Beloved by Toni Morrison

I guess there's no need for my stupid introduction sentence anymore, now that I do that title thing. Aww. I liked my awkward introductions. Well, I'll just get right down to it then. This book is (mainly) about Sethe, an escaped slave girl living in Ohio a few years after the Civil War. Her house is haunted by a ghost when we first meet her. I feel like I should explain who the ghost is; it's her dead baby daughter. (You find this out about four pages in. I'm being good!) This baby wasn't even named, at least, nothing more than the 'Beloved' that Sethe had carved on the baby's stone. Anyway, she lives in this haunted house with her still-living daughter, Denver. She had two sons, but they ran away because of the house and its "spite", her husband is dead, and her husband's mother dies pretty early on. I guess the most important thing to mention is that a man she knew at Sweet Home (plantation) shows up, chases the baby spirit out, and soon thereafter a stranger shows up at their door.


"'It's gonna hurt now,' said Amy. 'Anything dead coming back to life hurts'" (35). Amy is the girl who helped Sethe escape, and what she actually is talking about are Sethe's feet which are swollen similarly to the way a drowned body's would be swollen, because Sethe has walked so far over rough terrain. But still, it's important for something later on which I'm zipping the lip for. (I don't know why I'm trying to be so good for this. I will be spoiling this later on; it's necessary for book observations.)

Oh, actually, I'll be throwing huge spoilers in now. The stranger appears on page 52, confused at the concept of a last name, confused as to where she is, with stolen clothes and shoes she didn't even know how to tie. (The stranger is supposed to be about eighteen.) The stranger introduces herself as Beloved--the second she said this, a flag went up. I was immediately like, that's the dead baby come back from the dead!!! And Denver immediately realizes, and Paul D (the man from Sweet Home) realizes shortly, but Sethe doesn't realize until about 120 pages later. I mean, it makes sense, if she realized earlier there wouldn't be the same dramatic effect, and it would be much shorter, but it makes Sethe seem a little bit unrealistic. Well... maybe not. I guess not many people expect dead babies to come back... I guess I'm being harsh. Well, going back to what Amy said, Beloved was sick with a fever in a bad way.
"'Today is always here... Tomorrow, never'" (59).

Sethe comes to realize who beloved is because she catches Beloved humming a song that Sethe had made up and sung to her children as youngens. Because of this, she immediately starts feeling immensely guilty... Well, not that she wasn't feeling guilty before, but now that she a physical reminder right in front of her, she wants to apologize for her deeds no longer by explanation (she killed Beloved to protect her from white men) but by overindulging Beloved. She starts giving all of her and Denver's food to Beloved and shutting Denver out, and Beloved grows fat and bloated and Sethe starves herself, so it literally appears that Beloved is sucking the life out of her mother.

Denver at one point (SPOILERS HAVE ENDED RANDOMLY!) seeks work at a white folk's house, and I guess until the mid-1900's it was popular to have these stereotypical black money-holders. I say this because in Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison the (black) protagonist comes across a similar device. I don't remember what the description of that one was, other than the money went into its mouth and that it ended in bitty pieces when he becomes enraged. Denver sees one described in much greater detail, in an uncomfortable amount of detail: "His head was thrown back farther than a head could go, his hands were shoved in his pockets. Bulging like moons, two eyes were all the face he had above the gaping red mouth. His hair was a cluster of raised, widely spaced dots made of nail heads. And he was on his knees. His mouth, wide as a cup, held the coins needed to pay for a delivery or some other small service, but could just as well have held buttons, pins or crab-apple jewelry. Painted across the pedestal he knelt on were the words 'At Yo Service'" (255). Ugh. I honestly can't imagine seeing something like that, much less owning it, or being comfortable with it in the first place. Though I have to say, although Invisible Man definitely didn't have as in-depth a description of it as Beloved did, Invisible Man used it perhaps more... poignantly? Is that the word? Well, it was a tad more shaking because the woman who owned was herself black and didn't really see what was wrong with it, didn't mind or had trained herself not to mind it and even owning something so racist. Denver is bothered by viewing it.

Okay, and here we go: the ending is great. Well... maybe great isn't the proper word. But it works, it fits, it's perfect. I know I've said this before, but this only adds to the proof that the more I like a book, the less articulate I can get about it. Anyway, here is the main portion of the end, my favorite part: "...Then there is a loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive, on its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one's own feet going seem to come from a far-off place. Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. Disremembered and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can they call her if they don't know her name? Although she has claim, she is not claimed... It was not a story to be passed on. They forgot her like a bad dream. After they made up their tales, shaped and decorated them, those that saw her that day on the porch quickly and deliberately forgot her. It took longer for those who had spoken to her, lived with her, fallen in love with her, to forget, until they realized they couldn't remember or repeat a single thing she said, and began to believe that, other than what they themselves were thinking, she hadn't said anything at all. So, in the end, they forgot her too. Remembering seemed unwise... It was not a story to pass on. So they forgot her. Like an unpleasant dream during a troubling sleep... Sometimes the photograph of a close friend or relative--looked at too long--shifts, and something more familiar than the dear face itself moves there. They can touch it if they like, but don't, because they know things will never be the same if they do... Down by the stream in back of 124 her footprints come and go, come and go. They are so familiar. Should a child, an adult place his feet in them, they will fit. Take them out and they disappear again as though nobody ever walked there. By and by all trace is gone, and what is forgotten is not only the footprints but the water too and what is down there. The rest is weather. Not the breath of the disremembered and unaccounted for, but wind in the eaves, or spring ice thawing too quickly. Just weather. Certainly no clamor for a kiss. Beloved'" (275).


So, the book... the book was fantastic. It was shocking and uncomfortable and very disturbing (Beloved at the end of the novel makes my skin crawl just imagining her) and messed with the head. It was written perfectly (well, almost--a lot of semicolons are forsaken) and... man! This book is great. Seriously. Read it, read it, read it.
And, while I'm thinking of Invisible Man, we just watched the Malcolm X movie in Rebels--anyone thinking the Narrator's story and Malcolm X's seem very similar, at least until the very very end? Yes?