Rememory...remember?

In Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, I was struck by the cyclical nature of the novel, which played an especially large role in rememory. The telling and retelling of stories shape the novel, so I often felt like I was running around in circles. For example, the novel ends with the repetition of “not a story to pass on,” but that’s exactly what the characters did; they retold stories in order to tell a bigger story.

Despite it being a little confusing, I enjoyed the cyclic storytelling. My favorite example is probably the multiple versions of Sethe’s “big secret.” As Paul D recalls, Sethe was “Circling, circling, now she was gnawing something else instead of getting to the point” (Morrison 191). While trying to tell her version of how and why she killed her baby, Sethe must hover around it until she circles into the climax of her story. This style of storytelling appears many times throughout the novel.

However interesting the cyclical storytelling, I think it falls under a larger umbrella of rememory. Part one of the novel concludes with multiple versions of the story, and each one reveals different details. I think the different versions of the story allow readers to compile one overall version that encompasses bits and pieces of each. Sethe remembers her baby being able to crawl, Paul D does not believe the story is true because “that ain’t her mouth,” and Stamp Paid cannot even give his own version, so he reads from the newspaper.

Rememory involves recalling and retelling past memories, and it is loaded with emotions. Sethe decides to kill her children because she hopes to save them from a fate she considers worse than death. The slave catcher came and triggered the memories from her days at Sweet Home, so she saw no alternative; rememory is loaded with emotions. When Sethe tells Paul D her version of the story, she says, “It ain’t my job to know what’s worse. It’s my job to know what is and to keep them away from what I know is terrible. I did that” (194). Basically, Sethe understood that desperate times call for desperate measures. 

Intentional Disparity?

When reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved, the thing I found myself struggling with the most was the seeming discrepancy between Sethe’s account of why she killed her daughter and the guilt she seems to be experiencing throughout the novel. In her account of Beloved’s death, Sethe describes the decision to murder and save her children as an independent choice of which she was sure. Though she continually refers to the fact that she had no one to talk to when learning how to be a mother, she establishes the fact that she did learn how to do it. She learned how to do it on her own. She made the decision to run away from Sweet Home and to kill Beloved without consulting anyone else - something she is especially proud of. In this passage seems to be the only moment in the novel where Sethe is truly self-assured, constructing herself as someone with agency. This is in contrast to Sethe’s behavior up to and beyond this point. Although we do not originally know its cause, this guilt can be seen in the way she withdraws from the black community of Cincinnati. In some ways, this can be attributed to the community (initially) shunning her, but the fact that she does not attempt to branch out is evidence enough for me to feel as though she does not entirely disagree with their judgment. Additionally, she does not share this story with Paul D for a long time, a man who can simply walk into a room and supposedly make women so vulnerable that they cry. Why would she not share something so important with someone who is apparently so easy to talk to, if not for shame or guilt? I suppose it could be possible to experience both emotions in such a complex situation. Even as the reader, you experience both horror and understanding. But there does not seem to be an intention to use this discrepancy as an emotional complexity, but it rather appears as disjointed. Other than this annoying fact, I loved and was completely behind Beloved.

You are my face; I am you.

Toni Morrison’s Beloved is masterful for many reasons, not least of them her control of language. In the aftermath of the big reveal that Sethe murdered the crawling already? girl, language and style begin to shift within the text as the situation begins to deteriorate.

First there is the variant repetition of the lines placing characters in relation to Beloved which begin the four chapters which follow after the various tellings of the murder and the events leading up to it. The first of these is from the perspective of Sethe and begins “Beloved, she my daughter. She mine” (200) Next there is the section from Denver’s perspective which starts “Beloved is my sister” (205) followed by a section from Beloved’s perspective which opens “I am Beloved and she is mine” (210). The final of the four sections also commences with the line “I am Beloved and she is mine” (214). In both cases the “she” is Sethe and all four openings foreshadow the struggle that is to take place between Sethe who lays claim to Beloved, Beloved who in turn lays claim to Sethe, and Denver who does not lay claim to anyone but does accept Beloved as her kin.

The third section, the first of the two starting with Beloved’s perspective, is also stylistically different in that all of the paragraphs in this chapter include long spacing breaks within long fragmented and otherwise unpunctuated thoughts. This gives the writing a broken feel and makes more of a challenge to read as extreme focus is a necessity in order to not lose one’s place within the block of text.

The fourth section contrasts by beginning in a traditional paragraph and then breaking into poetry-like stanzas, with each line consisting of a single short sentence and with the “poem” losing end punctuation halfway through. This gives a feels of quick thoughts and the ambiguous perspective makes it seem like a fast-paced dialogue between the three characters but especially Sethe and Beloved. A key stanza on page 216 reads:  

Beloved

You are my sister

You are my daughter

You are my face; you are me

I have found you again; you have come back to me

You are my Beloved

You are mine

You are mine

You are mine

I found that stanza in particular and the larger four-chapter section overall compelling because of the complexity such breaks from the norm add to the novel as a whole. As a writer I appreciate the difficulty in pulling something of this nature off and respect the richness it adds to the writing as it virtually erases the distance between the text and its audience, making the situation all the more immediate and personal to the reader.

