Contents:
Everyone is astonished and appalled by this turn of events which Morrison discovered in an old newspaper account of the period. Baby Suggs is never the same again; Sethe is shunned by her fellow citizens; Denver grows up isolated and suspicious. Morrison is careful, though, to indicate that while this is a pivotal event in the lives of everyone, it is not the climax, or the worst thing to have happened to Sethe and her loved ones.
The climax of the historical narrative is, in fact, the night of the escape, when several of the escapees were hanged and mutilated, while the present-time narrative builds to Denver's decision to separate herself from what is apparently a life-and-death struggle between Sethe and Beloved, and to go out and find work and friends that will help her save herself.
One of the reasons Beloved is a great novel is that it is equally full of sensations and of meaning. Morrison knows exactly what she wants to do and how to do it, and she exploits every aspect of her subject. The characters are complex. Both stories are dramatic but in contrasting ways, and the past and the present constantly modify each other. Neither half of the novel suffers by contrast to the other. Especially worth noting is Morrison's style, which is graphic, evocative and unwhite without veering toward dialect. Even though Morrison rejects realism, using a heightened diction and a lyrical narrative method returning again and again to particular images and events and adding to them so they are more and more fully described, the reader never doubts the reality of what Morrison reports.
Just as Sethe recognises Beloved toward the end of the novel, and knows at once that she has known all along who she is, the reader is shocked at the sufferings of the black characters and the brutality of the whites, but knows at once that every torture and cruelty is not only plausible but also representative of many other horrors that go unmentioned in the novel and have gone unmentioned in American history. Harriet Beecher Stowe was accused in her time of exaggerating the cruelties in Uncle Tom's Cabin, and she replied that in fact she whitewashed events to render them publishable.
This novel feels very like that; powerful, life changing events being difficult to pin down. Its shocking nauseating , beautiful, difficult to read at times, difficult to stop reading, difficult to stop thinking about when you've finished. I suppose I'll read it again in 10 years to see if I learn anything new from it. Toni Morrison's writing isn't "great". It is mind blowing.
This book reads almost like poetry. It's a really, really, really heavy story- a woman escapes slavery with her four young children, only to reach freedom in Ohio right about the time the Fugitive Act was enacted. Her former owner comes for her and her children, and she makes a desperate decision to take her children's lives, rather than have them live enslaved.
As time goes on, the ghost of the daughter she killed haunts their house and makes trouble in her life. She and her living daughter, Denver, try to summon the ghost, and a few weeks later a mysterious young woman shows up and basically moves in with them. Highly recommended- take your time and read this one bunch of times. It can be really painful. But it is beautifully written and important to read. I had purchased it previously but was not able to get into if for some reason.
I think a better goal instead of increasing my total on the list of the Great American read would just be to read all of Toni Morrison. I'm now two to the good. Absolutely beautiful prose, characters, plot, etc. I feel changed after reading this book. So complex, so painful, so painfully beautiful, such life in the telling of this story. As a Black queer womyn, I have grown tired of the handling slavery narrative. Of the laziness of its use and overuse as a point of reference.
But what Morrison does so well is bring life to the complexities of Black life and love in the face of the worst part of American history. I would even go as far to say, it goes beyond the political. I don't even know if this review will capture all that I think and feel and see after reading this book. Beloved was a tough book to read, it is composed of flashbacks and memories narrated in no chronological order which makes it hard to understand.
After a few pages I almost gave up. But then I realized It would be very interesting to read a renowned novel that contains a poetic examination of slavery. However, I decided to continue reading the book. As I was going through the pages I was getting involved in the story and picturing all the details written by Morrison. I would definitely recommend this book and give 5 stars to this incredible and magical piece of art. I am convinced that Toni Morrison is the best writer in the world. My gosh--how can someones soul paint such vivid and emotional characters, era, such real feelings.
