Beloved: Theme through race lens.

In the novel Beloved by Toni Morrison we see how slavery impacted the lives of those who lived as slaves due to their race. One character in Beloved that was put into slavery due to her race and was forced to live a harmful and unsafe life and ended killing her baby was Sethe. We can see the theme throughout this novel using my lens, the race lens, is that sometimes you will be put through a tough situation and you will end up making a decision and the decision we end up taking might not always be the best choice, and we might end up regretting it. In this case for Sethe it was to either let Beloved live a life of slavery and go through what her mother, Sethe, went through or kill Beloved and not put her through the harmful life of slavery that could damage her, her whole life. We find out that Sethe ends up killing the Beloved due to the fact that Sethe does want her child to go through what she went through. 

Throughout the novel we find out that Sethe does indeed end up regretting her decision to kill Beloved due to the fact that she the baby she killed is reincarnated and Sethe feels that she has come back to haunt her. In an article on Beloved  it describes the feelings of Sethe after what she had done, they describe it as “Sethe is still haunted by the traumatic memories of slavery and of the ensuing events; additionally, the baby-ghost of her murdered daughter, Beloved, haunts her house. When Beloved physically returns as a young woman to taunt her guilt-ridden mother, Sethe faces a turning point and is required to address her past and exorcise the ghost.” (2) We can gather some important from the article and we can come to the conclusion that maybe Sethe did not choose the best decision, she is seen through the novel to develop strong feelings towards what she did, the article describes these memories of Sethe as “traumatic” and that Sethe feels “haunted” after the decision to kill Beloved. Sethe's decision to kill Beloved can be compared to many slaves during the time where the novel is placed, they had to choose either to kill their kin. We can see this in the article “ Sethe’s personal story is merely one of many similarly traumatic and horrific stories, and Beloved draws attention to a collective trauma of slavery that requires legitimization.” (3) the article describes Sethe life to many slaves during that time and the traumatizing life that many of the slaves had during slavery.

Theme in Race/Cultural Lens

Beloved by Toni Morrison is a complex novel that explores the issues of race, gender, class, and the history after Slavery. Through the novel, race is seen in various parts of the story. It has a big impact on the characters development and the people surrounding them. Race and Slavery tie in with each other because their own race made them who they are and how they as looked as in this particular time period. During these times, African Americans were looked at differently as all the other different types of races. The whites were always more superior in than them and the African Americans were put to work for them. Through the novel, Morrison conveys the theme of Slavery and how their past comes back to haunt them.

    Sethe did have a reason for killing her own daughter. Many people thought it was the wrong thing to do, but to her she was doing what's best for her daughter. When explaining herself to Paul D 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) . This quote is telling us that the reason she killed her daughter was because she did not want her to go through slavery. She did not want her to go through any of the hardships that Sethe went through like harassment. She was trying to protect her own daughter. Now that beloved is here, the past comes to haunt her and she is reminded of all the experiences that she has had. Reminding her of what she did to her daughter. A huge symbol to reveal this theme of slavery is Beloved herself. She is a symbol because it shows all the cruelty that happened in the past that Sethe does not want to acknowledge.

    In an article that I read about beloved called, “Hush, Little Baby-Ghost: The Postcolonial Gothic and Haunting History in Toni Morrison’s Beloved” by Ruth Van Den Akker, also states that slavery is one of the themes in this novel. A quote from the article is, “As Punter explains in “Arundathi Roy and the House of History”, history and its presence in the present is a “recurrent sense in Gothic fiction (...) the past can never be left behind, (...) it will reappear and exact a necessary price” (2003: 193)”. This quote is saying that Sethe’s past won't be able to be forgotten about. She won't be able to escape it because Beloved is here and it reminds her of the past. All of the experience of Slavery will be in her mind as well and how it affected her as person.

   

How Gothic Themes Relate to Race and Culture in Beloved

How Gothic Themes Relate to Race and Culture in Beloved
By Jeremy Ezrin

Themes In Beloved represent the greater pain and suffering of the
victims of slavery.

