Beloved

** Year of publication **// : // 1987
====Author Bio//: Toni Morrison was born// Chloe Anthony Wofford in 1931 and spent the first years of her life in Ohio. She received an undergraduate degree in English from Howard University and completed a master’s program at Cornell. When many of her classmates had difficulty pronouncing her uncommon first name, she changed it to Toni (a derivative of her middle name). In 1958, she married Harold Morrison, an architect from Jamaica, and the couple had two sons. They divorced six years later. After pursuing an academic career teaching English at Howard, Morrison became an editor at Random House, where she specialized in black fiction. At the same time, she began building a body of creative work that, in 1993, would make her the first African-American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her 1970 novel //The Bluest Eye// was followed by //Sula// in 1974, which secured Morrison a nomination for the National Book Award. In 1977, Morrison won the National Book Critics Circle Award for her book //Song of Solomon.// Her other works include //Tar Baby// (1981), //Jazz// (1992), //Paradise// (1998), and, of course, //Beloved.// That novel, considered by many to be her best, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. Today, Morrison is the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Council of Humanities at Princeton University, where she conducts undergraduate workshops in creative writing.====

Primary characters (name/ relationships/ job/ key traits):

 * Sethe** - Sethe, the protagonist of //Beloved,// is a proud and independent woman who is extremely devoted to her children. even though she barely knew her own mother, Sethe’s motherly instincts stand out the most. Unwilling to surrender her children to the physical, emotional, sexual, and spiritual shock she went through as a slave at Sweet Home, she attempts to murder them in an act of love and protection. She remains haunted by this and other scarring events in her past, which she tries to repress.


 * Denver** - Sethe’s youngest child, Denver is the most dynamic character in the novel. Though intelligent, and sensitive at the same time, Denver has been stunted in her emotional growth by years of isolation. Beloved’s increasing malevolence, however, forces Denver to overcome her fear of the world beyond 124 and seek help from the community. Her journey out into the town and her attempts to find permanent work and possibly attend college mark the beginning of her fight for independence and self-possession.


 * Beloved** - Beloved’s identity is mysterious. The novel provides evidence that she could be the ghost of Sethe’s mother, or the embodied spirit of Sethe’s murdered daughter. On an analytical level, Beloved represents the inescapable, horrible past of slavery returned to haunt the present. Her presence, which grows increasingly malevolent as the novel progresses, serves as an agitator for Sethe’s, Paul D’s, and Denver’s processes of emotional growth.
 * Paul D** - The physical and emotional brutality suffered by Paul D at Sweet Home and as part of a chain gang has caused him to bury his feelings in the “rusted tobacco tin” of his heart. He represses his painful memories and believes that the key to survival is not becoming too attached to anything. At the same time, he seems to incite the opening up of others’ hearts, and women in particular tend to confide in him. Sethe welcomes him to 124, where he becomes her lover and the object of Denver’s and Beloved’s jealousy. Paul D continues to doubt his identity, such as his value as a person.
 * Baby Suggs** - After Halle buys his mother, Baby Suggs, her freedom, she travels to Cincinnati, where she becomes a source of emotional and spiritual inspiration for the city’s black residents. She holds religious gatherings at a place called the Clearing, where she teaches her followers to love their voices, bodies, and minds. However, after Sethe’s act of infanticide, Baby Suggs stops preaching and retreats to a sickbed to die. Baby Suggs continued to be a source of inspiration long after her death, in Part Three her memory motivates Denver to leave 124 and find help. It is partially out of respect for Baby Suggs that the community responds to Denver’s requests for support.

**Secondary characters (brief identifications):**

 * Amy Denver** - A nurturing and compassionate girl who works as an indentured servant, Amy is young, flighty, talkative, and idealistic. She helps Sethe when she is ill during her escape from Sweet Home, and when she sees Sethe’s wounds from being whipped, Amy says that they resemble a tree. She later delivers baby Denver, whom Sethe names after her.


 * Paul A, Paul F, and Sixo** - Paul A and Paul F are the brothers of Paul D. They were slaves at Sweet Home with him, Halle, Sethe, and, earlier, Baby Suggs. Sixo is another fellow slave. Sixo and Paul A die during the escape from the plantation.


