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Ethics of Narrative in Toni Morrisons Novels

A Comparison of Sethe and Eva Wenqing Cheng
In her description of the relationship between reading and writing, Toni Morrison writes in Playing in the Dark,
The imagination that produces work which bears and invites rereadings, which motions to future readings as well as contemporary ones, implies a shareable world and an endlessly flexible language. Readers and writers both struggle to interpret and perform within a common language shareable imaginative world. And although upon that struggle the positioning of the reader has justifiable claims, the authors presenceher or his intentions, blindness, and sightis part of the imaginative activity.1

She recognizes both authors and readers roles in the creation of literary work.

The

interpretation of her fiction becomes the communal work by the reader and the author. Speaking of the authors intentions, Morrison suggests deep sociopolitical engagement in the work that manifests human experiences of cultural and political issues of their time. She notes that writers not only transform their social grounding The authors special into aspects of language, but also are aware of their doing this. opinions about values and moral principles to readers.

techniques of narrating events and happenings in novels unavoidably convey certain The readers interpretation and evaluation of the novel, the characters and other elements that constitute a novel are to be influenced to a certain degree by the values expressed in the narrative. And the authors purposes and intentions inscribed in the storytelling and narrative suggest ethical situation. The authors choices of narrative techniques and forms, and the integration of folkloric elements are of great ethical significance. In recent years, many critics have explored the relation between ethics and the creation and reception of literary works. J. Hillis Miller argues that ethics and narration cannot be separate, though their relation is neither symmetrical nor

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harmonious (Miller 2).

In his Narrative Ethics, Adam Newton demonstrates a close In Newtons opinion, His

relation of ethics to literary narrative and interpretation.

narrative situations frame relations of provocation, call and response that bind narrator and listener, author and character, or reader and text (Newton 13). exploration of ethical structure in narrative explains that the ethics of narrative exists in the process of narrative transmission from the author to the narrator, to the narrated and to the reader, and that the ethics of narrative is associated with the storytelling, reading and interpreting. Newtons notion has been widely employed and discussed James in many essays and articles including those on Toni Morrisons fiction.

Phelan, in his 1998 article Sethes Choice: Beloved and the Ethics of Reading in Style, shares Newtons approaches to root narrative ethics in narrative itself, but he chooses to pay more attention to the readers cognitive understanding, emotional response, and ethical positioning. I endorse his analysis of reading Sethes choice, The authors nevertheless I perceive that his emphasis on the authors ethical guidance in the narrative to their audience endows the author with too much power.2 choices of narrative techniques, which express his or her ethical stands implicitly or explicitly, are not only the guidance, but the authors suggestion of his or her ethical judgment to the implied audience also calls for their response. In Morrisons fiction, the authors employment of narrative strategies not only guides the implied audience to her own narrative judgment, but through communicating with the audience, Morrison asks for their judgment. In addition, the narrative technique in her fiction is The use of the storytelling inseparable from the African American oral tradition.

tradition, such as call-and-response, and multiple points of view endows Morrisons work with a dialogic relation between the author and the audience. The aim of this essay is to examine the link between ethical implication and the narrative forms and strategies in several important passages and scenes in Morrisons novels. Gatess notion of African American writing is illuminating in considering the oral tradition in Morrisons work. He argues that African American writing is double-voiced and self-consciously intertextual in its relation to both standard English and vernacular discourse.3 The permeation of the black oral traditions in the narrative is value-laden and influences the readers interpretation. A well-discussed example is the authors revision of the tar baby tale, through which Morrison invites readers

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imagination in the improvisation of the story.

Trudier Harriss enunciation is very This essay

valuable here, in which she writes, As is true with all her works, she makes it impossible to delineate clearly agents of good and evil (Harris 126). focuses on the ethics of narrative with the employment of storytelling tradition. What does the author convey in using the multiple points of view in recounting a story? What stand shall a reader take when the author encourages audience participation? These inquiries entail very significant ethical judgments on the characters, events, and even the authors attitudes. Both Sethe and Eva are confronted with the hardship of life in bringing up their children, and both choose to kill them for mother love. child. I concentrate on the narrative Morrison however This essay will strategies that depict the complicated ethical situation of a mother taking the life of her Killing a child is certainly against morals in our society. creates a mothers image that cannot be easily condemned as evil.

examine comparatively how the author depicts the characters in the process of storytelling, and how the difficult ethical situation is described in order to convey complete and objective information to the reader. To answer these questions, the And I also briefly actual study of the narrative representation will be required.