Not the best place and era to be transported to but Professor Morrison will certainly do it. This book alone put Toni Morrison in a category all by herself I mean I can go on and on and on and on about her literary style, gifts and etc. If you haven't read this yet it's a must for a realistic escape. This is a true masterpiece by one of America's premier writers. It is so much more than a ghost story, although it is that too.
It is a novel that probes to the very heart of what it means to be human, that explores why the past is never really past, how desperation can lead to both unthinkable acts and the resulting shunning by society. I read this when it first came out and found it difficult and troubling. Now, twenty years later, I found it deeply satisfying. It spoke truth to my heart. I feel like Morrison has a certain reputation and associations that are completely at odds with what her work is actually like.
Maybe it's the Toni-with-an-i thing; it's definitely the Oprah connection and the fact that she's a lady author, but whatever the reasons, I feel like people who haven't read her believe that Morrison writes these lovely, lyrical, ladylike books that will soften the heart and elevate the soul I mean, she really must be in order to write these things.
I can't imagine what it would be like to have this incredibly twisted stuff come out of my brain Of course, the most horrific parts of the book aren't invented; Morrison clearly spent a lot of time researching the historical record of slavery and thinking about its effects and meaning, and her ability to wrest a novel like this out of that past is just incomprehensible It's interesting to see how divided people on this site are about Morrison.
I think that's pretty understandable when you consider her subject matter. Some girl on here was like, "UGH! Beastiality, rape, torture, infanticide In a weird way, this felt a bit like the anti-Proust: The book is about the problem of memory, specifically the memory of trauma, both on a personal and national level. I feel like everyone always wants to write these great books about the most terrible shit, but the fact is that doing so right is incredibly hard, which is maybe why there're so many bad books about tragedy and so many good books about boring people's mundane little problems.
You really have to know what you're doing to write about the most terrible shit well, and Morrison picked THE most terrible shit in America's past, then wrote an original and organic ghost story that deserves its hallowed place in American literature Ya know, one thing we think about in social work school or that I thought about, anyway is the relationship between macro events or phenomena e.
This book depicts the effects of slavery on people -- individually and collectively -- with, just, well, shattering genius. But don't try this at home, folks! She is a lady of unusual talent and skills, and in most people's clumsy hands this effort'd be dangerous. Beloved isn't flawless, and it's not one of my all-time favorite books or anything. However, it is a great classic, and I think everyone who hasn't already should read it A lot of people on here, as noted, hate this book.
If you struggle to follow a slightly nonlinear narrative or are white and feel personally affronted by descriptions of historical wrongs perpetrated by white people on black people, you might chose another book club selection. Everyone else, though, I think should give this a go, especially if you love ghost stories! I just had a really fun idea for a literary double date, which would be Cathy from Wuthering Heights with Beloved, and Medea with Sethe. They could all go on the Oprah show together and talk about their traumatic experiences! I would definitely, definitely watch that, and I bet other people would too.
View all 42 comments. Anyone with 'human' emotions. I am sleepless and I need a moment to organize my thoughts, sort out my feelings. Come back to real life. A part of me is still with Sethe and her daughters, Denver and Beloved at A part of me "Beloved You are my sister You are my daughter You are my face; you are me I have found you again; you have come back to me You are my beloved You are mine You are mine" It's 6 o'clock in the morning and I have finished with one of the best books I have ever read in the course of my short life. A part of me is being tied to a pole and whipped mercilessly for eating a shoat I skinned, butchered and cooked myself.
A part of me is giving birth to children of fathers who forced themselves on me. A part of me is still wondering whether my husband Halle is out there alive and free or long dead. A part of me is burying the daughter I killed with a handsaw because I couldn't live to see her being pushed into the endless abyss of torture and humiliation that I had to endure myself.
A part of me is engraving the word 'Beloved' on the headstone of my dead girl, because she has no name. But it is not I.
