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Beloved (Beloved Trilogy, #1)

Toni Morrison

Start date: May 1, 2015

Finish date: June 30, 2015

Discussion: Group Reads

Why we're reading this: May 2015 Poll Winner
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Jul 16, 2016 Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, american-20th-c, pulitzer-winning-fiction, pulitzer-fiction, nobel-lit, african-american-lit, favorites, signed-copy, novels

This was my second or third reading of Beloved, a book that broke my heart and remade it once again. The tree on Sethe's back is a map to both pain and redemption. I feel like I am going to quote nearly the entire book if I keep to copy out all of my notes. From the initial haunting of Beloved and her return - the tale of Sethe is the tale of the revolting violence and sexual underpinning of the institution of slavery. The stories from Sweet Home are all heartbreaking (particularly once Schoolte This was my second or third reading of Beloved, a book that broke my heart and remade it once again. The tree on Sethe's back is a map to both pain and redemption. I feel like I am going to quote nearly the entire book if I keep to copy out all of my notes. From the initial haunting of Beloved and her return - the tale of Sethe is the tale of the revolting violence and sexual underpinning of the institution of slavery. The stories from Sweet Home are all heartbreaking (particularly once Schoolteacher takes over), and yet even across the river at 124, those who escaped are unsafe. The novel does a fantastic job of capturing the love of Sethe and Paul D, the emergence of an "I" for Denver and the pain of loss for Baby Suggs. Memorable from start to finish, this is truly one of the greatest works of fiction of the last century. I loved how it ended as Denver takes control of her life and in doing so, saves Sethe. Love conquers all.

Sethe is defiant at the beginning of the book when Paul D arrives: "I got a tree on my back and a haint in my house, and nothing in between but the daughter I am holding in my arms. Now more running - from nothing." (p. 15). Paul D, being the kind soul that he is, listens to the shards of her story. The reader needs to be patient because the full meaning of the loss of milk, the lost sons Buglar and Howard, the whitegirl - all of these will be peeled off of the story like layers of an onion. The emotion is overwhelming and creates tenderness between Sethe and Paul D: As she raised up from the heat she felt Paul D behind her and his hands under her breasts. She straightened up and knew, but could not feel, that is cheek was pressing into the branches of the chokecherry tree. (p. 17). And just like that, Paul D casts the ghost of 124 out, leaving Denver confused and alone:Now her mother was upstairs with the man who had gotten rid of the only other company she had. Denver dipped a bit of bread into the jelly. Slowly, methodically, miserably, she ate it. (p. 19). What is impressive is the power of Morrison's writing and how much she packs into these first 20 pages of the first chapter, it is breathtaking to read.

The afternoon lovemaking of Sethe and Paul D opens up vistas in their memory of the previous slave life they shared at Sweet Home when Sethe was with Halle and got pregnant with Denver. Most of the memories are rife with the inherent inhumanity and violence of slavery. To survive, the slaves of Sweet Home had to derive pleasure from very small, nearly insignificant things like corn in the field in which Halle and Sethe had made love the first time:What he did remember was parting the hair to get to the tip, the edge of his fingernail just under, so as not to graze a single kernel. The pulling down on the tight sheath, the ripping sound always convinced her it hurt. As soon as one strip of husk was down, the rest obeyed and the ear yielded up to him its shiny rows, exposed at last. How loose the silk. How quick the jailed up flavor ran free. No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simple joy could shake you. How loose the silk. How fine and loose and free. (p . 27). A lot to unpack there, but it is amazing how the memories of Sethe and Paul D intertwine - Sethe remembering the sex in the field and comparing it to the pain of opening the corn husk and Paul D remembering the sensations - both tactile and gustatory - of the raw corn.

One important thing to keep in mind when reading Beloved is the deep vernacular used by the protagonists that requires sometimes reading out loud to get a feel for the sing-songy diction and how time is strictly non-linear as each of the characters shifts back and forth over memories too painful to bear all at once. There is also an extremely sensual aspect to Morrison's writing where the various senses blend together:The closer the roses got to death, the louder their scent and everybody who attended the carnival associated it with the stench of the rotten roses. (p. 47). I took this to be another way of displacing the painful memories and dispersing them so as to dampen their bite.

Not long afterward, Beloved comes to 124 and the heart of the novel is how she has a dysfunctional, fusional relationship with Sethe, a distant, opportunistic relationship with Denver, and a violent, sexual relationship with Paul D driving him away from the house. It takes Sethe a lot longer then Denver to realize this because of Beloved's all-consuming devotion: Sethe was flattered by Beloved's open, quiet devotion...the company of this sweet, if peculiar, guest pleased her the way a zealot pleases his teacher. (p. 57) Paul D, before leaving, is tortured with memories that he long hid deep inside:He would keep the rest where it belonged: in that tobacco tin buried in his chest where a red heart used to be. Its lid rusted shut. He would not pry it loose now in front of this sweet sturdy woman, for if she got a whiff of the contents, it would shame him. And it would hurt her to know that there was no read heart bright as Mister's comb beating in him. (p. 73). Note that Mister was a rooster back at the Sweet Home farm.