discuss readers interpretation of the complicated situation, and their ethical judgment of the characters, and events in the process of author audience communication. Bakhtins theory of dialogic relation between the speaker and the listener proves that the audience creates the meaning of literary work together with the author.4

Sethes Infanticide for Protection

Storytelling tradition plays a very important part in narrating Sethes killing of her daughter. At the heart of the novel is the story which reveals the truth of Sethes infanticide, a story in which the characters and readers keep asking, what really happened. Created from pieces of memories and in multiple perspectives, the story is a process of improvisation, which depends on the reciprocal activities between the speaker and the listener. The bits and pieces of the story are related each time unfinished, without disclosing the shocking end. event and the characters. The reader is given enough time to use his or her imagination to participate into the creation of the story and evaluate the

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To make this point clear, I examine two prime aspects: first the relationship of Sethes infanticide to other parts of the novel, then the multiple points of view in the telling of Sethes story. The event of Schoolteacher and his students taking Sethes This story, similar to the narrative in The narrative defines the crucial milk is regarded as the cause of her infanticide. brief mention in her conversation with Paul D.

the whole novel, is revealed gradually from the first chapter, in which Sethe makes a impact of this experience upon Sethe by her repetition of the single sentence, and they took my milk, and by using a long passage to reveal her feelings and consciousness in interior monologue.
I am full God damn it of two boys with mossy teeth, one sucking on my breast the other holding me down, their book-reading teacher watching and writing it up. (70)

The narrative moves from a third-person narrative to the first that provides a reliable access to the characters innermost feelings. The passage reveals the damage that Morrisons representation slavery has done to Sethes psyche, the memory of which she refuses to recall, but which keeps its presence no matter how hard she tries to. of slavery, the equating of a human being with an animal or with a private possession, gives hints of ethical choices proceeding the dynamite disclosing of the protagonists resolution. Sethes infanticide is narrated in four perspectives, 5 Stamp Paid, Baby Suggs and Schoolteachers versions preceding Sethes telling of her own story. The narrative reaches to Sethes own version of the story by using African American storytelling techniques, that is, the story is revealed in unfinished and incomplete memories and information through different perspectives. During the process of narrating, the narrator evades any direct evaluation on each perspective. Compared with other parts of the novel, the narrative of Schoolteachers ethical perspective occupies quite a long passage. Before their eyes, Schoolteacher and slave catchers see:
Inside, two boys bled in the sawdust and dirt at the feet of a nigger woman holding a blood soaked child to her chest with one hand and an infant by the heels in the other. (149)

So Schoolteacher has nothing there to claim, and his perception of Sethes killing is

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based on his racist values.

He regards Sethe as a creature who has gone wild due to

the mishandling of the nephew whod overbeat her and made her cut and run (149). Both Stamp Paids and Baby Suggss stories recall the exact scene and the reaction after the horrible event. mouth. Stamp Paid attempts to disclose the whole story to Paul D, but the latter refuses to accept the truth by repeating insistently: But this aint her Thus Stamp Paids story is unfinished with the most terrible part left, Not only the narrator withdraws from providing snatching up her children like a hawk on the wing; how her face beaked; how her hands work like claws. . . (157). ambivalent about his memory, any ethical judgment in this complex situation, but Stamp Paid also becomes wondering if it had happened at all, eighteen years ago, that while he and Baby Suggs were looking the wrong way, a pretty little slave girl has recognized a hat, and split to the woodshed to kill her children (158). At the end of the first section, the narrative finally moves from these various versions of Sethes story to her own recollection of the past. forget. Paul D forces Sethe to tell him the truth, and to face her unspeakable memories that she can neither escape from nor But spinning around the room, Sethe circles around the subject, without Her telling of bringing up the children, and of their arrival at getting to the point.

Baby Suggss house, continues and finally is interrupted by the narrators analysis of her mind, Sethe knew that the circle she was making around the room, the subject would remain one. This direct analysis of the characters thought, which Axel Nissen discusses in his essay using the term psychonarration,6 shifts back to Sethes memories eighteen years ago.
Simple: she was squatting in the garden and when she saw them coming and recognized schoolteachers hat, she heard wings. . . And if she thought anything, it was No. No. Nono. Nonono. Simple. She just flew. Collected every bit of life she has made, all parts of her that were precious and fine and beautiful, and carried, pushed, dragged them through the veil, out, away, over there where no one could hurt them. (163)

