文学导论课程

Beloved and Toni Morrison

College of Foreign Studies

 1
A brief introdution to
Toni Morrison
 To n i M o r r i s o n

Identity backgroud:
A -Born in Ohio, USA
-Grew up in a family of working class
-Joined in Princeton University as a professor in 1989
-A writer with diverse identities of woman, black, and
American

Literary works:
The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula(1973),
Song of Solomon(1977), Beloved(1987)
Toni Morrison Tar Baby (1981)
(1931 - 2019)
 To n i M o r r i s o n

Main themes:
A
love, guilt, history, individual, gender, race, religion

Purpose of writing:
- To reveal the traumatic history of blacks under whites
- To explore the development paths for all blacks
- To expose of unfair fate of black women under the
imperialism and man-oriented society
- To defend the rights of black women to voice
themselves.
Toni Morrison join Princeton
University as a professor.
 2
Main characters
in Beloved
 2.1 The conquered generation

The older generation of black women represented by Baby Suggs in

03
01
Beloved is the conquered generation.

For blacks, there is no hope or expectation in this world.

“The blacks are just used as by whites like checkers to move around and the destination
of their existence is to run off, get rented or be hanged by whites.”
 2.1 The conquered generation

03 Her bodies has long been completely squandered by whites

-She has a total of eight children, and these eight children have six unknown fathers.
-The right to raise children and enjoy maternal love was also deprived and occupied by
whites. (Four children were caught in exchange for property, and another four children
were hunted.)
-In exchange for freedom, Baby Suggs has to rely on the only son Halle to sacrifice all
rest time to work for Sweet Home.
 2.1 The conquered generation

Aphasia （失语症） is the most typical symptom of the conquered generation

03
“talk as little as possible to
avoid getting into trouble”

-“It busted Baby Suggs’s legs, backs, eye, hands, kidneys, womb and tongue.”
-For whites, she screamed that “whitefolks is the worst luck in the wolrd. ”
-For men, she keeps the belief that “a man is nothing but a man. ”

What she feels is not the joy of being a wife and a mother but the sense of being
occupied by fear, pains and despair.
 2.2 The Struggling Generation

For the struggling generation represented by Sethe, consciousness of the

02
self is constantly being awakened in the repressive environment.

Life experience of Sethe ：

-Starting point: From the age of 13, Sethe has been forced to be enslaved in Sweet Home
-In Sweet Home: the whip torture from schoolteacher, milk taken by schoolteacher, loss of right to nurse
children.
-After Escape: schoolteacher and slave catcher insist on snatching her children
-Struggle point: kill the baby in front of schoolteacher
 2.2 The Struggling Generation

Fanon illustrates that blacks are bound by their inferiority

01
complex while whites are bound by their superiority complex.

Limitations ：
-When Sethe decided to marry Halle, she greatly yearns for wedding ceremony like Mrs. Garner, eager to
have priest, cake, and wedding gown in a public way envied and recognized by others,
-When goes social outing with Paul D, Sethe choose to wear the castoff given by a white woman and a
hat to disguise her identity of being a worker for Lady Jones.
-She is willing to spend two pennies for fun made by the white charmer as how whites disdain blacks to
satisfy her sense of the self insulting whites.
 2.3 The New-born Generation

Different from the background of the time when Baby Suggs and Sethe
03
grew up, Denver is the typical representative of the new-born generation

Differences Denver Sethe, Baby Suggs

124 in the black
Growth Environment Sweet Home Of sufferings
community
She has Sethe, Baby
Their parents are killed.
Family Environment Suggs of great mother
Husbands of two disappear.
love.

Identity Free child of parents Slaves of whites

 2.3 The New-born Generation

Significant
03 role in subjectivity construction and trauma healing

Limitations ：
1.Show great reliance on Beloved out of loneliness—lack of self-consciousness
2.Realizes its harm to Sethe after constant torment of Beloved—awakening of self consciousness
3.Takes the initiative to ask the community for help—bridge the gap in the community
4.Helps to drive away Beloved—a process of self identification, dual liberation and trauma healing
 2.3 The New-born Generation

“New” Negative Results

03
Results:
1. Denver initially did not even understand the unspeakable past experienced by the black community.
2. Denver has little contact with the outside world, especially with the black community.

