Beloved – Toni Morrison

In her novel Beloved author Toni Morrison makes excellent use of visceral and poignant imagery to help the reader experience her writing on a much deeper level.  The manner in which she colors both the narrative and the dialogue between characters stands out in particular.  I believe that Morrison uses color to code the varying levels of emotion that her characters are thrust between, and by doing so makes the atrocities of slavery more digestible for her readers.  From the very beginning we learn that Baby Suggs has an odd fascination with colors, especially the two orange pieces from the quilt in their home.  As she spends her last days in the 124 she becomes more and more fixated upon the vibrant colors (or lack thereof) which surround her.

Later in the novel, the color red is tied to the raw and the visceral.  When Paul D first has sex with Beloved the narrator tells us that, “What he knew was that when he reached the inside part he was saying ‘Red heart.  Red heart,’ over and over again” (138).  We are also told that before this encounter, Paul D’s heart has been rusted shut inside of a “tobacco tin” where the painful memories of his past are locked away and he is protected from new hardships.  As I suggested in class, my interpretation of the “red heart” Paul D mutters lets us know that now his heart has been broken out of its protective cover and it is red, raw, exposed, and vulnerable.

When Stamp Paid recounts his history with Baby Suggs he reveals how after Sethe’s murder of Beloved Baby Suggs becomes an empty shell of her former self.  He explains, “Her marrow was tired and it was testimony to the heart that it fed that it took eight years to meet finally the color she was hankering after” (209).  After all of those years looking for the right colors, Baby Suggs eventually finds what she was looking for and is laid to rest next to the grave of her granddaughter.  The narrator continues that with regard to Stamp Paid, “He hoped she stuck to blue, yellow, maybe green, and never fixed on red” (213).  Here again, red becomes the color of pain and suffering.  It represents that which has been exposed, cut open, and made vulnerable.  It is the color of a fresh wound and a beating heart, both of which have the ability to weaken those that have them.

After Stamp Paid reveals his own familial homicide Paul D feels a shiver run down his spine.  He cannot place exactly what it is that upsets him so, but he muses that it may be “the loss of a red, red heart” (277).  As this section comes to a close, Paul D has now learned of both Sethe’s violent act of love and Stamp Paid’s.  He was beginning to love Sethe until Stamp Paid revealed her bloody past to him.  Picturing Sethe standing there in the yard with her dead child in her arms, covered in Beloved’s blood (the color of pain and suffering), Paul D is no longer able see her as the kind and loving woman she once was.

In this last section Morrison proves her point that the atrocities of slavery did not end with the institution itself, and she does so with her striking use of color.  Even once Baby Suggs, Sethe, and her children have escaped the bondage of Sweet Home they are still subject to the ravaging effects of their traumatic past.  When Paul D exposes his red heart, Sethe covers herself in the blood red of her dead infant, and Baby Suggs becomes “fixed on red” they are all dealing with their horrific pasts in their own way.  The story told by Stamp Paid further proves that even the most gentle of men become subject to the devastating effects of slavery.  Love, tenderness, and familial bonds can only stand up to so much; eventually they all succumb to the pressures of red.