Toni Morrison Notes: David Crouse

Folks... As a small experiment I'm posting this week's notes on Beloved. Feel free to sift through these if you like...the next time I use this blog I might do this kind of disclosure more often if people think it's interesting (I type up notes like this for each text we discuss). Anyway... Toni Morrison: More Generalized Notes (3/15/98) What we’ve really been talking about is perception. All books are, of course, about perception, because language has to be coming to us through some kind of lens. But these books might be more consciously about perception: the two levels of reality in 1000 Acres, the multiple points-of-view in Madame Bovary, A Sport and a Pastime’s use of narrator who is mainly designed to make us question how he (and we) perceive things. Perception is a process of selection. Toni Morrison: An act of memory (rememory) is also an act of perception. Memory is another way to order the universe, it is selective, and the way this selection process plays out says something about me as a person. Memory then, can be seen as just another kind of observation. These are notes taken from internet research, the Morrison novel Beloved itself, the book Imagining Characters by A.S. Byatt and Ignes Sodre, and an interview conducted with Toni Morrison by Rosemarie K. Lester on the Hessian Radio Network. Most of the notes, however, are merely off-the-cuff observations on my part - small pieces of lecture notes and thoughts - and should be taken as such. 3 Part Structure Part 1 ¡°124 was spiteful.¡± Part 2 ¡°124 was loud.¡± Part 3 ¡°124 was quiet.¡± What do these statements say about the progress of the novel as a whole? Looping Structure ¡°It made him dizzy. At first he thought it was her spinning, circling him the way she circled the subject. Round and round never changing direction, which might have helped his head.¡± One of the key structural modes of the book is a sort of spiraling narrative which touches on a particular subject, then returns to it later, then returns to it again, gradually revealing the information over the course of the book. For instance: the murder of Beloved by Sethe or the idea of Sweet Home/the escape from Sweet Home. Question: What does this say about the characters themselves and their relationship with the past? Another detail about this subject: Baby Suggs and the use of color. When you first get this point it seems less powerful, almost trivial, almost quaint. Morrison lets the reader’s imagination run to the wrong place, then corrects them later on with other bits of information. Another detail: What happens to Paul A. As a reader you might think you know but then realize later that you don’t know at all. You’re perceptions are, in a sense, (morally) inadequate. Key element in this structure is the multiple point-of-view technique. We get the information through many eyes (many voices might be a more appropriate term), as if it were a story being conjured (told) from the past. We have to deal with the information as an outsider before we can deal with it on a more intimate level. Note of interest: Many critical articles mention this structure as an important part of the book but don’t really investigate the specifics of the structure in-depth. How do events reveal themselves over the course of the narrative? Subject for a critical article? Looping Structure: More Specifics We get information about his favorite tree and Sixo, the other Pauls, Halle, but in a very general way; this story is charming, almost quaint. It’s also an outsiders viewpoint, a white view point. And it’s also what Paul D wants to remember - the good stuff Then she returns to this when: ¡°All but Sixo, who laughed once, at the very end.¡± Sex scene - also quaint, but becomes something else later on. Connect this with our discussion about how to describe intimate moments. The stories here are not just told by a narrator who is imparting them for our benefit - ie. they don’t function as straight exposition. They function, additionally, as the dramatic relating of someone reliving a particular event from the past. Looping Structure and ¡°Legendary¡± Qualities to Event The looping structure implies that this is a story being told to us, it brought up, passed around, put aside, returned to from a different perspective. What this also does is build up certain events to the point where they move outside conventional reality. I’m thinking of the scene where Paul D and all the other men getting out of their cages, chained together, moving up through the mud and rain. ¡°For one lost, all lost.¡± (110) Inadequacy of language (or at least conventional language) The ¡°poet¡± sections somehow address this issue. The ideas of the novel cannot be completely expressed through conventional language; we need to step outside that. Beloved’s name comes from the Song of Solomon: ¡°My beloved is mine, and I am his.¡± Which parallels, ¡°I am beloved and she is mine.¡± The Song of Solomon has been read mystically, as an account of Christ’s marriage to the church, the soul: ¡°I am come into the garden, my sister, my spouse. I have gathered my myrrh with my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey. I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.