This representation of Sethes mind and thoughts parallels other versions of the story: those perspectives focalized by other characters in the novel in a progression, from other persons viewpoints into her innermost consciousness. Thus the employment

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of improvisation and repetition unsettles the narrative, but at the same time allows each character to have their own perspectives and reliability. and Stamp Paids contradictory story. the readers. The readers are confronted with Sethes emotional life after the cognition of Schoolteachers racist discourse, The complex ethical judgment then, is left to Schoolteachers comparison of Sethe to a creature is certainly

unabashed, but Stamp Paids perception of her as a hawk is quite acceptable, for he witnesses the horror of the murdering and he also shares the same hatred for the evilness of slavery. brief remarks. (152). Although Baby Suggss perspective of the horrific event is not clearly expressed in the novel, she manifests her complex feelings in her actions and After witnessing Sethes killing of her child, she expresses her understanding of Sethes motherhood in saying: Its time to nurse your youngest But she shouts at and fights with Sethe when she tries to feed the baby with Sethes repetition of the simple word no and her insistence of Her her bloody nipple.

the phrase, Schoolteacher aint got them, suggest different interpretation.

version is not only a justification for herself, but also it conveys some new aspects of the African American experience that we have never discovered in other literary works. Sethes murdering is evil, but what is our judgment of the slavery from which a mother tries to protect her children by even killing them? protagonist. The author exposes the evilness of slavery in the process of narrating the complex ethical decision of the

Evas Killing for Salvation

In Toni Morrisons fiction, Eva is another mothers image who has killed her child. Evas horrible violence is narrated in a comparatively direct way. complicated ethical situation to the implied reader. violence is displayed startlingly to the audience. most Morrisons novels, the narrators. characters consciousness. In Beloved, multiple perspectives are employed to disclose the truth in the past and to convey the In Sula, however, the scene of The narrative voice is, typically in

The frequent change of perspectives assures

an objective narration of the situation and is to acknowledge the validity of the The actual scene is related with the beginning sentence: The So late one night in 1921, Eva got up from her bed and put on her clothes (45).

narrative recounts the process after Eva leaves her room and manages herself to

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Plums room downstairs.

Very similar to the storytelling technique, the narrator In the

allows the character to provide information, or the description of the situation. paragraph that follows, the narrative changes to Evas perspective:
Back and forth she rocked him, her eyes wandering around his room. corner was a half-eaten store-bought cherry pie. empty pop bottles peeped from under the dresser. glass of strawberry crush and a Liberty magazine. (46)

There in the

Balled-up candy wrappers and On the floor by her foot was a

No commentary by the author is involved in this description of Plums life condition. Evas perspective, however, informs the audience of a war-wasted Plums image and her complex feelings. The narrative continues without actual conversation between the mother and the son, except Plums occasional drowsy mumbling and Evas simple murmuring, Im going, Plum. Evas violent actions, the bathing of her son in kerosene, and the burning are recounted from Plums focalization. the mother murdering her own child:
He felt twilight. Now there seemed to be some kind of wet light traveling over his legs and stomach with a deeply attractive smell. (47)

And this

change of perspectives produces some folkloristic and ritualistic effects on the event of

Setting her son afire, Eva leaves the room and the narrative voice suggests the authors attitude through the description of her actions: Quickly, as the whoosh of flames engulfed him, she shut the door and made her slow and painful journey back to the top of the house (48). Those words like quickly and slow and painful imply While in Beloved, Sethes story is The words, slow and Evas contradictory feelings on killing her child.

unspeakable; Eva is unable to see the horror created by herself. matter how painful it is.

painful may also suggest that she believes in the moral correctness of her behavior no Evas legendary life is narrated previous to Plums death. Morrisons fiction. The stories told

about the loss of her leg exemplify the employment of oral tradition techniques in Somebody said Eva stuck it under a train and made them pay Trudier off. Another said she sold it to a hospital for $10,000at which Mr. Reed opened his eyes and asked, Nigger Gal legs goin for $10,000 a piece?c (31).

