Abstract
Toni Morrison dedicated her fifth novel Beloved to the sixty million Africans who some historians believed died during the middle passage to North and South America and the Caribbean. In Beloved, Sethe’s daughter returns from the grave after twenty years, seeking revenge for her death. Through the use of flashbacks, fragmented narration, and myth, Morrison details the events that led to the crime. Beloved marks the height of Morrison’s achievement, for it is a narrative that resists closure in numerous ways. Morrison’s contrapuntal structure dominates the novel and appears as a device that mediates speech and narrative, the visual and the cognitive, and time and space.
Narrative Structure and Multiple Voices
The events are not explained in a linear method but through several voices. Among them the major narrative voices are Sethe, Denver, Beloved and Paul D. Beloved is based on the true story of Margaret Garner, an escaped slave who killed her daughter in a desperate bid to save her from the misery and indignity of slavery.
The Story
Sethe, the protagonist, was born in South and sold to the Garners who owned Sweet Home. After the death of Mr. Garner, the sadistic Schoolteacher’s oppressive presence makes life unbearable. Rather than surrender her children to a life of dehumanised slavery, Sethe kills her older daughter. Paul D arrives years later, and the ghost of Beloved returns in physical form. The novel ends with Paul D’s words: “You your best thing, Sethe.”
Mediation and Oral Tradition
Morrison incorporates elements of myth, legend, passion, obsession, superstition, religion, and the supernatural. Her stories are gripping, emotional and often based on the oral traditions of the Black American folk narratives. The contrapuntal interplay sustains the text and rescues it from formlessness.
Works Cited
- Beaulieu, Elizabeth Ann. The Toni Morrison Encyclopedia. Westport: Greenwood P, 2003.
- Bjork, Patrick Bryce. The Novels of Toni Morrison. New York: Peterlang, 1992.
- Bloom, Harold (ed.), Modern Critical Views: Toni Morrison. New York: Chelsea House, 1990.
- Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Knopf, 1987.
- David, Ron. Toni Morrison explained: a reader’s road map to the novels. New York: Random House, 2000.
- Wisker, Gina. Toni Morrison: A Beginner’s Guide. Hodder & Stoughton: London, 2002.