Halle was Sethe's husband and the father of her children before the flight from Sweet Home to where Halle's mother Baby Suggs had escaped in free Ohio, 124. Near the house, there was a clearing where she would give open air speeches to the other fugitives and survivors:Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them. Pat them together, stroke them on your face 'cause they don't love that either. You got to love it, you! And no, they ain't in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear...This is flesh I'm talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. (p. 88) Sethe bitterly misses the 28 days between her arrival at 124 and the catastrophe that consumes her, she misses especially the comfort of Baby Suggs:Just the fingers she thought. Just let me feel your fingers again on the back of my neck and I will lay it all down, make a way out of this no way. (p. 95)

In his reminiscing, we learn of Paul D's incredible journey and the countless acts of violence and predation that he survived including a chain gang under the beating sun of Georgia singing songs to Mr. Death, they smashed his head. More than the rest, they killed the flirt who folks called Life for leading them on. Making them think the next sunrise would be worth it; that another stroke of time would do it at last. Only when she was dead would they be safe. The successful ones - the ones who had been there enough years to have maimed, mutilated, and maybe even buried her - kept watch over the others who were still in her cock-teasing hug, caring and looking forward, remembering and looking back. (p. 109) During his wandering, he finds little consolation with the Cherokee who suffered the fate of genocide at the hands of white settlers. Decimated but stubborn, they were among those who chose a fugitive life rather than Oklahoma. The illness that swept them now was reminiscent of the one that had killed half their number two hundred years earlier. In between that calamity and this, they had visited George III in London, published a newspaper, made baskets,led Oglethorpe through forests, helped Andrew Jackson fight Creek, cooked maize, drawn up a constitution, petitioned the King of Spain, been experimented on by Dartmouth, established asylums, wrote their language, resisted settlers, shot bear, and translated scripture. All to no avail. The forced move to the Arkansas River, insisted upon by the same president they fought for against the Creek, destroyed another quarter of their already shattered number. (p. 111). Equally horrifying was on his way to 124, having tied up his boat he notices something red:Reaching for it, he thought it was a cardinal feather stuck to his boat. He tugged and what came loose in his hand was a red ribbon knotted around a curl of wet wooly hair, clinging still to a its bit of scalp. (p. 180) He keeps the ribbon which comes to symbolize for him the tiniest hope for survival among the ferocious slave bounty hunters and the promised haven of 124.

In the wake of Paul D's leaving after learning the complete story from Stamp Paid, things collapse in 124 into complete insanity as Sethe and Beloved become inseparable and push Denver out. At the end of the novel however, Denver finds a way to banish Beloved definitively by rallying the community of women in a beautiful scene (p. 261). Paul D rushes back to the side of Sethe, sick, and recalls a description of love by another victim of Sweet Home, Sixo, and his lover, the Thirty Mile Woman:'she is a friend of my mind. She gathers me, man. The pieces I am, she gathers them and gives them back to me in all the right order. It's good you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind. As the curtain falls on the book, the exchange between Sethe and Paul D:
Only this woman Sethe could have left him his manhood like that. He wants to put his story next to hers.
"Sethe," he says, "me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow."
He leans over and takes her hand, With the other he touches her face. "You your best thing, Sethe. You are." His holding fingers and holding hers.
"Me? Me?" (p. 273).

This is truly one of the most painful and beautiful books I have ever read and should be required reading for high school kids to understand fully the de-humanizing aspects of slavery and how sex was used as a tool for oppression. But mostly for the stunning love story of Sethe and Paul D.

Fino's Toni Morrison Reviews:
The Bluest Eye
Sula
Song Of Solomon
Tar Baby
Beloved
Jazz
Paradise ...more

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Mar 26, 2020 Henry rated it it was ok

Let me begin by saying that this book contains an important story that needed to be told. The plight of recently freed slaves in the years after the Civil War and what they endured both during slavery and after it was abolished is horrific and whether they were really freed is very questionable. My problem with this book is not the story but the writing. I know it won the Pulitzer Prize. I know that Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but this book was an ordeal to read to the poin ...more

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Mar 02, 2020 Pye marked it as dnf · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-historical, xx-bookclub-ftbc

DNF @ 1.5 hours into a 12 hour book. It's not that I disliked the book, I just couldn't make myself become interested in it. Hopefully I will give it another try later. ...more

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