In her fictional novel, Beloved, Toni Morrison sets the story in two main places: Sweet Home and 124 Bluestone Road. Sweet Home is the plantation located in Kentucky where the protagonist of the story, Sethe, is enslaved during the years before the Civil War while 124 Bluestone Road is the new home of Sethe and her daughter, Denver, after they escape the slave states of the South to settle in Cincinnati, Ohio. Sweet Home and 124 Bluestone Road share many similarities, but they also have many differences. Some of the characteristics that the two settings have in common are how both are haunted and debauched. On the other hand, Sweet Home and 124 Bluestone Road differ from each other in how 124 Bluestone Road has more human characteristics, …show more content…
In contrast to Sweet Home, 124 Bluestone Road serves as a home to a greater amount of women. Sethe, Baby Suggs, Denver, and later on Beloved all live in 124 Bluestone Road at one point of the story while the only women at Sweet Home were Mrs. Garner and Sethe. The lack of women at Sweet Home was so profound that the five desperate male slaves (Paul D, Paul F, Paul A, Halle Suggs, and Sixo) were “fucking cows, dreaming of rape, thrashing on pallets, rubbing their thighs and waiting for the new girl” (11). Another significant difference between 124 Bluestone Road and Sweet Home is how 124 is more humanlike and projects more emotion than Sweet Home. As the story progresses through each part, 124 constantly changes its status. In Part One, “124 WAS SPITEFUL” (3). In Part Two, “124 WAS LOUD” (169). In Part Three, “124 WAS QUIET” (239). Strangely enough, the novel says that “124 was so full of strong feeling perhaps she was oblivious to the loss of anything at all” (39). The fact that Morrison refers 124 as a “she,” and the fact that 124 could be spiteful shows how 124 was like an actual character in contrast to Sweet Home, which never displayed any sign of human-like characteristics. The last significant difference between Sweet Home and 124 Bluestone Road is how the plantation represents bondage while …show more content…
She dreams of a better future with Paul D when she is at 124 Bluestone Road but is still challenged with letting go of her past. In fact, the address of the house is an excellent example of Sethe’s inability to let go of her past. She has to overcome the fact that she killed her third child brutally every day and everyone shunning her does not help her cope with the problem. Furthermore, she intended to kill all her children because she was afraid of the possible things schoolteacher would have done to her children such as whipping. Also, every time milk pops up in Sethe's mind, she always concerns herself about how the two nephews of schoolteacher stole her milk. Another notable example of Sethe’s unrelenting past is the haunted house. Sethe is forced to deal with the anger of the haunting house while also having to be responsible for the downfall of her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, as well as for Beloved. A relatively straightforward and relevant example of Sethe’s history with slavery is the arrival of Paul D after eighteen years. With the arrival of Paul D, Sethe is reminded even more of the horrific experiences with schoolteacher. Sethe’s environment and surroundings can change all they want or stay the same, but her experiences with the horrors of slavery will continue to be on her mind until she dies. Sethe even admits that she
In the novel Beloved, Toni Morrison focuses on the concept of loss and renewal in Paul D’s experience in Alfred Georgia. Paul D goes through a painful transition into the reality of slavery. In Sweet Home, Master Garner treated him like a real man. However, while in captivity in Georgia he was no longer a man, but a slave. Toni Morrison makes Paul D experience many losses such as, losing his pride and humanity. However, she does not let him suffer for long. She renews him with his survival. Morrison suggest that one goes through obstacles to get through them, not to bring them down. Morrison uses the elements of irony, symbolism, and imagery to deal with the concept of loss and renewal.
While there initially she denies anything and all evidence that would point towards her true heritage and thereby disillusion her. While giving Jinx and Ruth a tour of the plantation house they come across a passage that Cheyenne calls an entrance for servants. Ruth quickly fires back saying that it must be a slave entrance because the Cherokee Rose Plantation was a fully functioning plantation in the past. Cheyenne’s responds by calling Ruth paranoid “expecting a boogeyman,” she assures Ruth that “this place is just what it seems: paradise” (Miles 103). This implies a complete idealization of southern plantation life, commonly seen in southern literature, but it is strange to see in a young black woman. Even the other characters notice that Cheyenne is extremely
One aspect in the novel Beloved is the presence of a supernatural theme. The novel is haunted. The characters are haunted by the past, the choices made, by tree branches growing on backs, by infanticide, by slavery. Sethe, Denver and Paul D are haunted by the past that stretches and grasps them in 124 in its extended digits. A haunt, Beloved, encompasses another supernatural realm, that of a vampire. She sucks the soul, heart and mind of her mother while draining the relationships that exists between Denver and Sethe and Sethe and Paul D.
