Colorism and Beloved

When Denver goes to ask Lady Jones for help. Toni Morrison reveals that Lady Jones dislikes her light complexion and blond hair. Her features, at the time, could only be accomplished by rape.  Her features are a constant reminder of what everyone in her community ran away from. In that way, she feels alienated from her community

Today, the black women that society deems "most beautiful"  have the same features that Lady Jones has. This is because are visually closer to what society deems as true beauty, whiteness. While light skin women during Lady Jones' and now feel isolated from the black community, they benefit from their features in both black and non-black spaces. Within the black community, colorism (prejudice against those of a darker skin tone, typically among people of the same race) runs rapidly. Light skin black women are viewed as more docile and feminine. Conversely, dark skin black women are seen as rough and masculine. Because of this, light skin black women are more acceptable and "wife-able" in a society where marriage is the only goal women should. 

I understand that Toni Morrison was trying to get at a particular point by talking about Lady Morrison's light complexion. I which that she would have also included the struggle that dark skin black women in the novel because it is a very important part of our history.

How Slavery Can Destroy All Self-Love

In Toni Morrison's novel Beloved, identity is often discussed, as the former slave characters try to live their lives freely. One of the dangerous effects of being enslaved is an emptiness where your sense of self should be and a loss of self-love. Baby Suggs preaches about how they should love their hands and appreciate their bodies because they belong to them. She reminds the former slaves about how they should love themselves, not because they are especially unique, but because they need to reintroduce love and attention on themselves.

It's interesting how the schoolteacher is described as teaching them about their "animal like characteristics." It reminds the reader how Sethe, Paul D, and Baby Suggs were taught their whole lives about how little they are worth, and how they have a value of an animal.

I think that this can cause major damage to the slave's minds, even if they are freed, because they are constantly put down. Even if they have the strength to try and maintain some sort of optimism or happiness, they aren't able to because they are always told about how little they matter. This completely changes the way they think about themselves.

Sethe, for example, thinks that she is not worth saving, but that her non-enslaved children are pure and need to always be protected. She has no sense of self-worth and self-love because she was told her whole life that she is not worth anything. Furthermore, Paul D is constantly trying to block out the pain from slavery and put it in his tobacco tin in his heart. But, he doesn't have any sense of self or self love because he was never able to deal with the heavy emotional pain of being enslaved.

I think that Toni Morrison does an amazing job of getting inside the mind of an enslaved person who has been so completely destroyed physically and emotionally. It's difficult to think about how a person would be able to move on from the emotional pain of their past. But, it's important to try to think about these things when we are attempting to understand the history of slavery and its impact on the humans who suffered through it.

Adjectives Defining Identity

In Beloved, Tony Morrison masterfully tells the story of life after slavery in a haunting manner. In addition to her literary techniques, Morrison's language surrounding race and identity caught my eye.

Throughout the novel, the color of one's skin is always tied into the person it describes. For example, Amy is a "whitegirl" and the house on Bluestone Road is in a "colouredpeople" neighborhood.

Although Morrison's deliberate combination of the two words makes perfect sense seeing as how race defines your position in society, I've never seen an author do this before. Subtle yet striking, this combination contributes to the author's depiction of identity where slaves are animals and stripped of agency. Denver isn't just a girl, she's a colouredgirl. Amy isn't just a girl, she's a whitegirl.

With this technique, there's no way to truly escape how society defines you. Whether you're free and just beginning to exert your power in the world, like Sethe attempting to murder all or her children, or if you're attempting to find some humanity in your enslavement, like Paul D and the bit, you're stuck in your own skin, haunted by the past, and powerless.

Ten Minutes for Seven Letters

Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved portrays the sexual abuse and exploitation experienced by slaves and former slaves extensively. Though it is hard to read, the situations described by Morrison are stories that need to be told. In the many years I have taken U.S. history, slave narratives, but specifically female narratives discussing sexual abuse, have been left out of the curriculum and ignored. If one such experience was mentioned in passing, there has been very little time spent talking about the implications of the stories and how deep the impact was. The topic has been a part of a few novels I have read for English classes, such as Beloved, however because there has been little prior experience with the subject, many of my classmates and I have a hard time going about discussing it. This cannot be solely pinned on the lack of discourse on sexual abuse, because people feel uncomfortable and find it hard to stomach, however we should not shy away from ugly truths for the sake of our blissful ignorance. The people who experienced the horrors similar to those described in Beloved deserve to have their voices and stories heard.