Hidden within its walls are laments of the past that still affect the present. In the novel, Sethe's child, Beloved, who was murdered by the hands of her mother haunts her. I'm sure Sethe and Beloved will be there to hold my hands and lead me forward. The American slave trade can never be forgotten nor should it. Just consider this line: There were also som After reading numerous positive reviews about this novel online, I was excited to start on it. View all 64 comments.
It is Sethe and Sethe is not I. I'm not even Baby Suggs Sethe's mother-in-law who never had a chance to recognize that she was a human being with a beating heart. Baby Suggs, who only looked at her own hands at the sunset of life and came to the realization that they were her own. Her very own for her own use and not the use of another. Baby Suggs, who was forced to accept the "kindness" of being bought out of slave labour by her own son, at the cost of never seeing him again, never knowing what happened to him.
I'm not Paul D, being made to wear neck braces as punishment for an act of belligerence, unable to move his head. Deeply afraid of starting a new life and adding a purpose to it-not knowing what to do with the new-found freedom after the Civil War. Afraid of loving too much and losing too much because of it. I'm just a lucky Indian girl who was born in an era free from the worst form of human rights violation that ever existed on the planet. I was not alive during the period of systematic brutalization of one particular race by another just because one proclaimed racial superiority over the other.
I wasn't in the hell called 'Sweet Home'. And a part of me is with them and I still cannot wrest it away. I can perhaps ramble on and on and still be completely unable to write a proper review of 'Beloved'. And I won't even try to summarize the book in a few sentences, since that would be deeply irreverent of me. Beloved is not just a masterpiece, not even just a remarkable literary achievement. Beloved is the beauty of the resilience of the human spirit. Beloved is about hope and endurance. Beloved tells us about unspeakable cruelty and abuse inflicted on humanity by humanity itself.
Beloved reveals festering psychological wounds, deep emotional scars that could never ever heal. Beloved is profoundly lyrical and empathetic in its depiction of grotesque events that unfolded during the most ignominious part of America's history. Beloved wrenches your heart out, shreds it into a million tiny pieces but then stitches all the pieces together and hands your heart back to you - all bloodied and messed up. Maybe a few years down the line when I read Beloved again, I will write a more coherent review and sound less emotional.
Maybe I will get every cryptic message Toni Morrison intended for her reader to receive and decode. Maybe I will not. But I will try. And I will read this book again when I feel like my life is difficult or I can't go on anymore. I'm sure Sethe and Beloved will be there to hold my hands and lead me forward. I cannot write anymore. I must go and find myself another tissue.
But I just had to write this the way I did. View all comments. Jul 31, Mark Stone rated it did not like it Recommends it for: I don't give books low marks lightly. If anything, I am prone to being carried away by the author's enthusaism and rate books more highly than they deserve. I am an aspiring author, myself, and that also leads me to be kind to the books. That being said, I really hated this book. I like fantasy and magical realism. I find the dreams and allegories that live just underneath the skin of the world we can more readily see and touch endlessly fascinating.
I like my stories intense and emotional, and I I don't give books low marks lightly. I like my stories intense and emotional, and I like it when characters are so full of passion that it obscures their sense of the world around them. I found Beloved incomprehensible to the point of absurdity.
It's one thing to have a book that is full of magic and poetry or to have a character's passion overwhelm their ability to describe the world from time to time, but I also need to know what is going on. For the story to grab me, I need to know what the story is. Did I mention that I really hated this book? I know it's trendy to read Toni Morrison , but I recommend this book to absolutely no one. I found it a borderline insulting waste of my time. View all 76 comments. Something about the dense, poetic prose and the elliptical nature of the storytelling made it impenetrable.
About a third of the way in, I realized just how carefully Morrison had constructed the narrative, which pivots on two horrific events: The setting is , Ohio. Sethe and her daughter Denver live in a house on Bluestone Road. When Paul D enters the home, things begin to change. He and Sethe worked on the same plantation — called Sweet Home, ironic because it was anything but — decades earlier. They share history, good and bad, and harbour secrets from the other. Beloved overflows with stories: It takes a while to get all the names straight; I found myself flipping back to see when a character was introduced.
