for connection and often the only time for reflection.” (11) These connections relate mostly to Beloved, that in the morning, she weakens Sethe by entrapping her in the house and asking for more food, while at night, Beloved loses her “form and identity” (12). Paul D also changes at night, when Paul D and Beloved have sex, “the contents of his tobacco tin—his heart—open.” (12) Throughout the novel, night is the time where freedom and escape is possible.