Historical Accuracy of Beloved

Beloved by Toni Morrison discusses the history and experiences of slaves in America, and how these experiences haunt those who have escaped from or been freed from slavery. Morrison mentions specific years and ages of her characters in the novel and alludes to connections between the events in the book and historical events in the American South. However, when matching up these dates to the history of slavery in America, they don't fit together quite right.

The book is set in 1873, 8 years after the Civil War. In 1855, Sethe gives birth to Denver. According to Denver's telling of the story, Sethe is 19 when she gives birth to Denver, meaning she would have been born in 1836.

Stick with me, this is where it gets tricky. According to Nan, both she and Sethe's mother were "taken up by" crewmen on the boat they took to an unspecified island. Sethe's mother gets pregnant by someone on the boat's crew and gets rid of the child on the island. This means that at least a year was spent traveling to and staying on the island. If we set the minimum age for surviving a pregnancy at 13, this means that Sethe's mother was at least 14 by the time she reached the states, if not older.

International slave trade was outlawed in America (though people could still trade slaves within America) in 1808, and a very small number of slaves were illegally smuggled into the country after 1808 due to high penalties for not only smuggling but buying smuggled slaves. Assuming Sethe's mother entered the country right at the end of America's international slave trade, she would have been 14 in 1808 making her born in 1797. And if Sethe's mother was born in 1794, that would make her at least 42 if not older at the time of Sethe's birth.

While having a baby at 42 might not seem unreasonable by today's standards, it would have been pretty much impossible for an enslaved woman. For starters, nowadays it is difficult for women at that age to conceive children and deliver them healthily through a traditional birth. On top of that, enslaved women were often forced to work through their pregnancies at the same rate as healthy men, were not provided with extra food, and had no access to prenatal care. Finally, slaves had an average life expectancy of 21-22 in the antebellum South, nowhere near the minimum age of 42 that Sethe's mother would be at the time of Sethe's birth.

In order for the story to match the timeline of American history, Sethe's mother would have to be 42 years old if not older at the time of her daughter's birth, and getting up and continuing to work on the plantation 2-3 weeks later. So what explanantion is there for this impossible feat? Am I missing another piece of evidence in the story that explains this timeline error? And if it truly is an oversight on behalf of the author, why did she include specific ages and years in the story if they don't work? What purpose does that serve? And am I digging too deep into this plot hole?

(Sidenote: I understand that the historical accuracy of the timeline does not have an impact on the message and information conveyed in the book, it just bothers me.)

Slavery and Seeing Ghosts

When we got Beloved in class, I glanced at the back of the book summary and learned that the novel is set in the 1800's when slavery was still in full swing. What I would soon learn is that this book is about so much more than conquering and living through slavery. There's another huge element of the book that makes it even more intriguing; the fact that Sethe and her family are being hunted by a ghost. And not just any ghost, the ghost of her dead baby that she murdered. To me, this added a whole new layer of interest to Beloved.

My grandparents and most of my cousins live in California so since I've been five, my family has usually flown out during the summer to see them. There's a certain village called Old Town because it's one of the oldest parts of San Diego. They have an old fashioned candy store and then also a lot more modern shops and restaurants on the surrounding streets. Shopping and eating are fun but my favorite part of the day is going to the Whaley House.

The Whaley House is ranked as one of the most famous haunted houses in America and I can personally vouch that that title is well deserved. The house was designed by Thomas Whaley and then built in 1855 when he moved his wife, Anna, and their six children there to live. A few months after moving, their youngest child, still an infant, Thomas Jr., died of Scarlet Fever. And that was just the beginning of bad omens for the Whaley's. People have claimed to hear a baby wailing or have said they see the baby's old cradle moving on tours.

