The book, Beloved,
has a definite chill to it. The story, the characters, the world in which the
characters are forced to exist all drew me in. And there I sat, captivated,
uneasy, and creeped out. But mostly captivated.
Beloved is the
story of slaves, in captivity, during escape, and in freedom, spanning from
about 1855 to 1873. The images the book draws of the physical, but mainly
emotional trauma of life as another man’s chattel are stark and distressing.
Written from the slaves’ point of view, Toni Morrison was able to put me into
their shoes more completely than I had felt in all my previous readings.
Perhaps it is her gift for poetic prose that touched me so deeply.
Aside from the torment of enslavement, Morrison adds a more
mystical, other-worldly aspect to the story with the appearance of the
protagonist’s dead child, Beloved, now grown and in new flesh, at the family’s
door. Ghosts coming to life don’t unnerve me that much, but while this innocent
child returning as a young woman should have induced some sympathy in me, I
felt none. She creeped me out.
The real value of this book, however, are in the deep insights
it offers to us as human beings. One that particularly struck me was that those
who consider themselves superior debase themselves in their efforts to keep
others “in their place.” Morrison wrote, “Whitepeople believed that whatever
the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle…” Through the system of slavery
or any effort to demean another people, the oppressors become debauched
themselves. Morrison writes, “The screaming baboon lived under their own white
skin.” While reading this, the History Channel’s “Ku Klux Klan” was on the
television, driving this truism home to me in all its horror. It also is
evident in research I’ve done on the 18th century oppression of the
Irish peasants.
I did find the style and structure of the book to be
confusing at first. I had to re-read the initial twenty-five pages before I
understood what was what, but I would urge anyone drawn to this book to stick
with it. The rewards are bountiful.