¡± ¡°I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.¡± And: ¡°I am black., but comely, Oh ye daughters of Jerusalem.¡± So in this sense Paul D is the Beloved. Everyone can be read as the beloved. Connection between property relationships and other relationships? Baby Suggs: ¡°Look like I loved em more after I got here. Or maybe I couldn’t love ‘em in Kentucky because they wasn’t mine to love.¡± White Characters Vs. Black Characters White characters are flat, are almost ghosts. They have no skin. Black characters are complex and generally sympathetic. Often they take on almost superhuman qualities. How does Amy, the girl who helped with Sethe’s birthing of Denver, fit into the structure? She’s almost ghost-like, isn’t she, but she also has very sympathetic qualities. Aime in French is beloved. At the end of the book we suddenly get half-white people. Like Miss Lady/Lady Jones or the ¡°bleached nigger¡± Sweet Home and Memory Seth hates herself for remembering the beautiful trees in Sweet Home, because she remembers these things - the beautiful things - more clearly than the horrible things. In a way her mind is a separate entity that she must fight against. Mrs. Garner: Sethe asks if there is going to be a wedding and she replies ¡°You are one sweet child.¡± Mr. Garner, by offering them their manhood as a gift takes it away from them. Memory The novel is essentially about memory, I feel; or at least this is one of the most useful ways a writer can look at the book. It’s very important that the book not make sense on the first reading. What happened in the past is so unbearable that it can only be comprehended in a fragmentary way. Memory stands outside people almost - for instance, Sethe sees her mind as something apart from her when Paul D tells her about Halle (70). We know and don’t know at the same time. Magic There is a spiritual world and you can treat it as very real as opposed to just a literary prop. You can’t say that Beloved is merely a metaphor for Sethe’s state of mind, for instance. She’s solid. She has weight and height and choice. Part of this is that we are offered a look into Beloved’s perspective. Death and Life The book leads equally to both - this is set up in the structure. She didn’t have to give Seth two babies but she does, one she kills, one she saves. Quotes from the book: PART ONE Paul D enters the house and finds Sethe and Denver after 18 years; they reunite and have a union in which the past bubbles to the surface again and then is exorcised (in the form of the ghost Beloved); it’s interesting that Sethe’s past history is exorcised by someone who is such a big part of it—someone who is also a symbol of that past. (6-7) Memory/Structure/Sweet Home ¡°Unfortunately her brain was devious.¡± We see how memory is intertwined with the present here—knotted together. Sometimes memories ¡°visit¡± themselves on people as if they are intruders¡­or ghosts. We also see Sweet Home for the first time in Sethe’s memory and see her relationship w/her memories as one of conflict. (12-13) White/Evil/Property ¡°Then a fierce argument, sometimes a fight, and Garner came home bruised and pleased, having demonstrated one more time what a real Kentuckian was: one tough enough and smart enough to make and call his own niggers men.¡± Garner and his obsession with making his slaves ¡°men¡±. What do you think of this? (21-22) Supernatural/Psychological/The ghost This is when Paul D drives out the ghost. But how does he actually drive it out—there’s the physical action but why else would it leave? Is there a relationship between the ghost and the psychologically-shaped structure of the novel? (41) Introduction of Amy (the ghostly white girl who helps Sethe). We get this as a told story through Denver’s point of view. Talk about the multiple ways we could get this information and how it might change this information; also talk about the way Amy ¡°helps¡± Sethe and the rubbing of her feet. (43) ¡°You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it’s not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it’s gone, but the place—the picture of it—stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head, I mean, even if I don’t think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened.¡± (60-61) The emergence of Beloved from the water. She comes out of the water just as Sethe has to pee (as if her water is breaking). We see three vertical scratches on her forehead (shovel injuries) and Sethe remembers the headstone with the name written across it. However, we don’t understand the full implications of this until later. Morrison allows us some level of misunderstanding at this point in the novel. (69) ¡°It had become a way to feed her. Just as Denver discovered and relied on the delightful effect sweet things had on beloved, Sethe learned the profound satisfaction Beloved got from storytelling.¡± Beloved feeds on stories in almost a vampiric way; Paul D comes into the story as an element from the past who initiates storytelling and so does Beloved, but how are they different? Beloved, for instance, is insatiable. Also, it’s interesting that Amy seems to live on TELLING stories and does not listen. She’s the opposite of the black ghost (is this because she’s a white ghost?) (81-82) The story of Halle going insane¡­we gradually get information about this and then it gets dumped into our laps¡­and Sethe’s¡­and we have to deal with the images. ¡°Nothing happened, and she was grateful for that. Usually she could see the picture right away of what she heard. But she could not picture what Paul D said. Nothing came to mind. Carefully, carefully, she passed on to a reasonable question.