As it happens, the house was cursed from the beginning. Built on the site where a man named Yankee Jim Robinson, a man infamous in San Diego for lying and stealing, was hung, his ghost is said to haunt the house since the Whaley's moved in. Violet Whaley, one of the oldest daughters, committed suicide in their outhouse by shooting herself with her father's gun. By the time her father ran out and brought her inside, she had already died. Some say they see a young women dressed in older fashioned clothes disappear in mid air or get hit by a wave of absolute despair when near the outhouse. It is assumed that she suffered from severe clinical depression and spiraled when her fiance left her, turning out to be a con man just wanting her money. I've caught multiple orbs (circular balls of energy that in the right context, can represent a ghost)  by the outhouse when it's too dark to be dust or anything my phone created.

Since I was 9 or 10, I've always had a connection with the house. From seeing apparitions appear in front of me to feeling the Whaley's dog brush against my leg, I've always experienced something that my brother and mother never have. I've even caught orbs on camera in places where I felt an energy draw to me. Clearly I believe in ghosts and while it may sound crazy, I have always felt a connection to the "other side."

When we dove into the possible theory that Beloved could be Sethe's baby reincarnated and learned about the whole plot of the ghost that haunts her house, it immediately caught my attention. I really like how Morrison added this to the plot because it adds another layer to the novel that you don't usually read about in books set during slavery or about slavery. Whether you're a skeptic or a fully fledged believer, I think this element to the story line makes the book even more unique and intriguing than it already is.

Orb in the lower right corner

Orb by the outhouse in middle left corner

The white area that looks like Thomas Whaley

Tobacco Tin Heart

While I was trying to figure out what I wanted to write about for this post, I mulled over Paul D's metaphorical tobacco tin box. He's sealed off his heart and let it grow cold. He doesn't allow himself to feel as much as would be normal because he's scared of being getting hurt as a result of his attachments. He is very adamant that he does not open his box. I started to wonder why it was that Paul D/Toni Morrison decided to use the imagery of a tobacco tin as opposed to a more secure lock box. It would seem to me that that the kind of seal that Paul D wants would be better found in something meant to store things a long period of time as opposed to being opened on a regular basis, contents being withdrawn and consumed. I decided to look on Google Images to see if there was something about these tins that I was missing. Turns out I wasn't missing much. They're really just like little altoid tins for carcinogens.

The images Google provided mostly showed older worn down boxes. The boxes looked like they were cheap to manufacture and sell. I did a bit of research and found that the cost of their contents were also much cheaper than what they are now. The price of tobacco has been steadily rising over the years. At the time that Beloved is set, tobacco and its tins were most likely a cheap commodity that everyone had access to. I think it says a lot about Paul D's self image that he pictures his heart stored inside of such a cheap container. The dehumanization that he faced is reflected in the devaluing of his own heart.

As I consider the metaphor of the tin, more and more possible interpretations come to me. Maybe a tobacco tin would be very valuable to an ex-slave who was previously unable to own property, showing that he does still value his heart. Maybe he put his heart in an inconspicuous container to try conceal his "weak point" from those who would do him harm. Or, maybe he chose to leave his heart in a tobacco tin and not a safe because he does not feel that he is completely done with it yet. As I said before, tobacco tins are meant to be opened, and their contents are meant to be removed. Maybe his placement shows a willingness to come out of his shell eventually and settle down a bit more. Maybe he feels like his heart is like the tobacco that would have been inside the tin before his heart, shriveled and gray, but able to be kindled, shining until death. (Although unlike burning tobacco, a revived heart isn't inherently bad for the health of all those in the area.) I hope that Paul D is leaving himself open to the possibility of easing back into emotional health, eventually discarding the tobacco tin. What do you think? Can you think of other better interpretations?

Smeagol Meets Sethe

Although The Lord of the Rings and Beloved look like two completely different books -- and they are -- I’ve found a lot of similarities between the two. Obviously, Morrison’s novel deals with very real issues and is grounded in a lot more truth than Tolkien’s magic-filled fantasy. But, perhaps The Lord of the Rings, despite taking place in an entirely different universe, encompasses some of the same issues as Beloved.

At its core, the ring seeks to control. First its user, then the rest of the world; the ring will not stop until it dominates everything. Unable to resist the temptation of power that comes with the ring, mankind is unable to destroy it. Even hobbits, one of the purest and wholesome species in Middle Earth, have trouble fighting the ring. Like a sickness, it festers in its user, stripping away their humanity. Smeagol, once a carefree hobbit, became something else when he found the ring. As a result of the rings power, Smeagol killed his friend, ate raw fish, and isolated himself from everyone. Smeagol eventually took on the name Gollum, marking the ring’s success in replacing Smeagol’s identity.

