Beloved Response

            As I read Beloved by Toni Morrison, I was struck by the depictions of slave life and post slave life that the characters underwent throughout the course of the novel.  I suppose this could be due to the fact that the nightmares of slavery are only told the context of history books and I have only run across narratives through books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which while they do not attempt to cast a positive light on slavery by any means, the absolute horrors are never fully realized.  This is the strength of Morrison’s writing, because she is able to completely encapsulate a vast multitude of emotions without seeming contrived.  I have read Song of Solomon as well, and I found this to be true in that novel.  As I think of Morrison’s strengths in storytelling, I am struck by our conversation in class today that revolved around the end of Beloved.  Morrison gives her readers an amazingly poetic final two pages with the repetition of the line “This is not a story to pass on.”  We dissected the sentence, what is the this, is pass on directed to future generations as a warning or to current and past readers as a means to convey the nightmares.  I am not going to attempt to answer these questions; however, I think that in creating a simple yet vague command, Morrison might also be urging us to consider, if this is not the story that we are meant to pass on, what is?  What aspects of Beloved are meant to be passed on? 

            I mostly think that the question that can be ascertained through Morrison’s statement shares a direct connection with the crux of post-modernism.  The stories that are meant to be passed on are those that represent individuals who are a direct result of being constructed by society, portraying how each and every toil has molded them into the people that we see. 
Certainly the representation of the world that Morrison offers is depicted as alienating.  For instance, characters like Paul D are unable to connect to the majority of society because of a tobacco tin around his heart.  This haunting image brings to mind the tobacco leaves that were primarily harvested by enslaved individuals.  Similarly, the community often alienates Baby Suggs due to her freedom and the gatherings that she hosts for the townspeople.  The bitterness that has been constructed as a direct result of the Fugitive Slave laws and poisons individuals to the point that gratefulness turns into rage.