Tomorrow, we'll begin talking about Toni Morrison's seminal 1988 novel, Beloved. Beloved is a book rich with Cincinnati history. It fictionalizes the life of runaway slave Margaret Garner into a magisterial narrative about love, human rights, and our ability to truly "own" the lives we lead. Some of you might be familiar with the story of Garner. She was a slave on a plantation in Kentucky during the 1850s and escaped from her masters with her young children by night from Covington across the Ohio River into the Union enclave of Cincinnati. When slave-catchers reached the home where she and her children were hiding, Garner killed one of her children and attempted to kill the others rather than allow them to be returned to a life of slavery. An America already at odds over the issue of slavery was captivated by the story of Garner and her subsequent trial, which posed fundamental questions about liberty, personhood, and the law. When Junot Diaz was asked by Newsweek to name the 5 books of fiction that were most important to him, he placed Beloved at the top of the list, saying that "[y]ou can't understand the Americas without this novel about the haunting that is our past."
Thomas Saterwaite Noble, "The Modern Medea" (1867)--painting based on Margaret GarnerToni Morrison based Beloved loosely on the Garner narrative. She also wrote the libretto for an opera on the subject of the runaway slave's life, entitled Margaret Garner. Beloved and Margaret Garner are just two examples of Morrison's interest in tracing the history of black life in America. She is one of the most important authors of the twentieth century and a major force in popularizing African American fiction, both as a writer and editor of other writers work during her time in the publishing industry. Beloved won the Pulitzer Prize, but many other novels by Morrison were justly celebrated--from The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon, two earlier works, to Paradise and the recently-released A Mercy. She is also famous for her many works of literary and social criticism, including Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. In 1993, Morrison received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
I remember when I read Beloved and got to that scene where it is revealed how Setha tried to kill her babies and I was surprised and shocked in a way. So in some ways, knowing the Margaret Garner story ahead of time is kind of a spoiler. I know, you could argue, anyone could have looked it up ahead of time too. But not knowing that had ahead of time had a profound effect on me as a reader. I'm just giving you a hard time for the fun of it I guess.
ReplyDeleteI read the Song of Solomon a few quarters ago in another lit class. That was one of my favorite books and authors. I didn't like Toni Morrison at first though. She is an acquired taste. I dig her almost "southern" style. I like her magical realism too. She takes ghosts and other supernatural things seriously kind of like Diaz does with the Fuku.
I find Ms Morrison's book very haunting. I can understand why Margaret killed her child, but I don't believe she had the right to.
ReplyDeleteI have seen parents ruin their children's life,under the good intensions of protect them. What if she killed a great doctor with the cures to illnesses in his/her brain or even a great liberator, perhaps his life wouldn't have even been as miserable as she believed it would been.
Does anyone or any institution ever have the "Right" to kill another??? Regarding parenting, a favorite expression of mine is that all children achievements in life are accomplished despite what their parents do to them. In other words, all parents fuck their chilren up, it is apparnt that some do more severely then others.
ReplyDeleteInitially I did not enjoy the first few chapters. But having got past that I am particularly drawn to the double jeopardy of not only being a slave, but a woman slave. Of being denied the very essence of being a woman. Love, family, and children. All are ripped savagely from the heart and the breast. Imagine living a life in which you do not even have control over your own feelings. Unless, of course, those feelings are sorrow and pain. A woman who kills her young chilren is a woman who has absolutely no hope, for herself or her children.
A few things.
ReplyDeleteOn a serious note...
I agree with "T", the right to kill does not exist and also with "mpmentat", all parents fuck their chilren up it's just a matter of how much (hopefully not to the death of, as the case is).
Personally, I am really liking Garner's work. Aside from some things not making immediate sense I'm learning little by little as the novel progresses. As I read I am starting to see similar themes from the other books we've read resurface (identity, haunting, etc). Though the first few chapters might be hard to get into the book picks up rather quickly. I like it.
Also interesting (and a tip of the hat to Prof. Glaser's author choices for this class).
"A survey of writers and literary critics conducted by The New York Times found Beloved the best work of American fiction of the past 25 years; it garnered 15 of 125 votes, finishing ahead of Don DeLillo's Underworld (11 votes)"
On a not so serious note...
I didn't know people did stuff like this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OF-LSFv1KE
Zachary
I think it’s an interesting question that professor Glaser poses, “Is it possible/ethical for history and the novel to intersect? In cases like Oscar Wao and The Dew Breaker I think the reducing of national terror to the confines of a novel have conflicting consequences. On the one hand, by personalizing the abuse of dictatorial regimes the novelist seems to be marginalizing what is a national, rather than personal, disaster. Of course within the nation there are many people, each of whom suffers on an individual level and it is this individual pain that allows us to connect to the abused character and to become emotionally involved in what the history books present merely as statistics. Beloved, however, does not work in quite the same way. Whereas the characters if Wao and The Dew Breaker are completely fictional, the mother in Beloved is a character who is meant to resemble a real woman, Margaret Garner. In order to save her children from slavery, Garner murdered her daughter and tried to kill her other children. Sethe, likewise, has killed her daughter (who comes back to haunt Sethe’s house) but is this similarity ethical? The story of Margaret Garner has already been personalized. She comes from a world in which slavery leads to suffering and degradation and her story already puts that world into perspective without an author trying to make sense of it. Morrison does not create fictional characters within a real, violent and oppressive society; instead she takes the story of a real individual within this society and turns that woman into fiction. Is Beloved then just a perversion of the truth? An attempt to further sensationalize an already pretty sensational story? Or does the distinction I was trying to make not hold true. (I myself am not entirely sold on it, just thinking out loud.)
ReplyDeleteDanielle M.
I agree that no one has the 'right' to kill anyone regardless if it is their own child. But reading the story I came to the conclusion that her reasoning for soing so was understandable. We saw the same thing in Maus, when Spiegleman's brother died from poison so he would not have to go into a concentration camp. It times of desperation and fear, people do crazy things that they believe is the right thing at the time. I do not think we are anyone to judge these instances because we have not experienced what they have gone through.
ReplyDeletegreengumm4me is stephanie
ReplyDeleteThough she successfully manages to combine the story of Margaret Garner with her own fictional elements, I think Morrison sacrifices a certain element of credibility with her readers. If the reader knows that this work is based off of the Garner story, the reader views the work as one of historical fiction. When the reader finds out that it is only "loosely" based off the story, it loses some of its ability to invoke the reader's empathy towards the story's characters. This is because the characters can no longer be regarded as "real people," they simply become more characters in just another story. I also feel that the supernatural theme that pervades the novel seems to discredit the reality of the story if a reader is reading it as a historical piece.
ReplyDeleteTom B.
There is a part of me that wants to believe that under no circumstances is killing a justifiable action but there is another part of me that thinks that feeling that way may be immature in thought. Sethe knew the life she led, she knew about the pain and the agony of her life and as a mother in her situation it can be said that she was justified in killing her daughter. She went crazy, a psychosis brought on by her own living conditions. Life is taken all of the time for many reasons and Sethe had the right to act the way she did in a world that was insane she had a right to be insane herself.
ReplyDeleteLawson