I think this situation is akin to Sethe and Paul D’s. Although the power dynamic is slightly different, their lifelong struggle with slavery and its ramifications are not too different from Smeagol and his ring’s. Slavery, like the ring, has taken Sethe and Paul D’s identity and humanity. Even after its abolishment, slavery takes its toll (at the time Beloved takes place and now). Sethe wishes she was crazy and Paul D relies on his tobacco tin more than his heart. Americans, then and now, struggle to end racism and sacrifice the power that accompanies it.

Morrison's Depiction of Neither Positive nor Negative Relationships

Paul D, a man who comes into 124, physically and figuratively shakes up the familiar relationships, throws Sethe into an unrecognizable emotional state, and evidently gets displaced by a ghost roaming the house, Toni Morrison uses this character to project the myriad of experiences, reflection, and pain of a African-American male in the Antebellum period. Morrison stalls his relationship with Sethe in front of her audience, through times where we've appreciated Paul D's presence, and times we've resented his ignorance towards his selfish treatment of Sethe. Not only does he equate a female with the home she lives in, saying;

  "He believed he was having house-fits, the glassy anger men sometimes feel when a woman's house   begins to bind them, when they want to yell and break something or at least run off. He knew all about that—felt it lots of times—in the Delaware weaver's house, for instance. But always he associated the  house-fit with the woman in it. This nervousness had nothing to do with the woman […] Also in this   house-fit there was no anger, no suffocation, no yearning to be elsewhere. He just could not, would not, sleep upstairs or in the rocker or, now, in Baby Suggs' bed. So, he went to the storeroom" (135).

Moreover, this thought process begins to be hypocritical, quoting "whom he loved (Sethe) a bit more everyday: [...] the blood in her eye when she defended her girls" (136); only to later break up with Sethe on the grounds that she had taken the life of her children to keep them from experiencing the most inhumane and degrading systematic oppression this country, and very much the world, has ever known. His vision of love pertains to a larger basis of insecurity in masculinity. The fact that Paul D would have rather impregnated Sethe than admit to having emotional struggle and turmoil is a point Morrison is portraying through his fluctuating treatment of Sethe. Men, especially at the time, were defined by their physical toughness. If a woman was to assert this "dominance" over a man, the male was not considered a man. The emotional struggles Paul D is going through at the time of his dissent from 124 relate back to his sexual encounter with Beloved. Having been raped, Paul D no longer feels his manhood is honored in the house of 124, as he has been made to feel unsafe in his own body, pressured into sexual acts, and socially isolated. Morrison ends the chapter right before the beginning of Part II by Sethe nonchalantly waving off Paul D's point to end their relationship. By ending the chapter with Sethe thinking: "Sweet. He must think I can't bear to hear him say it. That after all I have told him and after telling me how many feet I have, "goodbye" would break me into pieces. Ain't the sweet" (195). 

The audience is left feeling proud that Sethe is remaining unaffected by his absence and harsh insults, but also a large loss of a character's right to finally feel as if they are the person in control of their actions. This confusion is one of many ways Morrison depicts the lasting effects of slavery and how to many people at the time, slavery was mentally inescapable. We, as the audience, must not overlook the pain that both the main characters have gone through individually, and how they in turn allow for the treatment of one another. 

Baby Suggs, Hopeful

In Beloved, Morrison crafts a multitude of complex and interesting characters, almost all of whom struggle through intense oppression and grief throughout the novel. Baby Suggs certainly has her share of traumas to work through, but despite this she maintains a larger than life presence. Her work on the underground railroad as well as protecting Sethe and her children personally identify her as a larger-than-life beacon of hope. People's intense reverence and belief in her, from Halle's willingness to buy her out of slavery to her common suffix of "holy", further demonstrate her enigma-ness.  However, when Sethe does the unthinkable, Baby Suggs retreats - marking the loss of hope and the era of fear in 124. 