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Harris analysis is illuminating, for she points out Morrisons structural incorporation of folklore elements in saying: Told for true, these stories take the shape of memories, a first stage of legend formation in that the details of narrative have not yet been fully fleshed out (and frequently the teller of the tale can claim to have been an eyewitness of the occurrence) (Harris 68). Paradise. Similar narrative forms can also be found in Without unraveling After the raid on the convent, the people in Ruby, especially those

involved in the violence create various stories to cover the truth.

the facts to the whole community, the narrative emphasizes the changes to the bright side in Ruby caused by the raid. The narrative continues with no rational explanation of the disappearance of the leg, but instead convinces the audience that Eva sacrifices the leg for the money to save her children. Two other long sections in succession serve to describe Evas mind after her husband left. Axel Nissen discusses both sections in his essay, They are both Psychonarrationthe analysis of a characters thoughts taken on I share his notion of psychonarration in psychonarration.

directly by the author (Nissen 268).

interpreting the narrative that depicts the inside views of the character. But he further discusses that the approach to the characters mind can cause either sympathy or judgment, depending on the narrators tone (Nissen 263). much stress on the effect of psychonarration. His analysis puts too The interpretation of the authors

attitudes on Eva involves two important aspects, Morrisons insistence on the interaction between the author and the audience, and the process of characterization. After BoyBoys brief visit, the narrative employs the call-and-response to ask the audience to feel the experience:
Knowing that she would hate him long and well filled her with pleasant anticipation, like when you know you are going to fall in love with someone and you wait for the happy signs. (36)

The change of the third-person narrative into the second directly asks the reader to enter the characters consciousness. sovereign of this enormous house. And the characterization of Eva is a process Eva starts as a good mother in saving the from the abandoned wife and mother who survives enormous obstacles to creator and constipated Plum, and this image gradually changes after BoyBoys brief visit.

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Being the highest power in the house, Eva manipulates the life of the people living there. By giving the three orphans the same name Dewey, and offering advice to the newly-weds, Eva recognizes no authority, no morality except herself (Harris 74).7 So the narrative in the two sections does not simply cause sympathy; rather, the psychonarration there forces the readers participation to the complicated ethical situation. The readers can interpret the text without giving up their own stance. Evas family and the people in Bottom have various judgments on her behavior. Two years later, in their conversation, Hannah questions Plums death in a presumption of Evas lacking in motherly love. war-wasted, drug addict condition. her reason and motivation sadly:
I done everything I could to make him leave me and go on and live and be a man but he wouldnt and I had to keep him out so I just thought of a way he could die like a man not all scrunched up inside my womb, but like a man. (72)

Eva expresses her self-justification

in two aspects: the hardship of life being an abandoned wife and mother, and Plums Direct conversation is used here in addition to the Eva explains narrative representation of the characters thoughts by psychonarration.

Sulas accusation is the most direct confrontation Eva has ever encountered. The one watched you burn Plum (93). Eva in the novel.

She

refutes Evas condemnation of watching her mothers death by saying: which God? And this is the only ethical judgment against Sula blames Eva Very few references have been made to the communitys views, Her comment, Oh,

except a brief mention in the conversation between Nel and Sula. for Plums death, but Nel shows neither astonishment nor panic. viewpoints.

I heard that years ago. But nobody put no stock in it, represents most of the peoples Several reasons may explain the peoples unconcerned attitude: Eva as the sovereign in managing her house and other peoples business in Bottom, Plums condition of being a drug abuser, and then fire as an African American traditional symbol of purification. On the folkloristic tradition of fire, Trudier Harris gives According to Harris, fire is an ancient ceremony But she instructive analysis in her essay.

for eliminating evil or the diseased from the midst of society (Harris 80). memory vivid (Harris 80).

also notes that Evas burning of Plum backfires because Plums death only makes The evidence of this can be found in the last part of the

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fiction when Nel visits Eva at the old peoples home twenty years later. things (169). Plums death.

Eva tells

Nel: Its awful cold in the water. Fire is warm, and Plum. Sweet Plum. He tells me These seemingly insane remarks reveal Evas being haunted by Morrisons incorporation of folkloristic elements into her narrative

challenges the audiences perception of death. Morrisons employment of storytelling tradition entails a dialogic author, character and audience relation. The change of different perspectives in recounting a The author admits the story represents the evident polyphonic nature of her fiction. assurance and commentary on their viewpoints. judgment control the narrative.

validity of the perception and consciousness of each character, without any authorial So in Morrisons fiction, the narrator refrains from taking any characters stance or letting any characters ethical In the narration of a story, each character participates with different bits of the same story, and thus the cognition of the story, or the personality of the character is achieved in the process of improvisation in completing the whole story. In this process, the call-and-response structure of narrative also invites the audiences participation in experiencing and creating. The multiple Among versions of Sethes infanticide exemplify evidently the polyphonic nature. racist view.

them, Schoolteachers version is certainly to be rejected because of his shameless Stamp Paid and Baby Suggs, being the fellow African Americans and Thus if Sethes self justification of killing for protection, suggests And if the narrative of Eva being an abandoned The complex ethical situation should also take Through these structural devices, having suffered the same evilness of slavery, express their complex perspectives on Sethes violence. a mothers instinctive behavior and motherly love, Stamp Paids narrative conveys the violent side of Sethes behavior. formation of Evas personality. wife suggests sympathy for the character, it is also associated with the process of the Hannah and Sulas perspectives into consideration. standards of morality in society.