Other things that will haunt and disturb me: These are balanced out with scenes of kindness and generosity. The language is earthy yet majestic, with echoes of Faulkner and even the King James Bible. The point of view shifts repeatedly. Morrison gives you various takes on the same scene but spreads them throughout the book, so you circle around events trying to get to the truth.
Is the truth possible? Do some things remain unknowable? But like much great art, Beloved offers a glimmer of hope and redemption at the end. We need some kind of tomorrow. View all 41 comments. Beloved is a novel about haunting; it is a novel about the human inability to move on from the past and how easily it can resurface.
We may try to move on, but it never really leaves us. And when the past is painful and full of blood it echoes for an eternity. I Beloved is a novel about haunting; it is a novel about the human inability to move on from the past and how easily it can resurface. The American slave trade can never be forgotten nor should it. Although Beloved is the physical manifestation that is haunting her mother, the reality is somewhat different. It is her past; it is the injustice she faced and a decision she was forced to make that will never leave her.
Beloved is just the embodiment of it. The novel flicks around in time, moving forwards, backwards and then returning the present. Beloved is no light reading. It is a demanding book. The plot shifts around with little explanation, point of views change randomly and quickly. But, again, this is because the past never truly leaves us. We may be in the present, though our history will always haunt us. And here America is being haunted by her dark past.
The shackles may have been removed but each former slave will always feel them on their wrists biting into their skin. They flock together, building new communities out of those who experienced, and are still experiencing, the pain and hell slavery wrought them. They do their best to carry on and make new lives, though racial prejudice still remains.
And it will for many more years. But who are they now? There is also a sense of closeness, of inexperience. The world is a vast place, but for former slaves, for those born into slavery, it is dauntingly huge. Imagine spending your entire life in one enclosed space, knowing but a small handful of people, and then suddenly having the world made available to you. Where do you go? Where do you belong? Thus, men like Paul D are forced to wonder with no real sense of belonging. They go from town to town, relationship to relationship, without establishing a strong sense of identity or roots.
Pain permeates this narrative. It oozes out of the characters and their sad experiences. Morrison gets to the heart of the matter and she is uncompromising in her honesty. Certainly, not a novel to be missed though I was glad to finish it. View all 4 comments. Jun 24, Lisa rated it it was amazing Shelves: Sometimes reality is too painful to address in plain, simple narrative.
Sometimes truth has to be approached in circling movements, slowly getting to the heart of the matter through shifting, loosely linked stories that touch on the wound ever so lightly, without getting too close too fast. Sometimes I read to escape my reality, only to find myself in a universe endlessly more complicated, more painful, more difficult to understand and follow.
Sometimes basic statements like "I could never under Sometimes reality is too painful to address in plain, simple narrative. Sometimes basic statements like "I could never understand why a mother would kill her child" seem to dissolve, leaving a confused feeling of not knowing exactly anymore what is right and what is wrong, given specific cruel circumstances. Sometimes novels shake me and leave me scarred, endlessly sad and grateful at the same time.
Your voice sounds loud and clear through the fog of political thought. If you want to know what slavery does to people, read Beloved. It will not leave you unaffected. It left me speechless. View all 27 comments. Dec 21, Fabian rated it it was amazing. It has been a while since I last was online according to this computer's calculations: Because slavery is such a muddy record in our books, it is certain documents like these, which widen the scope significantly to include various P. The book mirrors the psyche of a woman who chooses liberating death for her child, rather than the awful clutch of slavery.
It decidedly marks a usually-undocumented moment when ex-slaves got something close to freedom-- and had to find out how to live, survive, or try to make way for the upcoming generation-- outside of slavery. View all 6 comments. Aug 25, Harpal Khalsa rated it did not like it Recommends it for: This is probably my least favorite book I have ever read.