 * Lady Jones** - Lady Jones, a light-skinned black woman who loathes her blond hair, is convinced that everyone despises her for being a woman of mixed race. Despite her feelings of alienation, she maintains a strong sense of community obligation and teaches the underprivileged children of Cincinnati in her home. She is skeptical of the supernatural dimensions of Denver’s plea for assistance, but she nevertheless helps to organize the community’s delivery of food to Sethe’s plagued household.
 * Ella** - Ella worked with Stamp Paid on the Underground Railroad. Traumatized by the sexual brutality of a white father and son who once held her captive, she believes, like Sethe, that the past is best left behind. When it surfaces in the form of Beloved, Ella organizes the women of the community to exorcise Beloved from 124.
 * Mr. and Mrs. Garner** - Mr. and Mrs. Garner are the comparatively benevolent owners of Sweet Home. The events at Sweet Home reveal, however, that the idea of benevolent slavery is a contradiction in terms. The Garners’ paternalism and condescension are simply watered-down versions of schoolteacher’s vicious racism.
 * Mr. and Miss Bodwin** - Siblings Mr. and Miss Bodwin are white abolitionists who have played an active role in winning Sethe’s freedom. Yet there is something disconcerting about the Bodwins’ politics. Mr. Bodwin longs a little too eagerly for the “heady days” of abolitionism, and Miss Bodwin demonstrates a condescending desire to “experiment”on Denver by sending her to Oberlin College. The distasteful figurine Denver sees in the Bodwins’ house, portraying a slave and displaying the message “At Yo’ Service,” marks the limits and ironies of white involvement in the struggle for racial equality. Nevertheless, the siblings are motivated by good intentions, believing that “human life is holy, all of it.”

Allusion: Beloved alludes to Sethes past.
 * Notable structural, literary and stylistic techniques:**

Imagery: The novel has vivid flashbacks and causes the reader to feel as if they are there.
Diction: Speech and dialect reflects the time period and the are.

**The Color Red**
Colors from the red part of the spectrum (including orange and pink) recur throughout //Beloved,// although the meaning of these red objects varies. Amy Denver’s red velvet, for example, is an image of hope and a brighter future, while Paul D’s“red heart” represents feeling and emotion. Vitality plays a big part in this novel, For example, the red roses that line the road to the carnival serve to herald the carnival’s arrival in town and announce the beginning of Sethe, Denver, and Paul D’s new life together; yet they also stink of death. The red rooster signifies manhood to Paul D, but it is a manhood that Paul D himself has been denied. The story of Amy’s search for carmine velvet seems especially poignant because we sense the futility of her dream. Sethe’s memory is awash with the red of her daughter’s blood and the pink mineral of her gravestone, both of which have been bought at a dear price. In the world of //Beloved,// trees serve primarily as sources of healing, comfort, and life. Denver’s “emerald closet” of boxwood bushes functions as a place of solitude and repose for her. The beautiful trees of Sweet Home mask the true horror of the plantation in Sethe’s memory. Paul D finds his freedom by following flowering trees to the North, and Sethe finds hers by escaping through a forest. By imagining the scars on Sethe’s back as a “chokecherry tree,” Amy Denver sublimates a site of trauma and brutality into one of beauty and growth. But as the sites of lynchings and of Sixo’s death by burning, however, trees reveal a connection with a darker side of humanity as well. Paul D describes his heart as a “tin tobacco box.” After his traumatizing experiences at Sweet Home and, especially, at the prison camp in Alfred, Georgia, he locks away his feelings and memories in this “box,” which has, by the time Paul D arrives at 124,“rusted” over completely. By alienating himself from his emotions, Paul D hopes to preserve himself from further psychological damage. In order to secure this protection, however, Paul D sacrifices much of his humanity by foregoing feeling and gives up much of his selfhood by repressing his memories. Although Paul D is convinced that nothing can pry the lid of his box open, his strange, dreamlike sexual encounter with Beloved—perhaps a symbol of an encounter with his past—causes the box to burst and his heart once again to glow red.
 * Trees**
 * The Tin Tobacco Box**


 * Tone:**mournfulness, regret

Having survived a traumatic escape from slavery, Sethe has killed her older daughter in a mad attempt to keep her from being taken back to the South by her old master. A mysterious figure now appears at Sethe’s home, calling herself by the name on the dead daughter’s tombstone
 * Major conflicts (in abstract terms, with resolutions):**

The climax of the flashback plot occurs near the end of Part One in Chapter 16, when the text finally reveals the circumstances of Sethe’s daughter’s death: eighteen years ago, Sethe attempted to murder all her children when she refused to hand them over to schoolteacher to endure a life of slavery. Only her elder daughter died. The second climax occurs at the end of the novel, during the “exorcism” of Beloved, who seems to be the ghost of the daughter Sethe murdered. In an echo of the first climax, Sethe mistakes Mr. Bodwin, her family’s benefactor, for schoolteacher and tries to kill him with an ice pick.
 * Key scenes (turning points, resolutions, climaxes--inc. page #'s):**


 * Key quotations (annotate: identify speaker, situation, and relevance--inc. page #'s):**


 * Your reactions/ reader responses (note personal reactions to any of the above categories, or any other element of the reading experience**): I feel that this book is a very relatable, especially if you are dwelling on the past and guilt is haunting you. it is a very good read and and it teaches you how to cope with hard situations.

// **Notable literary devices present in work and how they contribute to meaning:** Figurative language, Diction, and allusions. These contribute to the work as whole because it gives a deeper meaning and it make the reader feel and experience new feelings and thoughts. //