Throughout the novel so far, I have not really felt as engaged by the ghosts as I thought I would be. Maybe later on they will be fleshed out, but at the moment, they all feel half baked. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as having a few underdeveloped mentions of spirits is better than a ghost hunting book set in the 1800s. But, I really would have liked Morrison to have elaborated more on Beloved while she was still a ghost. I understand that it might have been to fit into the theme of memory, and may not have been what she was going for, but it feels like the mentions of what Beloved did before Paul D chased her out were halfhearted. Or maybe Morrison was going for this feeling? Maybe it made more sense with the emphasis on memory to treat the ghost's actions as not important enough to remember. I am not sure.
There is, however, the part about the ghost of the Native American in the ruins. Instead of just feeling kind of vague, which could very well be intentional, it feels more like it was slapped in. Sixo goes to the trouble of appeasing the spirit, but in the end he finds the girl he wanted to meet in the forest. Morrison could have very easily just had Sixo find a barn or just skipped the house entirely, but instead she writes shortly about Native Americans and respecting the land of those who lived there before. Why? Sure, it is good to acknowledge the struggle of the people here before us, but it really feels out of place, the ghost especially. Maybe it was used to establish similarities between the struggles of two oppressed groups, or maybe it was again used in order to further the idea of random and non-nonsensical memory. But to me, it feels kind of slapped in, just like many of the ghosts.
It is up for debate whether the ghosts are relatively undeveloped in this story because Morrison felt that it would detract from the main story, or because she intended the ghosts to represent the memories of past generations and things like the Native American just easily filled that role, or to continue the idea that memory does not make logical sense most of the time, or for some reason other than these. I personally think, though, that Morrison developed the idea of Beloved haunting and then coming back to life and then added the segments about the other ghosts and the old Beloved after in order to establish that ghosts are normal in the novel's world. It does not, however, really detract from the experience of the book, nor does it contribute significantly to the meaning of the work, so in the end it is only a minor, nit picky complaint that hasn't changed the fact that I am enjoying the story so far.
It seems to me as if the ghost in the 'present day' timeline of the novel have been an afterthought. It seems like most of the character development throughout the story has been told through flashback, and the ghost of the present are the lingering demons of the character's past. I feel the primary function of the spirits is to condemn Sethe, Sixo and the others to their past, and not serve so much as a dynamic and developed entity.
ReplyDeleteI actually like the way the ghosts are woven into the book. I think the subtlety of the spirits is key to portraying the normalization of haunting in the book. This normalization is important because it puts an emphasis on how much death really happened at that time. Generally, haunting is supposed to be a result of a violent or unhappy death, so it would make sense that ghosts are prevalent during that time period. What I wonder is if ghosts are as normal to white people in the book? Or if it is just a representation of slavery haunting black people, even after the war.
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