I think I hate it even more because so many people like it so much. Unlike really trashy novels, people actually try to argue that this is a great book. But it definitely embodies all the things that make me hate books. It's heavy handed with its message, which ultimately ruins some pretty spectacular imagery. Its also just a giant pastiche of people who can actually write, which makes it just feel disjointed and annoying since it switche This is probably my least favorite book I have ever read.
Its also just a giant pastiche of people who can actually write, which makes it just feel disjointed and annoying since it switches between standard narration and stream of conciousness and surrealism in intensely awkward ways. It's not even like that switching between different narrative structures is inherently bad, but this book definitely does it in the most ridiculously annoying way of any book I have ever read.
Along with the heavy handedness of the whole affair is that this whole book is just trying to make me guilty for being white. It is probably one of the top 3 most unfortunate things in the history of the world that slavery not only ever existed but went on for so long, but I already get that. So really Toni, no need to beat that into my head with a bloody axe So to speak. Seriously, even thinking of the entire month I spent reading and analyzing this giant piece of trash gives me a headache.
I'm convinced that this book strikes the ultimate low-point on the acclaim vs. It's just artsy-fartsy nonsense for people who want to feel like they're reading real literature when they're not. I'm pretty sure I don't have proper words to express my hatred for this book Or, rather, if I expressed my hatred for this book, my words would not be proper , so I'll just leave it at that.
View all 34 comments. Broken hearts in search of mending. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. You who read me keep your repugnance and horror to yourself. I am here to tell you my story with an iron smile under my chin. The men without skin stole my milk so my mother punished them with my blood. I was the already crawling baby waiting to be loved. Which kind of unimaginable atrocities can lead a mother to murder her own baby to spare it a certain life full of humiliation and wanton abuse? How much suffering can a human being unde You who read me keep your repugnance and horror to yourself.
How much suffering can a human being undergo before he loses touch with reality and turns to derangement as the only way to cope? But I do wonder, derangement or conscientious remembrance as a sort of self-inflicted punishment? Set in the s Ohio, this story reveals, in a disturbingly subtle and poignant way, the real value of freedom as opposed to a life of slavery. Baby Suggs, the mother of her spouse -only in the eyes of God- Halle, tries to warn her about the risks of being a slave woman and insisting on loving her children too dearly.
But Sethe blooms with the seed of light which is growing inside her and plans an escape with her family to be able to love freely. Until one fateful day, when the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, disguised as men without skin, come to take what they believe to be their right. They come to teach a lesson to these proud animals which have had the boldness to believe they can be human beings. They undermine the body and tear the flesh, proving their power and manhood, forcing their entrance. They arise as the masters, squeezing all kind of fluxes from emaciated carcasses: But not tears, never tears.
The fluxes blend into a streaming river of sorrow and lost hopes which will never reach the cleansing waters.
They wear out the spirit and subjugate the soul, chocking and chopping. The hummingbirds sing, flapping their wings, and the sunbeams shine through the branches of the trees, which are now adorned with hanging limbless torsos. The natural world, which becomes the imperturbable setting for this irrational carnage, watches as an indifferent spectator. She only has time to spare one before she is stopped. Or a selfless, desperate act of a loving mother? An individual might not find enough strength in him to exorcise the ghosts from his past, to break free from his long life bondages, to recover from the nonhealing wounds of his soul.
But when embraced by the nourishing arms of the community, when allowed to enter its collective memories and sorrows, he becomes miraculously empowered to banish his worst nightmares, to let go of the shame and the guilt. A future, free from the shadow of slavery is possible then, where a so much coveted peace of mind can be envisioned, where the hummingbirds will sing and the sundrenched grass will gleam in harmony with smiling faces instead of iron grimaces and scarred necks.
Slave life; freed life- every day was a test and a trial. I am the girl and I am still waiting to be loved. This is not a story to pass on. This is a story to forget so that a new beginning can be born. View all 64 comments. Nothing better than that to start the day's serious work of beating back the past.