Beloved by Toni Morrison is a complex and extremely symbolic novel. The themes of race and culture are extremely prevalent throughout the entirety of the plot, with nearly every action or event having a plausible deeper meaning or representation of the pain and suffering of Sethe and the sixty million of which Morrison references in the dedication. Hush, Little Baby-Ghost: The Postcolonial Gothic and Haunting History in Toni Morrison’s Beloved by Ruth Van Den Akker offers a unique analysis of race and its incorporation into the book. Den Akker focuses on the postcolonial and gothic influences of the novel and how they reveal themes that exemplify the murder and genocide of which is so prevalent. Furthermore the article argues that Morrison uses characters and events to assert aspects of the story that otherwise would have gone unnoticed. These euphemistic representations combined with the overarching themes of race and culture embedded within the deeper gothic and post colonial themes allow Morrison to portray the pain and stolen lives of slavery in a magnitude that stands for sixty million victims.

The influences of race and culture in Beloved’s overall plot cannot go unnoticed. There are multiple instances in which Morrison writes from the first person of the book’s characters, perhaps the most influential of these first person point of view is beloved’s. Beloved’s odd memories and horrific stories of the middle passage fill a gap in the story and reveal the book’s true motif. “I cannot lose her again  my dead man was in the way like the noisy clouds  when he dies on my face I can see hers she is going to smile at me  she is going to” (250). This quote exemplifies the confused and dark feelings that pertain to Beloved, while also alluding to gothic themes that Den Akker repeatedly references. This grotesque imagery exhibits her feelings towards Sethe, showing pain and a need for love and companionship. Furthermore this quote also exhibits the race/gothic theme which is prevalent in order to represent slavery as a whole. The numerous references to “faces” show the magnitude of slavery and how individuals lose their personal identity.

While the Den Akker effectively draws correlations between beloved and gothic theme that express pain and suffering, the themes are more isolated than that. The pain and infanticide referenced throughout the book are not meant to exhibit images of hell, but to show the pain of slavery and Sethe’s remorse towards herself and her actions.

Throughout the novel Morrison draws clear connections between the past and present via constant flashbacks as well as changing the point of view by which the book is narrated. The gothic influence of slavery and Beloved’s initial ghost form highlight the communal pain and suffering slavery has inhibited to slave and former slave families throughout the United States and abroad. While her later physical form highlight the family and content that was ripped away from millions by slavery. This complex theme of the novel is alluded to in numerous instances including the following, “Beloved, she my daughter. She mine. See. She come back to me of her own free will and I don’t have to explain a thing” (236), this quote exemplifies Beloved’s return from the dead and her love of which Sethe has longed for. Furthermore it also clearly shows the gothic themes by which Den Akker references by showing paranormal events such as Beloved’s return and it representation as the pain of slavery.

These examples as they pertain to gothic themes and symbolic representation throughout the novel are tools by which Morrison reveals themes of race and culture. Van Akker makes numerous references to such representations that give greater meaning to the book and the magnitude of its themes, this technique is represented in the following “The dedication of the novel, “Sixty Million and more”, draws attention to the vast amount of (hi)stories that are silenced of which Beloved is merely one”. The fact Morrison would reveal such an important theme in the book’s dedication only places further emphasis on its scope and magnitude. Furthermore Van Akker also argues “the gothic becomes a means to allow a disclaimed history to resurface into the present”. This further exemplifies a common theme throughout the novel of individuals and events representing over arching emotions or actions.

What does Beloved represent?

Text: Beloved by Toni Morrison

Critical Lens: Race and Culture

Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a compelling novel that deals with a racial difference after the time of slavery. The novel deals with a racial and cultural difference between the blacks and whites is relevant throughout the text. One person that can be perceived as the racial and cultural difference from the past is Beloved. Beloved brings back memories to Paul and Sethe from the past and from their time during slavery. Sethe was forgetting about slavery until Beloved showed up. So, Beloved represents the cultural and racial difference from the past because she brings back memories to Paul and Sethe

In the article, “Hush, Little Baby-Ghost: The Postcolonial Gothic and Haunting History in Toni Morrison’s Beloved,” Ruth Van Den Akker writes about the cultural significance of the dead baby Beloved. She writes, “ As Wisker also argues, ‘the unbearable history of slavery is embodied in the presence of [this] baby-ghost’ (2005: 175). Therefore, Beloved is not merely a repetition of the  familiar ghost story, but functions as an appropriation of this genre in foregrounding cultural haunting.” In the novel, the ghost baby known as Beloved has some significance to the past. I think that when she uses the reference of the baby ghost, it represents a cultural haunting from the past because when she came into Sethe and Paul’s life she brought back memories of slavery. Beloved brings back a memory to Sethe about slavery and how she killed Beloved so she didn’t have to go through slavery. Her bringing back memories to Sethe cause racial and cultural tension with her and whites toward the end of the book. Since the ghost baby brings back memories of the past she could represent the culture from the past.