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.

Pretty Little Slavegirl

In the last two class discussions we’ve had, I’ve been struck by the conversations about art and the representation of slaves in these works.  We saw this in the picture of the kneeling woman with the text, “Am I not a woman and sister?” written above her.  While this is a pro-freedom image, it reinforces notions of slaves as submissive and in need of guidance from the white population rather than strong and forceful in their quest for freedom.  This point was reinforced today when we discussed the sculpture featured in the novel which was owned by the abolitionists and portrayed a black person in a position of servitude with the line “At  Yo’ Service.”  I think that knowing these modes of representation of slaves are important to understanding the novel because they are part of that master narrative which Morrison seeks to dismantle.  Understanding these artistic representations is important because they remind the reader what this novel is pushing against.  Sethe’s associations between the abolitionists and slave owners may seem misguided but it actually reinforces the complexity of racial relationships and Morrison’s refusal to adhere to conventional notions of history.  Instead, Morrison explores the dark and morally ambiguous center of a slave community.  As flawed as her way of coping with being a slave mother is, Sethe’s actions could not possibly be mistaken for being supportive of a system designed to benefit the white slave owners.  Morrison does not represent Sethe as pleading for help from these whites.  Instead, Sethe takes control of her situation by deciding her baby’s destiny will not include life as a slave.  Morrison wrote, “…a pretty little slavegirl had recognized a hat, and split to the woodshed to kill her children.”  This is significant because of Morrison’s description of Sethe as a pretty little slavegirl.  This phrase would have you believe Sethe to be an innocent child, not a woman capable of making a murderous decision.  This contrast serves to heighten the moral ambiguity of Sethe’s character.  This is an ambiguity, which was completely ignored in the artistic representations of slaves that we have discussed.   

Take This to Your Grave

The last chapter of Morrison’s Beloved is one of the most intriguing and puzzling chapters in the novel. With the repetition of, “It was not a story to pass on” (275), this chapter belabors the point that the character and memory was forgotten and the story itself is not something one should try to convey to others. But, interestingly enough, the last word of the novel is, “Beloved” (275), which brings back what was forgotten. Within that name, and also the title of the novel itself, resides the story of Beloved and the memories of slavery and oppression that many people want to forget. This novel is extremely focused on the characters' preoccupation with forgetting in order to protect themselves from painful memories. Just like the character of Baby Suggs, who only allowed herself to remember that one of her children liked burned bread, and Paul D who keeps his heart locked in a metaphorical “tobacco tin” (117), the characters keep their memories and their emotions bottled up in order to attempt to forget the past. Beloved is someone who asks too many questions and pushes people to remembering the things they want to forget. For example. by asking Paul D to call her by her name, Beloved makes his “tobacco tin” heart open and transform into a, “red heart” (117). So, even though this a story that should not be passed on, by ending the novel with the word, “Beloved,” readers are confronted with the fact that those memories will always exist, though they may not be in the front of our minds. Just like the word, “Beloved,” is carved onto the gravestone that is spoken of in the beginning of the novel, the memories and associations that accompany the identity of, “Beloved,” may be laid to rest, but they are still set in stone, never to be completely destroyed. They can be brought to mind, just as a gravestone may be visited, but they can never be entirely obliterated.

The Narrative Voice of Slavery

Toni Morrison prevents the alienation of her characters and the deterioration of the self, due to the physical and emotional trauma of their experiences of slavery. 

Toni Morrison’s novel ‘Beloved’ can be described as a modern interpretation of the gothic novel due to its horror and mystical aspects within the narrative. Morrison is retelling a part of American history that is sensitive and still a controversial topic. One could argue, that through the novel, Morrison is granting a narrative voice to those who were enslaved, by rewriting an element of history to portray an idea of how life for African Americans in the 1800s. The repetition of “It was a story not to pass on.” (322) in the closing pages of the novel creates the notion that Slavery itself is the story not to pass on,  almost as if the events of the novel are to be repressed and left in the past. However, the novels very existence implies that this is a story that needs to be told and the repetition of this contradicting phrase reinforces that the horrors of this story is not one to pass on for joy, but to remember and to respect.

Returning back to the narrative voice, Morrison grants the female characters of the novel a narrative voice that they otherwise would have been denied. She  does not sugar coat the harsh reality of slavery in the 1800s, but constantly reminds of us of how African Americans were treated, especially women with imagery of rape, beatings, the stealing of breast milk and death.  ““They used a cowhide on you?”  “And they took my milk.” “They beat you and you was pregnant?” “and they took my milk!”” (20) When first reading this particular extract in the earlier classes, I found this particularly eye opening.  The images of violence and beating are not seen to be as shocking as the very fact that Sethe had her breast milk stolen. Morrison, is creating the image of a woman being completely stripped from her motherly duties and rights by being unable to care for her baby in the most natural way. In many ways, this is more effective than the images of violence and rape as it has dehumanized and enslaved Sethe not only within society but in her body.