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tài liệu bộ môn văn học anh của sinh viên đại học hà nội. Review book: Beloved by Toni Morrison.Toni Morrison, the second of four children in a black workingclass family, was born as Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio. Her parents, Ramah (Willis) and George survived the Great Depression with the aid of the government and by sharing with their equally poor black and white neighbors
Review book: Beloved by Toni Morrison I Toni Morrison Toni Morrison, the second of four children in a black working-class family, was born as Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio Her parents, Ramah (Willis) and George survived the Great Depression with the aid of the government and by sharing with their equally poor black and white neighbors Living in an integrated neighborhood, Morrison did not become fully aware of racial divisions until she was in her teens "When I was in first grade, nobody thought I was inferior I was the only black in the class and the only child who could read," told Toni in an interview in The New York Times Dedicated to her studies, Morrison took Latin in school and read many great works of European literature She graduated from Lorain High School with honors in 1949 Toni Morrison worked as novelist, editor and professor Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue and richly detailed African-American characters Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Love and A Mercy Morrison's highest achievement is the novel Beloved, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 In 1993, Morrison became the first black woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature The Nobel Foundation stated that Morrison “gives life to an essential aspect of American reality” through “novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import.” II Summary Beloved is a big novel Therefore, in this paper, we attempt to cover only the first chapter However, to get a grasp of the novel, it is essential to provide a brief summary of the novel followed by a synopsis of chapter one 1 The novel Beloved begins in 1873 in Cincinnati, Ohio where Sethe, a former black slave has been living with her daughter, Denver On the day the novel begins, Paul D, whom Sethe has not seen since her escape from Sweet Home plantation in Kentucky around twenty years earlier, stops by her house From the fragmented flashbacks of main characters, all events are revealed When Sethe, the protagonist, turns 13, she is sold to the Garners, who own Sweet Home and practice a relatively benevolent kind of slavery There are also five other male slaves there, namely Sixo, Paul D, Paul A, Paul F and Halle Halle later becomes Sethe’s husband Together they have two sons, Howard and Buglar, and a baby daughter named Beloved Mr Garner’s death leaves Mrs Garner in a deep grief, and she eventually asks her sadistic brother-in-law, who is known to the slaves as the schoolteacher, to run the farm The schoolteacher treats the slaves so brutally that they decide to run away When escaping from Sweet Home, Sethe is pregnant with her fourth child The schoolteacher, however, anticipate their escape His two nephews violate Sethe and steal the milk her body is storing for her infant daughter, Beloved Unbeknownst to Sethe, Halle is watching the event from a loft above her where he lies frozen with horror and goes mad When the three villains find out that Sethe has reported their misdeeds to Mrs Garner, they whip her severely regardless of her pregnancy and that leaves chokecherry tree-shaped scars on her back Fortunately, Sethe manages to escape and is nurtured by a white girl named Amy Denver, who later helps her deliver her forth baby in a boat Sethe names the second daughter after her benefactress Sethe spends twenty eight wonderful days in Cincinnati with her mother-in-law and her children On the last day, however, the schoolteacher comes for Sethe to take her and her children back to Sweet Home Rather than surrender them to a life of dehumanizing slavery, she takes them to the woodshed and tries to kill them Beloved is the only one to die, having her throat cut with a handsaw by Sethe Sethe later resorts to sleeping with an engraver to get the word “Beloved” carved on the headstone Thanks to a group of white abolitionists, Sethe is released and returns to the house numbered 124 Meanwhile, Paula D is sold to another slave owner in Georgia where he has endured torturous experiences One day, a fortuitous rainstorm allows him to escape He travels northward and ends up on Sethe’s porch in Cincinnati years later Paul D’s arrival at 124 makes the ghost of Beloved and Denver resent him right from the start Before moving in to 124, he chases the ghost away One day, when the couple returns home from a carnival, they encounter a strange young woman sleeping near the steps of 124 The woman calls herself Beloved Beloved and Paul D hate each other and Beloved controls him by moving him around the house and seducing him against his will When Paul D learns the story of Sethe’s infanticide, he leaves 124 In his absence, Beloved grows increasingly manipulative and parasitic while Sethe is obsessed with satisfying Beloved’s demands and making her understand why she kills her Worried about Sethe, Denver leaves 124 and seeks help from her former teacher to exorcise Beloved from the house When arriving at 124, they see Sethe on the porch with Beloved who stands smiling at them, naked and pregnant Eventually, Beloved disappears for good and Denver is taken to her new job Afterwards, Paul D comes back to Sethe and they live happily ever after 2 Chapter The first chapter tells the present life of Sethe and Denver at 124 Eight years earlier, Sethe’s mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, also lives with them Before she dies, she sinks into a deep depression and spends her last days requesting “color”- bits of brightly colored objects she hopes would alleviate her sadness and