Another point that Ruth Van Den Akker talks about is cultural memory. She writes, “Cultural memory likewise connects past and present: ‘cultural memorization’ is ‘an activity occurring in the present, in which the past is continuously modified and redescribed even as it continues to shape the future’ (Bal, 1999: vii).” When Beloved shows up at 124 she brings memory from the past for Sethe and Paul. There was a lot of cultural memory in the book especially for Sethe. When Beloved comes she brings cultural memory to Sethe. Sethe starts to remember about her time at the slave plantation and about why she killed Beloved. Her remembrance about her time at the plantation was evident in the book with how protective she was when the white man came to pick Denver to work. When Denver was getting picked up to work from a white man, Sethe became all defencive and nearly killed the man with a ice pick.

Beloved can represent a cultural aspect of the past and about the time Sethe had at the plantation. Beloved gives Sethe memories which showed us in the book the relationship and difference of the cultural difference. When Beloved came into Sethe’s life she brought the cultural memory of the plantation.

If you would like to read the article yourself click on this link

https://drive.google.com/a/mysummitps.org/folderview?id=0BwWQODZGx-hZSGU1czQzTk4tN28&usp=drive_web.

Then click on the article that says Deconstructionist_Race_Hush Baby Ghost.

-Cormac Keegan

WHY I CHOSE THIS LENS PROMPT

Specifically in beloved, race culture is a central theme and it will be interesting to view the story through this particular lense. Many aspects of life have unexpected associations with race and culture. I have extensively studied race and culture in many aspects. Specifically my sophomore and junior year I took Holocaust which went in depth in analyzing how race and culture has contributed to crimes like the Holocaust. I think it will be interesting to look at the crime of slavery through this same lense. My personal belief is that many actions have a relation to race and culture. Specifically in relation to how be base opinions and view others. I also looked at the feminist lense books at looks at events through a similar viewpoint. I hoping to understand how race and culture had affected the total plot of the story in a more in depth fashion. The story being about slavery obviously has profound influence from race/culture, but I want to better understand the psychology behind this.

Race and Culture : Beloved

Now at Sweet Home, my niggers is men every one em. Bought em thataway, raised em that-away. Men everyone”.

Reading a text through the Race/Cultural Lens focuses on the cultural backgrounds and race of the characters. This helps the reader have a bigger perspective on the author's attitude towards race.  

The whites during this time were always portrayed as high class, and better than everyone else, especially to the slaves. The slaves in this house at Sweet Home do have it better than other slaves. The different races that are portrayed in this novel is African American. The family live in Ohio  at the beginning of the book. This book was based on the time period after slavery. Meaning that the characters in the book were not currently slaves. The main character, Sethe, escaped from slavery to go to Ohio, when she was 18.  The entire family in the novel are African Americans. Before, Mr and Mrs Garner were the owners of Sweet Home. During a conversation with young men that work with Mr.Garner he tells them, “Now at Sweet Home, my niggers is men every one em. Bought em thataway, raised em that-away. Men everyone”. This quote is saying that everyone that works there is treated like a man because they deserve to be treated like a good person. However, Paul D, who as well as Sethe come back to Ohio, is confused with this reaction because he thinks that everyone treats the slaves wrong and it was suspicious of him saying they deserve to be treated right. After telling all the men this he says, “I wouldn’t have no nigger men round my wife”. It was very suspicious because now he is saying that he does not trust the men around his wife, but he treats them a different way than other owner would treat the slaves. This gives us two different perspectives of the race and cultural lens because it shows that the slaves are treated differently, in a better way because they deserve to treated as good people. They are not treated as slaves but as employees that are capable of handling themselves without an owner treating them disrespectfully, as other owner might of.  However, he does not truly trusts because he does not know what the men are capable of doing. The owners of the Sweet home are portrayed as more high class because they own Sweet Home but also because of their race. The slaves in other places were more lower than anyone else. When the book flashbacks into the times when they were slaves, it shows that they were lower than others.

Why I chose this Lens

My first choice was feminist and Gender lens, I considered this because this book does focus more on a certain woman that went through a lot and was still haunting her through the entire novel. But I would like to explore more of the race and culture lens because the book was made at a time where slavery was happening and how race influenced stereotypes that we see today.