Reasons:
1. Relative closeness of the environment for Denver’s growth.
2.Unwillingness of her mother Sethe and grandmother Baby Suggs to let Denver have any painful
experience of being enslaved like them.
 3
Main plots
of Beloved
 3.1 Rememory of life

In all, Morrison directly depicts what sufferings that whites bring to

A
blacks, and how blacks become the ‘Other’.

① Painful life as slaves in Sweet Home which is a controlled by whites

② Life of Escape from Sweet Home as fugitives.

③ Life of labour as workers for whites

 3.2 Killing Baby

In all, killing baby is the result due to the long-term oppression by whites.
B Such action witnesses the awakening self consciousness of African-
American.

① School teacher and slave catcher insist on snatching back children of Sethe back, which are regarded
as belongings of slave owners back to Sweet Home.
② Sethe cut one of babies’ throat and swung the baby toward the wall planks.
③ Such craze becomes unspeakable memory, bringing great trauma to Sethe both physically and
psychologically. Meanwhile, it also triggers misunderstanding and isolation of black community
④ After that, the spirit of a murdered child haunts 124 continuously. Beloved scared Sethe’s 2 sons away,
tortured Baby Suggs’ mentality to death and made Sethe completely isolated.
 3.3 Return of Beloved

In all, the arrival of Beloved forces Sethe to recall the past, linking the
C
fragmented trauma to the whole.

① 18 years later, Beloved returns to 124 in terms of a beautiful girl.

② Beloved drives away Paul D by seducing him to have sexual relationship at first.

③ Beloved frequently proposes unreasonable requests, which also cuts Denver’s reliance on Sethe.

④ Out of guilty and mother love, Sethe always satisfies Beloved, graudally being trapped into the state of

losing the self.

 3.4 Return of Beloved
Image of the dead daughter
C

 “A FULLY DRESSED woman walked out of the water”

 “Sethe's bladder filled to capacity, more like flooding the boat when Denver was born.”
 “She had new skin, linelessand smooth, including the knuckles of her hands. “
 “Three vertical scratches on her forehead seemed like baby hair”
 “Sethe was licked, tasted, eaten by Beloved’s eyes.
 “She remembered a woman who was hers, andshe remembered being snatched away
from her” (how she was killed by mom)
 3.4 Return of Beloved
Image of the black slave
C

Background: In order to spend less money but make more profit, the black slaves were

carried by ships through the Middle Passage, and many blacks died.

Beloved’s answer to Denver: “Heaps. A lot of people is down there. Some is dead.”

Beloved’s interior monologue: “ I do not eat the men without skin bring us their morning

water to drink we have none at night I cannot see the dead man on my face daylights comes

through the cracks XXXXXX”

 3.4 Return of Beloved
Image of Sethe’s mom
C

Tip: Sethe also lost her mom since she was a child. So sethe grew up in an environment with

little care and love. Obviously, Beloved serves as Sethe’s mom to some extent, at least in the

mental level.

 “she moved like a heavier one or an older one”

 “Beloved's fingers were heavenly. Under them and breathing evenly again, the anguish

rolled down.”
 3.5 Exorcising Beloved

In all, the period of exorcising Beloved is a process to gain consciousness of self

D
and achieve trauma healing for blacks.

① Its existence drives Denver to walk out of 124 and seek help from the black community.

② Thirty black women unites as singing team under the leadership of Ella, successfully praying for

driving Beloved away.

③ All things return to a regular but better state.

 4
Narrative techniques
of Beloved
 4.1 Dislocated time of beloved
The present time line is as follws: When the narration on the present level
proceeds, the stories of the past invade
-In 1873, the last man of Sweet Home——Paul D
into the narration in pieces and fragments
arrives at Sethe’s home and begins to live her. He
randomly in the form of rememory.
drives away baby ghost after arrival.
-Beloved arrives and manages to estrange Paul D
by seducing him.
-Paul D leaves 124.
-Sethe was tortured by Beloved’s greed for love.
-Denver goes to the outside world for help. Any object or action of the present time
-The community exorcises Beloved away.
can evoke their recollections about their
painful past
-Paul D comes back to Sethe.
 4.1 Dislocated time of beloved

Example 1:
When Sethe goes across the field to wash her feet,
“suddenly there was Sweet Home rolling, rolling, rolling out before her eyes, and
although there was not a leaf on that farm that did not make her want to scream, it rolled
itself out before her in shameless beauty.”

