Beloved- Context

Question 1

What is the importance of Oral Tradition (within the novel)?

Answer 1

Oral Tradition: the passing on of stories through word of mouth. It became a fundamental aspect of communication amongst African-Americans during the slave trade.

• Baby Suggs and the Clearing
• The story of Denver’s birth
• Toni Morrison: says it is “not a story to pass on”, but does it anyway
• Stamp Paid telling Paul D about Sethe and Beloved: the power to tell history in your own hands?
• About 1/2 of the novel consists of storytelling & Oral Tradition: people telling each other stories of the past, much of the novel takes place in flashbacks
• Every character has their own story to tell

Question 2

How can magic realism be seen in the novel?

Answer 2

Magic realism: the supernatural being accepted as an ordinary part of life.
- Beloved’s first appearance in Chapter 6 (and Sethe’s reaction)
- Sethe, Denver and Beloved in the Clearing (Sethe isn’t scared that she was being choked, just confused as to why Baby Suggs would be like that)
- Beloved being able to suddenly appear without warning: no footsteps
- When Sethe realises who Beloved is: she accepts that her dead daughter has somehow returned without hesitation
-

Question 3

What inspired the novel?

Answer 3

Morrison found a newspaper detailing the infanticide by Margaret Garner after her escape from slavery in Kentucky, where she fled to the safety of Joseph Kite’s house with her husband and children. But their masters stormed the home with warrants and, having no other choice, Margaret Garner slit the throat of her two year old and only injured the two others.

• mirrors Sethe’s story
• Shows Morrison’s intimate understanding despite the way it was framed in the paper, as a mother and as a black woman of the sacrifice Garner had made.
• the Slave owners were named Garner in the novel.

Question 4

How is Beloved a gothic novel?

Answer 4

Gothic: literature genre employing dark and picturesque scenery, startling and melodramatic devices, an atmosphere of exoticism, decay, mystery, fear, and dread, often utilising the unknown and the supernatural.

• the isolated setting: revolves around one isolated and haunted house- 124 Bluestone road which becomes Sethe’s prison later in the novel at the hands of Beloved. Denver escapes by necessity and is able to become more independent and later draw on the community to save Sethe.

The supernatural:

• Beloved is a ghost
• she falls apart later in the novel, Signified by her tooth falling out.
• she rises from the water( signal of rebirth) fully clothed and has sinisterly similar qualities to that of a baby( ie she drinks a lot, she does not understand boundaries- and this uncanny heightens when she uses her newfound sexuality against Paul D)
• she also possessed and leeches off of Sethe, becoming larger as she grows small.
• The flashbacks and scenes from the middle passage suggest her ambiguity may be because while she is Beloved, she is also the ‘ sixty million and more’ slaves transported in the middle passage.