Baby Suggs work within the black community mark her as the human embodiment of hope. She ran 124 as a safehouse for escaping slaves - already instilling countless fugitive slaves with hope as they made it one stop further to freedom - and while there, served as a pseudo-preacher. In her Clearing, she called children to laugh, men to dance, and women to cry, allowing them to cope with their griefs and fears as fugitive slaves (103). She would tell the crowd that, "the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine" (103). She preached what was feasible, she gave them hope not through some divine god but through the autonomy of themselves, of the community, of humanity. She gave them hope they could actually use. 

Clearly, others had hope in her. Otherwise, she would not have been called "Baby Suggs, holy". More than this, Halle had great hope in his mother. She states that it was almost foolish for Halle to buy her out of slavery so late in her life, she had very few years left to live even if they were free. Why then, did Halle give up years of Sundays for Baby Suggs? He had hope in her. He had hope in freedom. Halle believed so firmly in the promise of a better life outside slavery that he was willing to give up what little freedom he had to give someone else full freedom. For Halle, Baby Suggs represented the hope of a better life, which is why he was willing to work so hard to get her out of Sweet Home. 

Once Sethe commits The Misery, Baby Suggs is no longer representative of people's hopes and dreams. She retreats into a room, searching aimlessly for her own hope by thinking through colors. 124 becomes barren, no longer the hotspot for hopeful runaways on the Underground Railroad. Halle never makes it to 124, never gets the freedom he believed in so hard and paid so much for. When she finally and truly dies, Sethe and Denver are left alone in the haunted house, with no hope of ever being accepted and loved again by society. 

Throughout the novel, Baby Suggs is a vessel and representation of various character's hopes. She is a manifestation of the hope the Underground Railroad brought to fugitive slaves, a proof of Halle's hope in a free life, and her retreat and death mark the point at which 124 lost all hope of being a normal and not frightful house. In Beloved, Baby Suggs truly earns the title 'Baby Suggs, Hopeful'.

The True Power of Morrison's White Point of View Chapter

Throughout the novel of Beloved, we as readers are only exposed to a certain point of view. That point of view is from the enslaved point of view. Protagonists such as Sethe, Paul D, Halle, and Denver who were either enslaved or have a family history of oppression are the protagonists for this novel. Although, in the passage my group had from pages 174-176, the point of view changes to the white race.

Through the white point of view, it is quite easy to see how they viewed Blacks during this specific time period. For instance, on page 176 the schoolteacher thinks to himself about Sethe,"besides having at least ten breeding years left." The diction in this specific line is outstanding, Morrison conveys that Whites thought African Americans more like animals and property then they did as actual human beings. I found the words "breeding years" especially significant. Something about those words hits you hard. I noticed that that one sentence in the entire passage explained the entire White mindset about African Americans. Having read lots of readings and history textbooks about the history of slavery, you become blocked from the emotional side of slavery. Morrison opens these doors back up with ease, showing the true dehumanization of African Americans put in place by Whites.

A few other instances caught my eye. On page 175 from the Sheriff's point of view, he thinks,"A crazy old nigger was standing in the woodpile with an ax. You could he was crazy right off...". The sad part about this quotation is the audience knows that the "crazy black man" is actually a kind and genuine man, Stamp Paid. This further demonstrates the butchered white point of view and they had no emotional feelings toward slaves. Slaves were not even considered human enough to care for, but it was easy for them to make assumptions based on how they looked or acted.

What do you guys think of this? Do you agree with my quotes and how they support that the white point of view illuminates just how dehumanizing Whites were to Blacks?

What our History Books Don't Teach Us

When we learn about the Civil War and Reconstruction in our American history classes, African-Americans are rarely afforded any agency. In these classes we learn to be patriotic, an easy task when you only learn the parts of American history where we "pull ourselves up by our bootstraps" and fight for democracy. "How did we go from a small British colony to a leading world power?" The answer is multifaceted, but a big part of this growth came from slave labor. The exponential economic development throughout the 19th century was actually a direct result of slave labor, but of course that fact has been erased from our textbooks. African-Americans fought in both the Revolutionary and Civil wars, yet we rarely learn about black people during this time period as being anything other than slaves.