Example 2:
After Sethe and Paul D’s first love-making, they lie on the bed and starts their rememory.
The present just switches to the past. Paul D remembers their cooking of potatoes at
Sweet Home with other slaves, Sixo’s romance with his thirty-mile woman. Sethe
remembers Baby Sugg’s marriage, her love experience with Paul D.
 4.2 Zero time focalization

Narrative works, traditionally described as characterized by an omniscient

point of view, are described by modern narratologists, as having a zero
focalization. （零聚焦）

Example:
When the narrator describes the trembling of Paul D,
“Still no one else knew it, because it began inside. A flutter of a kind, in the
chest, then the shoulderblades”

Since “no one knew”, the description must be narrated by an omniscient

narrator. So we could witness the degradation and dehumanization process of
Paul D under slavery.
 4.2 Zero time focalization

Another typical
example ：
When Paul D and other forty-five slaves escape in the flood, they meet a camp of
sick Cherokee. And the omniscient narrator tell the brief history of Cherokee.

“Dcimated but stubborn, they were among those who chose a fugitive life rather
than Oklahoma. The illness that swept them now xxxx destroyed another quarter of
their already shattered number”

The narrator not only shows us the tragic history of African-American slaves but
also the native american’s brief history of oppression. It widens the theme of novel.
 4.3 External focalization
External focalization （外聚焦） denotes a focalization that is limited to
what the observer could actually have observed from the outside. In a
narrative with external focalization, the character performs in front of us
without ever being allowed to know his thoughts.
Example:
After Paul D chases away the ghost that haunts the house and goes to the
To invite
bedroom with Sethe, narrator the
describes reader
Denver’s to in detail.
actions
participate in the creation of the novel
“Denver wandered through the silence to the stove. She ashed over the fire
and pulled the pan ofo biscuits from the oven. She took out a jar, and, looking
around for a plate, found half of one by the door.XXXXX She removed it all
and coaxed the jelly onto one half of the half a plate. She took a biscuit and
pulled off its black top.” (20s for reading)
 4.4 Internal focalization
A narration with an internal focalization is the “story telling from the
perspective of a point that is internal to the story”.
Classfication of internal focalization:

Fixed internal focalization (everything that the readers learn comes from a
fixed character)

Variable internal focalization (narration is completed by different perspectives

of different people)

Multiple internal focalization (different even contrasting perspectives into the

same event)
 4.4 Internal focalization
Fixed internal focalization
C

Example:
When Paul D comes to 124 to live her, Sethe’s life starts to own color and vitality, which is
revealed by a large description from the eyes of Sethe.
“Kneeling in the keeping room where she usually went to talk—think it was clear why Baby
Suggs was so starved for color. There wasn’t any expect for two orange squares in a quilt
that made the absence shout.XXXXXXXXX—the full range of the dark and the muted that
thrift and modesty allowed.”
 4.4 Internal focalization
Variable internal focalization
C

For example, the climate of novel—process of exorcising Beloved

Beloved——misunderstanding towards mother love and tortures Sethe
Sethe——continuously satisfies the unreasonable needs of Beloved and sacrifices herself
Morrison give every character opportunity to narrate in of exorcising Beloved.
Denver——bravely walks out of 124 and seek help from the community
They are together to form the climax. No one of them could be deleted.
Ella—leads thirty women to rescue Sethe
Thirty women—pray together and play the significant role in exorcising Beloved.
 4.4 Internal focalization
Multiple internal focalization
C

For example, Narration of Scars on Sethe’s back from perspectives

To Paul D, “....he saw the sculpture her back had become, like the decorative work of an
ironsmith too passionate for display..”
To Amy Denver, the escaped white indentured servant
Such
“It’s a tree, Lu. multiple internal
A chokecherry focalization
tree. See, shows
here’s the the cruelty
trunk—its red andandsplit
the wide open, full
of sap, and thisinhumanity of the slavery
here’s the parting for theand deepens the theme
branches.XXXX of thecherry
Tiny little novel.blossoms, just
as white. Your back got a whole tree on it. In bloom.”
To Baby Suggs, they are “Roses of blood blossomed in the blanket covering Sethe’s
shoulders...”
 4.5 Interior monologue

Morrison has said “It’s important to me that the interior life of each of those
characters be one that you could trust, one that felt like it was a real interior
life, and also be distinct one from the other.”