Morrison challenges our tendency to appraise events and characters according to We are unable to fix our stance in her fiction, and Morrisons fiction exemplifies any judgment we have made seems to be too partial.

the dialogic interaction between the reader and the author. And the narrative conveys the authors ethical attitudes, which invites the reader to respond and to participate into the creation of the novel. The readers ethical perception and judgment thus

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create the ethical meaning of the text together with the author. Bakhtins Discourse in the Novel.

This relation, which

binds the author, character and the reader together, can find its theoretical evidence in His theory of the dialogic relation between the The speaker and listener stresses the readers part in the meaning of literary texts.

speaker seeks to orient his discourse with its own determining horizon within the alien horizon of the understander and enters into dialogic relations with moments of the horizon.8 novels. By incorporating storytelling devices in her work, Morrison invites us into a communicative relationship between the author and the audience. author-audience relation. Her novels exemplify the connection between narrative and ethical experience, and the dialogic Moreover the storytelling techniques cannot be separated from its ideological implications in delivering memories and experiences of the past. And Morrison challenges our beliefs of morality by introducing the African American life experiences. Her ethical treatment of the complex situation in Beloved and Sula, Avoiding judgment on the characters difficult resolutions, Her literary treatment of the mothers difficult decision inspires us deepens our understanding of the racism which has not been so vividly described in any history book. of their children. Morrison actually condemns slavery and racism, which lead to the mothers murdering to reconsider the moral issues in our social life. Bakhtins enunciation of the speakers orientation towards the listener(understander) sheds light on the employment of oral traditions in Morrisons

Notes
1 See page xiv in the preface to Playing in the Dark (London: Picador, 1992). Toni Morrison discusses racial consciousness in writers literary imagination and readers interpretation. 2 By saying that James Phelan lays too much stress on writers guidance to the implied reader, I do not mean Phelan has ignored the multileveled communication between the author and the reader. The incorporation of oral tradition necessitates readers participation, and I consider the dialogic relation between the author and reader in the creation of the meaning of the text to be more appropriate for Morrisons text. 3 For the discussion of double-voiced discourse, see Gates 131.

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4 5

For the definition of dialogic relation, see Bakhtin 32-44. Maggie Sale suggests four perspectives in analyzing the narrative of Sethes infanticide. But James Phelan presents three tellings of the story including Schoolteachers, Stamp Paids and Sethes, see Sale 323.

Axel Nissen employs Gerard Genettes and Dorrit Cohns notions of psychonarration in his essay to discuss the narrative of the characters mind.

In her discussion of Plums death, Trudier Harris notes that Eva considers Plums misuse of life to be sufficient for her to take it, see Harris 74-75.

David Shepherd compares Bakhtins theories to Wolfgang Isers ideas, and describes the notion of active understanding as enabling the dialogic encounter of historically determined utterances, each of which not only takes what has already been said about its object, but is also always oriented towards and shaped by an anticipated response, see Shepherd 92.

Works Cited
Bakhtin, M. M. Discourse In the Novel. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1998. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Harris, Trudier. Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison. Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1991. Miller, J. Hillis. The Ethics of Reading, Kant, de Man, Trollope, Eliot, James, Benjamin. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987. Morrison, Toni. Sula. New York: Knopf, 1974. ___. ___. Beloved. New York: Knopf, 1987. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992. ___. Paradise. New York: Knopf, 1998.

Newton, Adam Zachary. Narrative Ethics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995. Nissen, Axel. Form Matters: Toni Morrisons Sula and the Ethics of Narrative. Contemporary Literature (Summer 1999): 263-285. Phelan, James. Sethes Choice: Beloved and the Ethics of Reading. Style (1998): 318-333.

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Sale, Maggie. Call and Response as Critical Method: African American Oral Tradition and Beloved. Critical Esssays on Beloved. 1998. Shepherd, David, Bakhtin and the Reader. Hirschkop and David Shepherd. Bakhtin and Cultural Theory. Ed. Ken Ed. Barbara H. Solomon. New York: G. K. Hall,

Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993.