The Character of Beloved in Toni Morrison's Beloved
Perhaps one of the most important issues in Toni Morrison's award-winning novel Beloved is Morrison's intentional diversity of possible interpretations. However the text is looked at and analyzed, it is the variety of these multiple meanings that confounds any simple interpretation and gives the novel the complexity. The debate rages on over many topics, but one issue of central and basic importance to the understanding of the novel is defining the different possibilities for interpreting the title character. As Robert Broad recognizes, "the question, "Who the hell is Beloved?" must haunt the reader of the novel," and the reader must come to some basic understanding of her character to appreciate the difficult stream of consciousness sections (Broad 189). But there may be no "basic" understanding available of Beloved, for she is a character that ostensibly refuses any single identity, either literal or symbolic.
The critical debate on the topic is no more conclusive, and there is a sharp divide in the interpretations of the very nature of Beloved. Deborah Horvitz was one of the first to write on Beloved, and in 1989 she set the stage for much of the later criticism by assuming the supernatural origins of Beloved. Her essay "Nameless Ghosts: Possession and Dispossession in Beloved" extended Sethe's realization that Beloved is her dead daughter to include also the "Sixty Million and more" of the dedication (Morrison vi). Beloved is all African women who have died in the middle passage, and the families of those taken, and Sethe's mother. She returns for several reasons, some positive, some not. She is memory made corporeal, and it is through her that Sethe can first rememb...
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Horvitz, Deborah. "Nameless Ghosts: Possession and Dispossession in Beloved." Toni Morrison: Beloved. Ed. Carl Plasa. Columbia Critical Guides. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. 59-66.
House, Elizabeth B. "Toni Morrison's Ghost: The Beloved Who is Not Beloved." Toni Morrison: Beloved. Ed. Carl Plasa. Columbia Critical Guides. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. 66-71.
Mbalia, Doreatha D. Toni Morrison's Developing Class Consciousness. Selinsgrove: Associated University Presses, 1991.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Plume, 1988.
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Osagie, Ilyunolu. "Is Morrison Also Among the Prophets?: "Psychoanalytic" Strategies in Beloved." African American Review. 28.3 (1994): 423-440.
“Where does discipline end? Where does cruelty begin? Somewhere between these, thousands of children inhabit a voiceless hell” (Francois Mauriac, Brainyquote 2016). These statements posed by French novelist Francois Mauriac can be applied to Toni Morrison’s Beloved. The novel centers around Sethe, a former African American slave, who lives in rural Cincinnati, Ohio with her daughter named Denver. As the plot progresses, Sethe is confronted with elements of her haunting past: traumatic experiences from her life as a slave, her daunting escape, and the measures she took to keep her family safe from her hellish owner plague Sethe into the present and force her to come to terms with the past. A definitive theme
Gates, Henry Louis and Appiah, K. A. (eds.). Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York, Amistad, 1993.
...She writes of the type of person that one can only hope exists in this world still. The message of her writing and philosophy is contained in a single phrase from the novel: “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine,” (731). This is an inspiration, awakening an inner voice and drive that impels each person to do their absolute best. It implores the soul of the reader to awaken, to become the ideal of the human spirit, and to rise until it can rise no higher. It is a call to anyone with reason, anyone with the strength to be an Atlas, and it is reminding him or her of their duty to live up to the individual potential. For as long as there are those who would hear the message, there will still be hope for mankind.
Food To Students." Points Of View: Junk Food In Schools (2013): 2. Points of View
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Breit, Harvey. Shirley Jackson. The New York Times June 26, 1949, 15. Rpt. in Modern American Literature, Vol. II. Ed. Dorothy Nyren Curley et al. New York: Continuum, 1989.
"All Food Sales in Schools Should Offer Healthier Options." Should Junk Food Be Sold in Schools? Ed. Norah Piehl. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2011. At Issue. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 14 Apr. 2011.
Wyatt, Jean. “Body to the Word: The Maternal Symbolic in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” PMLA, Vol. 108, No.3 (May, 1993): 474-488. JSTOR. Web. 27. Oct. 2015.
To understand why identity is vital to the characters in Beloved, identity must first be defined. According to the Oxford Dictionary, identity is defined as “the fact of being who or what a person or thing is” (identity). Identity is who you are both internally and externally to the world. The main characters in Toni Morrison's Beloved are former slaves. The former slaves’ main struggle, after having been stripped of their humanity and identity by the white men who owned them, is to reclaim self-ownership and form identities independent of those forced upon them by their owners under the system of slavery. Both Stamp Paid and Baby Suggs show the importance of a name and identity by trying to abolish their history.
Toni Morrison does not use any words she doesn’t need to. She narrates the story plainly and simply, with just a touch of bleak sadness. Her language has an uncommon power because of this; her matter-of-factness makes her story seem more real. The shocking unexpectedness of the one-sentence anecdotes she includes makes the reader think about what she says. With this unusual style, Morrison’s novel has an enthralling intensity that is found in few other places
As much as society does not want to admit, violence serves as a form of entertainment. In media today, violence typically has no meaning. Literature, movies, and music, saturated with violence, enter the homes of millions everyday. On the other hand, in Beloved, a novel by Toni Morrison, violence contributes greatly to the overall work. The story takes place during the age of the enslavement of African-Americans for rural labor in plantations. Sethe, the proud and noble protagonist, has suffered a great deal at the hand of schoolteacher. The unfortunate and seemingly inevitable events that occur in her life, fraught with violence and heartache, tug at the reader’s heart-strings. The wrongdoings Sethe endures are significant to the meaning of the novel.
Khaleghi, Mahboobeh. "The ghost of slavery: individual and communal identity in Toni Morrison's Beloved." Language In India Feb. 2012: 472+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.
Harrison, Lindsay & Browne, Sylvia. (2003). Visits from the Afterlife: The Truth About Hauntings, Spirits, and Reunions with Lost Loved Ones. New York: Dutton.
To survive, one must depend on the acceptance and integration of what is past and what is present. In her novel Beloved, Toni Morrison carefully constructs events that parallel the way the human mind functions; this serves as a means by which the reader can understand the activity of memory. "Rememory" enables Sethe, the novel's protagonist, to reconstruct her past realities. The vividness that Sethe brings to every moment through recurring images characterizes her understanding of herself. Through rememory, Morrison is able to carry Sethe on a journey from being a woman who identifies herself only with motherhood, to a woman who begins to identify herself as a human being. Morrison glorifies the potential of language, and her faith in the power and construction of words instills trust in her readers that Sethe has claimed ownership of her freed self. The structure of Morrison's novel, which is arranged in trimesters, carries the reader on a mother's journey beginning with the recognition of a haunting "new" presence, then gradually coming to terms with one's fears and reservations, and finally giving birth to a new identity while reclaiming one's own.
Do aliens exist? For eons, mankind has pondered over this peculiar question and a revealing truth has yet to be answered. However, one thing is known for sure, the discovery of intelligent alien life outside of Earth would provide support to prove and/or disprove fundamental beliefs that have been held for centuries. In any case, the discovery would serve as a cornerstone for humanity to make the quantum leap in understanding the purpose of our existence. Based on numerous examples, it is impossible to deny the existence of extraterrestrial life outside of Earth. Reportings of sightings, ancient civilizations beliefs, and scientific proof from scientists and astronomers are all key factors that contribute to this statement.