Robert Humphrey defined it, “interior monologue is, then the technique used
in fiction for representing the psychic content and processes of character,
partly or entirely unuttered.”

When used, it presents tense verbs and firs-person pronoun are adopted to
present the person’s most inner world.
 4.5 Interior monologue
Sethe’s section
C

“Beloved, she my daughter, She mine”.

“She come back to me of her own free will and I don’t have to explain a thing... But my
love is tough and she back now”
“I couldn’t lay down with you then. No matter how much I wanted to. I couldn’t lay down
nowhere in peace, back then. Now I can. I can sleep like the drowned, have mercy. She
come back to me, my daughter, and she is mine.”
deep mother love towards Beloved but also mixed with tragic memories
 4.5 Interior monologue
Denver’s section
C

Love for Beloved “And I do. Love her. I do. She played with me and always came to be

with me whenever I needed her. She’s mine. Beloved. She’s mine”.

Dream of father “An angel man and can do a lot for me.”

Fear of mother “She killed one her own daughters”.

endless loneliness and great desire for love and company

 4.5 Interior monologue
Beloved’s section
C

Beloved’s part of interior monologue is greatly attractive since it contains no punctuation.

“I see the face I lost Sethe's is the face that left me Sethe sees me see her and I see the

smile her smiling face is the place for me it is the face I lost she is my face smiling at me

doing it at last a hot thing now we can join a hot thing”

both the individual thinking and the collective pain

 4.5 Interior monologue
Mixed interior monologue
C

“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”

The past, the present and the future, the live and the dead, You and I, are all one and
same. By such way, the unspeakable pains in the past could be transcended.
 5
Main themes
of Bloved
 5 . 1 Tr a u m a

“NotA a house in the country ain’t packed to its rafters with

some dead Negro’s grief”

① Mental and physical pains and sufferings of thousands of blacks are vividly shown in the

text.

② It also depicts the serious psychological problems of blacks after abolishing slavery.
 5 . 1 Tr a u m a
The Family Scar: Intergenerational Discipline from the Whites
C

 As what we have seen in Beloved, each black family of different generations suffers
from slavery and whites at different level.
 Nobody could avoid it in Beloved no matter for Baby Suggs, Sethe and Halle or Denver.

The first step for Beloved is to bravely face tauma and reveal what they are.
 5 . 1 Tr a u m a
The Collective Pain: Skin Color and Body
C

 White people dominate the discourse system

 The images of black slaves, such as Paul D, Halle, and Sixo, all show a barbaric and
uncultured state.

 African-Americans with black skin becomes a victim of gaining white aesthetic values
—“black is ugly”
 Black: ugliness, inferiority, laziness, and primitiveness
White: privilege, authority, leadership, beauty, bravery, and mainstream
 5 . 1 Tr a u m a
The Collective Pain: Skin Color and Body
C

 In Beloved, all blacks are faced with nonstop productive labor under the control of whites.
“Only Halle, who has been hired away for years know what lies outside Sweet Home.”
 In the panoramic Sweet Home, blacks are subjected to physical violence.
 The physical wounds are vividly recording and telling the colonists’ atrocities.
-The scar on Sethe’s back turns like a chokecherry tree after schoolteacher’s whip.
-Sethe’s mom has a circle and a cross burnt right in the skin by whites.
-Paul D gets an iron bit in his mouth in Sweet Home.
 5 . 1 Tr a u m a
The Individual Oppression: Deformed Mother Love
C

 For Sethe as the other, mother serves as only a biological name for a long time.
 Limited by the environment of the times, the maternal love that Sethe conveyed has been
gradually distorted.
The In Sweet
deformed mother loveHome, as the other defined by
-Seeing the death of mom by whites
schoolteacher, Sethe is subjected to
-Knowing her mom throwing away other inhuman torture.
babies “I am full God damn it of two boys with
psychological shadow great
mossydesire
teeth,to getsucking
one rid of on my breast the
-Growing without the
incare
the of mom even
childhoodd slavery me down, their book-
other holding
drinking milk from other blackdistorted reading teacher watching and writing it
up”
 5 . 1 Tr a u m a

The climax of Sethe’s mother love is the action of the killing baby.
C

 Sethe loses understanding of other blacks in the community.