It seems to be a good book to read in the light of the recent discussion on the Roots reboot, as well as the recent New York Times article which discusses how African-American DNA bears signs of slavery. I feel that for many thi "Working dough. I feel that for many this isn't too much of a surprise. This was a tough read, even tougher the second time around. I never get used to books like this; if anything they get more painful as I become more and more aware of what slavery consisted of.
One of the things that always gets to me when reading slave narratives is the burdens the slaves had to endure and with little to no help, but I'm learning about the little things they did to try to endure and survive. Some of their methods may not sound healthy, from our perspectives for example, limiting love because you know that any time your family could be taken away from you , but this book shows us in many ways how unless we are in a certain situation, it's really impossible for us to know how we'll react to it. At the beginning of the book, former slave Baby Suggs is contemplating colour, all because she is about to die and she has never had the time to do so before.
The world of a slave is small and it doesn't belong to them. And even with freedom the past still haunts them: Paul D and Sethe's love story is against the odds, with Paul D guarding his heart and Sethe still recovering from deaths, abuse, and children running away.
Two very broken people, and Paul D with this sort of mentality: Its lid rusted shut. He would not pry it loose now in front of this sweet sturdy woman, for if she got a whiff of the contents it would shame him.
And it would hurt her to know that there was no red heart bright as Mister's comb beating in him. Would it be all right to go ahead and feel? Go ahead and count on something?
I pictured her loneliness, loneliness that caused her to value the company of a ghost, which is why she clung to Beloved, who demands so much attention and affection. I ended up liking her character transformation the most: View all 24 comments. Sep 28, Kelly and the Book Boar rated it it was ok Shelves: Find all of my reviews at: I realize this is a classic and a Pulitzer Prize winner and yada yada yada, but oh my goodness am I glad to be done.
Going in to this book I knew nothing about it except for the fact that it was on the Banned Books List and that Oprah said I should read it. I did manage to finish, but WHAT. There are only about 47 Find all of my reviews at: I will say that Beloved is the only book I can remember reading where I was in love with the story but hated the way it was told.
As for Beloved being touted one of the best books of all time????
Thanks for nothing, Oprah! View all 30 comments. Sep 12, Jason Pettus rated it it was amazing Shelves: Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally. In which I read for the first time a hundred so-called "classics," then write reports on whether or not they deserve the label Book Beloved , by Toni Morrison The story in a nutshell: To understand the importance of 's Beloved , you need to understand that before this first Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.
To understand the importance of 's Beloved , you need to understand that before this first novel of hers, author Toni Morrison was already a respected executive within the publishing industry, and a highly educated book-loving nerd; this is what made it so frustrating for her during the s and '80s, after all, when trying to look back in history for older books detailing the historical black experience, and finding almost nothing there because of past industry discrimination, general withholding of education from blacks for decades, etc. This novel, then, is Morrison's attempt to partially right this wrong, loosely using a real historical record from the s she once discovered when younger and obsessed upon for years, the story of a slave woman her age who once voluntarily killed her own child rather than let her be taken back to slave territory.
In Morrison's case, the novel is set in the decade following the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, up in Ohio in the northern US where so many former slaves fled during the so-called "Reconstruction" of the American South in those years. As such, the actual plotline resembles the beginnings of what we now call "magical realism," a style that has become virtually its own new sub-genre in literary fiction in the last twenty years; because not only is this woman's house haunted by a violent poltergeist, but eventually even a young woman appears claiming to be Beloved herself, the bizarre revenge-seeking reincarnated version of the very daughter this woman killed during the Civil War years.
Or is she a runaway taking chance advantage of intimate knowledge she randomly happened to learn through odd circumstances? And does it matter? Just as is the case with most great postmodern literature, Beloved actually tackles a lot of different bigger issues in a metaphorical way, perhaps the more important point altogether than the details of the magical part of the plot, which never does get fully resolved in a definitive way even by the end; it is instead a novel about love, about family, about responsibility, about the struggle between innate intelligence and a formal education.