In Beloved the slaves working on Sweet Home experience great violence, brutality and are badly treated like animals. In the novel, the character who is mostly affected of slavery’s severe conditions is Sethe. Sethe gets tortured, raped and mistreated. As a result, Sethe tries to run away from the bondage of Sweet Home and then she is forced to kill her own baby. To understand the past, if one wishes to, the present-day readers must face with the past incorporated in Beloved.Only by engaging with this ominous, unwavering force in a conscious way, we will understand the past, and its impact on our
Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved, reveals the effects of human emotion and its power to cast an individual into a struggle against him or herself. In the beginning of the novel, the reader sees the main character, Sethe, as a woman who is resigned to her desolate life and isolates herself from all those around her. Yet, she was once a woman full of feeling: she had loved her husband Halle, loved her four young children, and loved the days of the Clearing. And thus, Sethe was jaded when she began her life at 124 Bluestone Road-- she had loved too much. After failing to 'save' her children from the schoolteacher, Sethe suffered forever with guilt and regret. Guilt for having killed her "crawling already?" baby daughter, and then regret for not having succeeded in her task. It later becomes apparent that Sethe's tragic past, her chokecherry tree, was the reason why she lived a life of isolation. Beloved, who shares with Seths that one fatal moment, reacts to it in a completely different way; because of her obsessive and vengeful love, she haunts Sethe's house and fights the forces of death, only to come back in an attempt to take her mother's life. Through her usage of symbolism, Morrison exposes the internal conflicts that encumber her characters. By contrasting those individuals, she shows tragedy in the human condition. Both Sethe and Beloved suffer the devastating emotional effects of that one fateful event: while the guilty mother who lived refuses to passionately love again, the daughter who was betrayed fights heaven and hell- in the name of love- just to live again.
As the story unfolds, it becomes increasingly evident that Sethe is emotionally unstable. Beginning with her life at Sweet Home, dealing with the everyday trials of sla...
The story is based upon Sethe, Denver, Beloved, and Paul D all of whom have their own personal problems. It is easy to see how critics can say that Beloved is unacceptable for the high school English level but it all depends on the maturity of the students and the discretion of the teacher. Many people thought it to be very amusing when Morrison wrote about how the arrival of Sethe affected the men at Sweet Home. "They were young and so sick with the absence of women they had taken to calves." (Chapter 1, Pg. 10) This statement is lewd and should not be viewed by an immature audience but the Honors English class has a higher maturity level and although there may have been some comments about the incident, it definitely wasn't overly talked about.
Throughout many of Toni Morrison?s novels, the plot is built around some conflict for her characters to overcome. Paradise, in particular, uses the relationships between women as a means of reaching this desired end. Paradise, a novel centered around the destruction of a convent and the women in it, supports this idea by showing how this building serves as a haven for dejected women (Smith). The bulk of the novel takes place during and after WWII and focuses on an all black town in Oklahoma. It is through the course of the novel that we see Morrison weave the bonds of women into the text as a means of healing the scars inflicted upon her characters in their respective societies.
Nine patriarchs found a town. Four women flee a life. Only one paradise is attained. Toni Morrison's novel Paradise revolves around the concept of "paradise," and those who believe they have it and those who actually do. Morrison uses a town and a former convent, each with its own religious center, to tell her tale about finding solace in an oppressive world. Whether fleeing inter- and intra-racial conflict or emotional hurt, the characters travel a path of self-isolation and eventual redemption. In her novel Paradise, Toni Morrison uses the town of Ruby and four broken women to demonstrate how "paradise" can not be achieved through isolation, but rather only through understanding and acceptance.
Throughout Beloved Sethes duplistic character is displayed in the nature of her actions. Shortly after her re-union with Paul D, she describes her reaction to schoolteachers arrival as 'Oh no, I wasn't going back there. I went to jail instead' (P42) These words could be seen that Sethe was. portraying a moral stand by refusing to allow herself and her children to be dragged back into the evil world of slavery....
Sethe is the most dramatically haunted in the book. She is the one who was beaten so badly her back is permanently scarred. She is the one who lived and escaped slavery. She is the one who murdered her child rather than return it to slavery. So she is the one whose past is so horrible that it is inescapable. How can a person escape the past when it is physically apart of them? Sethe has scars left from being whipped that she calls a "tree". She describes it as "A chokecherry tree. Trunk, branches, and even leaves. Tiny little chokecherry leaves. But that was eighteen years ago. Could have cherries too now for all I know" (16). It is apt that her past is represented on her back--something that is behind her, something she cannot see but knows that is there. Also it appeared eighteen years ago, but Sethe thinks that it may have grown cherries in those years. Therefore she knows that the past has attached itself to her but the haunting of it has not stopped growing. Paul D. enters Sethe's life and discover a haunting of Sethe almost immediately. He walks into 124 and notices the spirit of the murdered baby: "It was sad. Walking through it, a wave of grief soaked him so thoroughly he wanted to cry" (9). The haunting by Beloved in its spirit form is stopped by Paul D. He screams "God damn it! Hush up! Leave the place alone! Get the Hell out!" (18). But Sethe's infant daughter is her greatest haunt and it is when Beloved arrives in physical form that Sethe is forced to turn around and confront the past.
In Morrison’s novel there is a lot of symbolism with in her characters especially one of the main characters Milkman. While milkman is technically an adult because of his age he retains a childlike persona due to his vanity, fear of responsibility, and his childhood friends. Milkman’s hesitance towards becoming an adult at the onset of this novel changes, through his quest for gold. He matured to an adult that takes responsibility, tries even when he knows that he will fail and surrenders his vanity.
...to support the book’s theme of a woman in search for herself and sense of personal value. Forgiving one’s self, coping with the past, and learning from mistakes are ubiquitous and timeless lessons to be learned for all people. Beloved, as well as several other works by Morrison, will continue to be a vastly entertaining ghost story as well as a genuinely heart-touching novel.
In Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, Morrison uses universal themes and characters that anyone can relate to today. Set in the 1800s, Beloved is about the destructive effects of American slavery. Most destructive in the novel, however, is the impact of slavery on the human soul. Morrison’s Beloved highlights how slavery contributes to the destruction of one’s identity by examining the importance of community solidarity, as well as the powers and limits of language during the 1860s.
During the last few days at Sweet home, Sethe was made to suffer more than