Beloved - a book review

In an effort to read great American literature our book club chose Toni Morrison‘s Pulizer Prize winning novel, Beloved.  Morrison also received the Nobel Prize in literature, and Beloved was named the top novel of the past 50 years by a respectable American literary society.

This was a hard book in many ways: the prose variation, non-sequential timelines, imagery, and the assault on all things we understand as good.  We began our discussion first around the tricky flow of the plot line and changes in writing style as thoughts emerged from different characters’ perspectives.  Jeff got through the book through reading and on tape, and Rick watched the film, which helped fill in many of the blanks. Beloved should be read more than once to appreciate the depth and complexity of such great literature.  There’s a lot there.

While the book opens in 1873 at 124 Bluestone Rd., Cincinnati, the main story begins in the mid-1850s at the plantation known as Sweet Home. The juxtaposition of the plantations’ patriarchs, Garner first, then the Schoolteacher, represents good versus evil along the broad spectrum of human behavior. Morrison expertly inserts several other good white people, including, of course the Bodwin’s who provide our protagonist Sethe with a home, the house at 124 Blackstone. (Note the missing '3' in that sequence).   And while the itinerant Amy emerges to assist with Sethe‘s birthing Denver, she too is dismissed as white trash, just another person low on the social hierarchy of late 19th century America.   Prejudice is not limited to the racial kind.

While we learn early in the story of the death of the child “Beloved” and the tree of scars on Sethe’s back, we learn later of the dehumanizing treatment on her and so many other members at the Sweet Home slave community: particularly the rape and stealing her milk by Schoolteachers’ nephews. This denial of agency, the realization that even their bodies were not their own, or that their social and emotional health was depended on the plantation owners, all emerged from this rape.  The subsequent escape from Sweet Home is not clearly chronicled, and Sethe’s husband Halle never reappears in the story; his fate seems intentionally unresolved. Their two sons’ departure is also unclear; their escape from 124 Blackstone happens early in the first chapter.

The arrival of the Kentucky Horseman and Schoolteacher to Cincinnati was a pivotal, and central scene.  The notion of her children enduring a life like her own is too much, and we learn how Sethe took her own daughter‘s life.  The physical and emotional abuse created scars greater than a woman’s maternal instinct.  It is difficult to imagine how mentally damaged a mother would have to be to kill her own child.

Another reason this book was hard is that it was based on a true story.  The story chronicled many other acts of violence and abuse on African slaves: Sethe’s mother, raped on the slave ship and hung.  Paul D’s experience on a chain gang in Georgia during the War includes a time where he cannot distinguish whether the screaming he hears is coming from inside his head or the outside.   Rape, whipping, shackling, iron mouth bits and other forms of torture and psychological abuse run throughout the novel. Of many references to trees, the tree on Sethe's back represents the scars of physical abuse; but the psychological scars go even deeper.

The character Beloved evolves throughout the book: in an early scene Paul D manages to exorcise the red stain on the house; Beloved returns in person, so to speak, after Paul D had taken Sethe to the local carnival, a community event where locals finally could accept her in spite of her past.  This community acceptance is a highpoint in the book, but also marks the beginning of Beloved’s new effect on all the characters. Supernatural tones drift in and out of the story as a force magnifier of emotional and psychological trauma.  The other high point appears at the end: a community of faith returns to 124 Blackstone and rids the house of the ghost in a scene of spirituality and hope. Faith communities matter.

We discussed the perception of human value in the context of Sethe’s husband Halle having worked “five years of Sundays” to buy “Baby Suggs’” freedom.  While five years of Sundays was a tremendous cost, as his mother‘s market value was actually negligible.  Thus, even Mr. Garner‘s agreement to sell Baby Suggs to Halle seemed an unfair transaction.  On the other side, from Halle‘s perspective, his mother’s freedom had infinite worth.

We also explored the notion of white guilt today: some of us have ancestors that were slave owners. But we uniformly agreed that we must be careful inserting our ethical and moral structure from our safe and secure childhoods into places and times so different from our own.  Nevertheless, the topic itself is rife with political implications, and we got into it as we often do.  At one point Rick turned to me and said his ‘watch says it’s getting loud in here’.   We terminated that tangent and moved back to our appreciation of the well-told history in this novel.

Chuck referenced a review by Margaret Atwood that highlighted the citation of Paul’s letter to the Romans (9:25) which states: "I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved." This is a reference to Paul’s invitation for Gentiles to have a relationship with God through Jesus, a powerful reminder that our Constitution grants God-given rights to all Americans, irrespective of skin color, religious associations, or other differentiators.  And yet, as humans, tribalism is baked into our DNA: we like our home teams and are threatened by outsiders. Doug commented that when he travels, he often checks a local paper for their politics or sports, to find talking common ground with the people he’s visiting. We could all learn from this technique in finding common ground with others we don’t know.

Once again, our Bonnie Lea book club nailed another book that “we would not ordinarily seek out on our own“, forcing us to consider this difficult stain on American history, the legacy of enslavement.  We explore history, including the horrific parts, so we can give adequate thought and new perspective to our interactions with other people today and into the future.