Beloved by Toni Morrison
Beloved is considered by many to be the Great American Novel. Marrying historical fiction with horror, it is based on the real story of a black woman, Margaret Garner, who escaped slavery on a plantation farm in Kentucky with her husband and children in early 1856. They ran to the free state of Ohio but were later caught by the authorities. Before their recapture, Margaret killed her young daughter to prevent her return to slavery.
The novel’s main character, Sethe, is a similarly devoted mother who flees with her children from an abusive owner known as ‘schoolteacher’. They, too, are caught and Sethe tries to kill her children to keep them from slavery. Only the baby dies and her gravestone is marked ‘Beloved’. Terrifyingly, this is not the worst thing to happen Sethe and her family. The story is filled with the sufferings of the black characters and the brutality of the whites as it veers between two pivotal narratives. Harriet Beecher Stowe was once accused of exaggerating cruelties in Uncle Tom's Cabin; she rebutted this, claiming she whitewashed events to make them publishable. It is no overstatement to say Morrison pushes the truth harder.
The story begins years later; Sethe is living with her 18-year-old daughter, Denver, in a house that is reportedly haunted. Paul D, a fellow slave from the plantation Sethe escaped arrives and performs an exorcism. But then a mysterious female stranger shows up; she is 20 years old and calls herself ‘Beloved’.
Despite being a product of its time, Beloved is timeless. This is a difficult book to read but there’s a reason it was awarded the Pulitzer. The novel ends with a warning; “[t]his is not a story to pass on.” The historical and emotional truths of the novel are painful but they deserve to be remembered.
Submitted by Mary-Ellen