Nobody comes to 124 after that event because same as the whites, blacks in the
community thought that Sethe was mad.

 The return of Beloved has tortured Sethe as a baby’s venom for a long time.
Due to guilt for killing the daughter, Sethe’s love for her Beloved has also completely
entered into a doting state.
 5.2 Digestion of gender antagonism

① Black woman of (traditional ) masculinity

A
Morrison rewrites the imagine of black woman and makes them as the core of family and
social revolution.
② Man of weakened masculinity
When Sethe was taken by schoolteacher, her husband Halle silently stayed in loft and
watched without stopping them. (frailty and timidness)
Under torture of beloved, her two sons also fled. (ruthlessness)
Due to the temptation of 124, Paul D has sexual intercourse with beloved. (desire)
Paul D frequently expresses doubts over Sethe and Denver (conservatism)
 5.2 Digestion of gender antagonism

There is no absolute feature for man or woman as masculinity also could be speciality of woman.
She transcends the antagonism and shows us that only genders mutually support, understand and
live with each other, can people own a better future.
 6
Figure of speech
in Beloved
 6 figure of speech
Symbolism
C

Example:
Trees for Sethe:
-“Boys hanging from the most beautiful sycamores in the world. It shamed her.” and “the
sycamores beat out the children every time and she could not five her memory for that.”
- When Paul D first appears in 124, “Sethe looked down at her feet and saw again the
sycamores.”
-There’s a maze of scars on Sethe’s back, referred to by Amy as a “chokecherry tree.”

Trees are marks of sufferings and pains that Sethe carries. They are her past, and they are
the prejudice of white men against her.
 6 figure of speech
Oxymoron
C

Example:
Description of engraver’s young son “the anger in his face so old; the appetite in it quite new”
Painful rememory of Sethe “It rolled itself out before her in shameless beauty.” and “Boys
hanging from the most beautiful sycamores in the world.”
Confused appearance of Sethe “He let’s me look good as I feel bad”.

Its novelty gives the reader fresh psychological experience and leave a deep impression on
the reader.
 6 figure of speech
Transferred Epithet
C

Example:
-Together they waged a perfunctory battle against the outrageous battle of that place.
-“welcoming cool” “brotherly flirtation”

Through the usage of Transferred Epithet, the author could accurately convey her idea to the
idea, and the reader could grasp unique and artistic fantasy of the author.
 6 figure of speech
Alliteration, assonance and rhyme
C
Example:
Stanza 1 Stanza 2 Stanza 3
Whenthe busy day is done Through the muck and mist and glaam Layeth she her hands upon
And my weary little one To our quiet cozy home, My dear weary little one,
Rocketh gently to and fro; Where to singing sweet and low And those white handsoverspread
When the night windssoftly blow, Rocks a cradle to and fro. Like a veil the curly head,
And the crickets in the glen Where the clock's dull monotone Seem to fondle and caress
Chirp and chirp and chirp again; Telleth of the day that's done, Every little silken tress.
Where upon the haunted green Wherethe moonbeams hover o'er Then she smooths the eyelids down
Fairies dance around their queen, Playthings sleeping on the floor, Over those two eyes of brown
Then from yonder misty skies Where my weary wee one lies In such soothing tender wise
Cometh Lady Button Eyes. Cometh Lady Button Eyes Cometh Lady Button Eyes
 6 figure of speech
Alliteration, assonance and rhyme
C

Alliteration: singing sweet, weary wee, her hands, she smooths, such soothing

Assonance: cozy home, dear weary

Rhyme: aa bb cc dd ee

Such phonetic figure of speech techniques add more musicality to the language and help us to
understand ones of main themes of Beloved—mother love and culture.
Thank you!