Toni Morrison counters this problematic narrative. Morrison gives her contemporary audiences insight into the African-American experience in Antebellum America. She provides us with extremely complex characters who display a full understanding of their situations. She shows us their agency, their emotional strength, but most importantly, their vulnerability. Toni Morrison gives African-Americans something that most of our history books fail to afford them: a chance to be more than just former slaves.

As someone who is very interested in American history and has studied it in depth, I am disappointed that there is so much missing in our traditional narrative. This being said, I am so glad we are reading this book. The perspectives and insights here are truly valuable, and I hope everyone takes a minute to question why we haven't heard them before.

Love is all Freedom Consists of

Love in Beloved by Toni Morrison is something each of the characters seem to be endlessly chasing after. Love is something that is in human nature to crave and be dependent on. Love is something humans often recklessly distribute.

Morrison uses love to bring people together, rip them apart, build them or and tear them down. She is able to manipulate one feeling and action to construct a complex novel that links love with freedom. Through Sethe, and others, Morrison touches on just how capable and compelling love truly is.

Throughout the novel, slavery is experienced and referenced. Morrison uses such a institution to demonstrate just how demolishing the absence of love can be. The enslaved lust after and cry-out for love. With the lack of freedom, there is inevitable shortage of love.

As the novel continues and Sethe gives birth and is forced to face the realization that her baby girl will lead the same devastating life she did. Sethe's love for her daughter prompts her to murder Beloved, as an act of prevention of slavery. She has so much love for her daughter she is about to take her own life just to keep her from her calamitous life as a slave. She believes she has just given Beloved freedom from a lifetime of pain and suffering.

Morrison builds a bond between love and freedom by writing about having the genuine choice to choose who you love. Sethe speaks of this with, "... to get to a place where you could love anything you chose--not to need permission for desire-- well now, that was freedom" (191). She feels pure freedom and power when she can love who she want, how she wants, when she wants. 

Through Sethe's trials and actions, Morrison cultivates love in is breath taking light. Beloved suggests that love is a all-powerful feeling that can lead people to do things they never thought they could. As well as the fact that, love will provide natural power and absolute freedom. 

The Unconventional Slave Narrative

As we reach the conclusion of part one of the novel in our reading, the reader is left with what is most nearly, a meditative reflectiveness. Beloved, thus far has transcended a binary reading; it is a layered and polished work that retains meaning yet to be discovered after even the fourth or fifth readthrough. Morrison is rather admirable at her craft because she has thus-far presented a skillfully woven reading in slave-era America literature that deviates from more-or-less linear and recycled theme that we've seen in other slave narratives throughout our academic careers.

As much as it may be present throughout the telling of the novel, the derived themes surrounding the cruelty of the white man and the extortion of the black man/woman was hardly a central focus. As effective and as powerful as the message is in highlighting the oppression and racism can be in the traditional slave narrative, the trials of the Sethe's, Paul D's, Baby Sugg's, and Stamp Paid's past, in Beloved, serves as just one of many vehicle used to convey the true meaning of the work. Morrison's characters are complex and thoughtful, genuine and in fact, very human. Morrison humanizes them -portraying them as so much more than the pitiable victims of slavery's oppression. With this in mind, it becomes clear to me that this is quite intentional and that Morrison doesn't want us to linger in the unfairness and cruelty of our characters' past. Morrison builds her characters and presents them to the reader through emotions and interactions, and not through the futility of the white man's iron grip. The excerpts of Sethe and Paul D in their slaving days were just a few of many catalysts to the characters' complex and emotional present.

It is within those raw interactions that the reader comes to understand and empathize with the main character on a more layered and profound level. While the traditional slave novel can serve its purpose to unbridled success, Morrison's Beloved is unlike anything I have ever read because of how daring it defers from tropes and expectedness of the genre.

Freedom and Self-Identity After Slavery

Toni Morrison's Beloved contains many accurate and in depth portrayals of slavery and its effects on its victims. It is hailed in its depiction of slavery and its dehumanizing effects on slaves. The book has gruesome and vivid depictions of those effects, notably in Sethe and Paul D's troubles with communicating their experiences and coming to terms with what they experienced,

However, Beloved provides a glimpse into another aspect of post-slavery life for African American's that other sources rarely take into account: coming to terms with their newfound independence. Baby Suggs, possibly more so than the other characters, demonstrates this revolutionary period in every recently freed slaves life.