¡± (83) ¡°She shook her head from side to side, resigned to her rebellious brain. Why was there nothing it refused? No misery, no regret, no hateful picture too rotten to accept? Like a greedy child it snatched up everything. Just once, could it say, No thank you? I just ate and can’t hold another bite? I am full God damn it of two boys with mossy teeth, one sucking on my breat the other holding me down, their book-reading teacher watching and writing it up. I am still full of that, God damn it, I can’t go back and add more.¡± (92) Denver and Beloved talk. Discuss how they shape stories. How does this method of story compare to the conversations between Khan and Marco Polo in Invisible Cities? The isolated imaginative storytelling of A Sport and A Pastime? The relationship between the father and his past in The Road? (105) Baby Suggs remarks that, ¡°There is no bad luck in the world but white folks.¡± (113) Paul D is associated with haunting: ¡°In its place he brought another kind of haunting: Halle’s face smeared with butter the clabber too.¡± (119) The circle of iron. Discuss the relationship between the circle of iron and Beloved. Why does Beloved not take responsibility for Sethe’s choking ie. is there a larger agency at work here? This has implications that spread to Beloved’s spiritual origins—symbol of not just one dead girl, but all victims of slavery and genocide. (150) Beloved begins to exercise power over Paul D, driving him out of the house. (174) We get school teacher arriving at 124 to capture Sethe and it’s related to us from school teacher’s point of view. What does this do to our relationship to the events that follow? Is it teaching us a specific way of experiencing them, seeing them? And then what do we experience/learn when point of view shifts? This is also when Sethe’s past becomes more overtly told—interesting that we have to wait this long to get a ¡°bead¡± on all of this. What does this do to our experience of the novel? (181) Paul D learns about the murder of ¡°beloved¡± from Stamp Paid, who shows him a newspaper article about it. (189) ¡°It made him dizzy. At first he thought it was her spinning circling him the way she was circling the subject. Round and round, never changing direction, which might have helped his head. Then he thought, no, it’s the sound of her voice; it’s too near. Each turn she made was at least three yards from where he sat, but listening to her was like having a child whisper into your ear so close you could feel its lips from the words you couldn’t make out because they were too close.¡± Is this the structure of the entire novel? (216) ¡°I don’t remember nothing. I don’t even have to explain. She understands it all. I can forget how Baby Suggs’ heart collapsed; how we agreed it was consumption without a sign of it in the world. Her eyes when she brought my food, I can forget that, and how she told me that Howard and Buglar were all right but wouldn’t let go each other’s hands. Played that way: stayed that way especially in their sleep. She handed me the food from a basket; things wrapped small enough to get through the bars, whispering news: Mr. Bodwin going to see the judge—in chambers, she kept on saying, in chambers.¡± (217) Origin of Beloved’s name—it comes from Dearly Beloved, which is what the pastor said during the service. (225) ¡°Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers—not the defined.¡± Sixo and his rebellion against schoolteacher; Sixo really knows the politics of their situation—he’s the only one who seems to really see Mr. Garner as an evil man. (228) Schoolteacher talks about the human characteristics and animal characteristics of the slaves. (248-249) This is Beloved’s section; the section becomes fragmented and moves outside convention language construction. What does this fragmentation do to our understanding of the information? It’s as if Beloved is many things at once—a girl who has been held captive, a ghost of Sethe’s daughter, and the spirit of all slaves, held in the bowel’s of a slave ship. (266-267) ¡°Sixo turns and grabs the mouth of the nearest pointing rifle. He begins to sing.¡± We finally get his death and his laughter; what is the origin of this laughter exactly? They have to shoot him to quiet him, which is a sort of victory, given his circumstances. (277) We hear about an alternative version of Beloved’s past—that she was a captive of a white man in Deer Creek. Does this information complicate her as an individual? Is it capable of explaining away what’s happened up to this point? Is she able to be ALL these things, in an odd way? (304) The crowd arrives at 124 to find past versions of themselves; we experience everything at once, the past merging with the present. (309) ¡°The ice pick is not in her hand; it is her hand.¡± Sethe experiences this same merging of past and present. (323) Why is this not a story to pass on?