She begins her life as a free woman with an air of uncertainty. She asks herself why she needs freedom after losing so much and living so long as a slave, but she begins to understand its importance. She starts to notice her hands, they're her own. Her heart beats, signifying her very own life. Baby Suggs goes from skeptical to entranced with her newfound freedom in the matter of a short wagon ride.

What she does with that entrancement furthers the importance of this essential experience. Baby Suggs strives to assert her independence in any way she can, starting with disavowing her slave name, a name she had never before heard herself called (Jenny Whitlow) in favor of the name Baby Suggs she had adhered to herself from her husband. What's more, she preaches self-love and independence to her "congregation" to further assert that newfound experience.

Beloved displays an aspect of life as a freed slave little acknowledge and rarely seen through its telling of the characters first experiences with freedom. It presents a powerful and beautifully worded description of just how important those experiences are, and how intrinsic they are to the human condition.

The Discovery of Halle

From the beginning of the book, we are introduced to the father of Sethe's children and the son of Baby Suggs, Halle. Although we never directly meet him, we begin to get a sense of who he his from flashbacks from Sethe and later on Paul D. For a while it is a question to Sethe and the reader as to where did Halle go? Is he dead? Did he escape but end up going somewhere else? Where could he be?

As the years went on, Sethe seemed to give up on him in a way, coming to the conclusion that Halle just left her and their children all alone. But with the appearance of Paul D., we get some closure from this looming question in all of our heads. Sethe responded to Paul's question as to why she did not consider Halle to be a good man because "he did worse; he left his children". Paul D. reveals to Sethe that Halle saw what happened at the loft in the barn. For Halle, witnessing the incident broke what little humanity he had as a slave. As a result of the incident, Halle broke, he realized that he was just a powerless slave, the whole thing "'broke him like a twig'" (81). He then went arguably insane, he could no longer stand himself and the life he was forced to live. The last time Paul D. saw Halle, he was sitting by the butter churn with butter all over his face. Sethe goes on to say that the reason as to why Halle had the butter all over his face was "because the milk they took is on his mind" (83). Because of this one incident, Halle's life, family, and whole world in shattered having no real way to cope with what just happened, Halle reverted to anything he could. Slavery reveals its true self to Halle in showing him that it's not just about the lack of freedom and deference for a "master" but as a complete lack of power in life, stripping away any and everything that makes a human a human being.

Ironically, learning that Halle had rubbed butter all over his face after witnessing what happened to Sethe completely changed Sethe's view of who and what Halle was. Same goes for Halle, just after witnessing what happened in the loft, his perspective of who he was changed. Sethe learns at the end of the day that she will do anything to keep her children from the life of slavery, and she learns that Halle was a good husband after all but he could not handle the feeling of powerlessness. The event that destroys Halle eventually empowers Sethe to defy the schoolteacher. 

The Power of Beloved

I find it really interesting how Beloved talks about slavery. Everyone in the book has had past trauma of being a slave, running away, not knowing their parents, etc. Yet it is never outright said that they were slaves. It is one of the few fictional books I've read about slavery, and it is definitely the most memorable. I think that the most powerful aspect of this novel is that I am able to really feel what the characters feel, and imagine what I would do and how I would feel if I was put in that situation. That is a really powerful feeling.  I think that everyone should read this book to learn about slavery because it doesn't just present you with facts, it allows you to empathize with the people, and get a sense of what their lives were like during that time.

The Rooster's Purpose

Paul D's description of the rooster Mister is one that is much like how a slave would describe one of their master's. Just the name "Mister" is exactly what a slave would refer to their master as. Paul D describes the situation  when he says,"'I wasn't even thinking about the bit. Just Halle and before him Sixo, but when I saw Mister I knew it was me too. Not just them, me too. One crazy, one sold, one missing, one burnt and me licking iron with my hands crossed behind me. The last of the Sweet Home men...Mister was allowed to be and stay what he was. But I wasn't allowed to be and stay what I was'"(Morrison 86).

The entire life of a slave is filled with a lack of freedom. This lack of freedom exists because of the chattel slavery that the slaves are forced to endure. From the moment they are born, they are forced to feel less than human. But, it is at this point in Paul D's life that he only feels the animalistic nature he is forced to live and not the human side. He does not only feel like an animal, he feels less than an animal. Mister is his superior in this instance.

This description of Paul D's experience with the iron bit is one of the most valuable descriptions of slavery that Toni Morrison provides. Even though the setting of the story is in post civil-war America, Morrison utilizes her seamless use of point of view manipulation to incorporate an important part of American history in her story that incorporates supernatural elements.

Putting Ourselves Back into the World of Slavery

There are plenty of stories that bring us, as readers, right back into the brutal years of slavery. Many people refrain from talking about the subject in present day because it is a gruesome topic to talk about and it is quite disturbing. Although, still many resources, such as Beloved by Toni Morrison, bring us back into the immediate post-slavery condition.

It is extremely important for every one of us to read and put ourselves back into this time period in history. If we were to forget that slavery ever happened in our world, we would be more prone to taking the same course of action in the future. For instance, if these intense stories were not told and we did not feel emotionally vulnerable reading them, then we could not make a connection to what the slaves or post-slaves were feeling during and after slavery. We would be much more susceptible to reliving our past mistakes.

For instance, great novels such as Rolling Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor and Beloved exhibit the toughness of life after slavery. Rolling Thunder Hear My Cry is set in the time period of the Great Depression and still it is easily seen that the racism against African Americans was still incredibly strong. This was nearly 65 years after slavery was ended by the 13th Amendment. Without these great novels, we would know of slavery but we would not hold the emotional value that most of us do have. We see from reading these pieces of literature that these were human beings that we were enslaving, treating like animals with no rights. If these books were not present in our lives, slavery would just be a story and almost seem like a myth. It would simply be something we learned about, and not something that we cared about.

In education today, I do believe that slavery is taken halfheartedly because children have been learning about it since they became proficient readers. Learning about slavery is crucial to our future and our equality, but it does leave students a little worn out and they do not understand the severity of the slavery situation. Slavery should still be taught the same way it is being taught now in school, but students need to begin to realize that these were real people that were slaves, not just words in a book.

What do you guys think of my comments? Are pieces of literature about slavery and post-slavery crucial to our generation? What would happen if these novels and stories about that time period were not around?

Modern-day Slavery

Throughout my 12 years in school, I have read countless articles, short stories, and novels based on slavery or about slavery. I think over the years, students' ears have become numb to the term slavery just because it is so widely discussed and taught in school. It is not that children have stopped caring, just that they have lost sight of its true weight. Slavery is still prevalent in our world today and should continue to be taught through all levels of schooling.

I find slavery so fascinating in the way that I can't wrap my head around how human beings were once treated so poorly on the same land that I live on today. However, our "progressive" world that we live in today has not progressed as far as we like to believe, as Ta-Nehisi Coates argues. In fact, there is a living, breathing example of slavery that is a humongous issue in the United States right now- the prison system.

The Netflix documentary, Thirteenth, displays the similarities between slavery and the US prison system; the truth is shocking. The film explains a loophole in the 13th amendment that the government has been able to use to get away with slave-labor in the jails. The amendment states, "Neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

The evidence of this exploitation goes all the way back to 1865, just following the Civil War. After the Confederates economy was decimated, they needed a way to boost income. However, they could not use slaves, as they had been doing. So, they found a loophole in the amendment and re-enlisted many slaves for minor offenses. The South now had free labor.

Since then, our courts system has gotten out of control and has allowed millions of African Americans with minor charges to be placed in prison for unnecessary sentences. The documentary's first line is that one in four African American men will serve prison time at some point in their life. The probability for white men is tremendously smaller.

When I think about slavery, our prison system is not the first thing to come to mind. However, it should be. It is our modern-day construction of slavery and it is not going away until we, as Americans, see it for what it really is.

While very upsetting, it is the truth that we continue to live in a racist society. But putting racism on the back-burner and arguing that slavery is in the past and not necessary to teach our children works against us. In order to live in a racially equal society, everyone must be knowledgeable and everyone must be held accountable for knowing his/her history. We cannot build a successful, loving world off of ignorance.