loss of all eight of her children Not so long after her death, Sethe’s two sons, Howard and Buglar each runs away from the house because of the malevolent presence of an abusive ghost that has haunted the house for years Sethe works hard to remember as little as possible about her past until one day she returns home and finds a surprising guest, Paul D They slip into easy conservation although they have not seen each other for eighteen years Paul D walks into the house and gets soaked by a wave of grief over him Sethe explains that the presence is the sad specter of her dead baby, Beloved Sethe also tells Paul D about the chokecherry tree on her back and firmly refuses to move out of the house when Paul D proposes the idea Sethe cries and says that the men whipping her stole her baby’s milk before she ran Paul D comes up to her and pulls down the top of her dress He cradles her breasts in his hand while he kisses each line of her scars Seeing them flirt and talk about Sweet Home makes Denver jealous and excluded She bursts into tears, saying that she can no longer live a life of being isolated by the whole community The house immediately begins to lurch and shake as the ghost vents its rage Paul D shouts at the ghost and asks it to leave Denver resents his act, for the ghost is the only company she has In part III, we attempt to demonstrate author’s point of view on racial discrimination and motherhood III Author arguments Problems of racism and slavery “Beloved” deals with the themes of love, family, self-possession, slavery and the cruelty of whites Racism is one of the most important fields in “Beloved” as well as chapter one under which the cultural identity has been hidden or captured by white master’s bitter treatment The beginning of the novel is depicted by the pain and the pang of slavery and its aftermath The protagonist Sethe is described as the medium of Schoolteacher and his nephews’ sexual fulfillment and childbearing machine without regarding her motherhood and humanity Schoolteacher’s nephew “took Sethe’s milk” and “used cowhide” on her when she told Mrs Garner about it (p.10) Morrision condemns and raises her voice against the problem of racism in a very ironic tone This is clearly reflected in the epigraph "Sixty Million and More" The first sentence refers to the number of black people who died from the time of the Middle Passage (1770-1807), the stage of the slave trade in which millions of Africans were shipped to America Through this, the author reminds readers of the frightening history of the slaves "I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved which was not beloved." (Romans 9:25) The rest of the epigraph is quoted from the New Testament in a letter from St Paul to the Romans In the letter, Paul encourages the new Christians in Rome by promising them that they are God's people and will receive God's love through grace God's promise of love and forgiveness comes even though the new Christians not deserve to be beloved The Biblical quote is a fitting beginning for a novel that deals with love and forgiveness The epigraph also creates the tone for the opening chapter of the novel, which deals with Beloved, the destructive ghost of Sethe's daughter who causes problems for Sethe Although Beloved was never a slave, she was a victim of bondage, for Sethe killed her so she would never have to endure the hardships of servitude like her mother Even though Sethe claims it to be an act of salvation, she eventually haves to suffer the guilty of murdering her daughter A new manifestation of motherhood Toni Morrison, in Beloved, expresses her praise of the sacred motherhood that a black slave mother, has for her children The love is vividly portrayed in the milk stealing scene in the first chapter Since Sethe was not only deprived of nursing from her mother for the first few weeks of life but also she was also left hungry, she fully understands the importance of breastfeeding for both mothers and children On that basis, she is concerned about providing milk for her children as she shares with Paul D “all I knew was I had to get my milk to my baby girl” (p.10) Her milk is all she has for her children and even though she is violated, she still makes sure that her children have enough milk by telling “the women in the wagon to put sugar in cloth to suck from so when I got there in a few days she wouldn’t have forgot me”(p.10) According to Barzey (2015), Sethe’s love is symbolized by her ability to breastfeed them Therefore, after the schoolteacher and his nephews stole her breast milk, she reported the misdeed to Mrs Garner as a way of expressing her anger Yet when she spoke of the incident, she was even angrier about the fact that they had stolen her milk intended for Beloved than the severe whipping that leaves permanent scars on her back She keeps repeating twice that “and they took my milk” (p.11) Sethe’s maternal love somehow recalls us of that of Fantine in Les Miserable who is forced by circumstances to sell her hair and front teeth and become a prostitute in order to get some pennies for her daughter Their maternal instinct is so strong that they regardless of skin colors are both willing to anything to support their children Unlike vulnerable Fantine who, probably like other mothers, sacrifices her beauty and health for the sake of her daughter, Sethe in Beloved would rather kill her children than subject them to the horrors of slavery Toni Morrison’s Beloved explores one of the most poignant and devastating effects of servitude on motherhood It is slavery that turns children of slaves into property- the property that is sadly not slaves’ but their masters’ Morrison also explores the fact that slave mothers are not allowed to raise or nurse their own children More deeply than anyone else, as a victim of slavery, Sethe understands that a life of bondage is full of injustice and indignity Therefore, she cannot leave her children living the life she has endured; death is much kinder than slavery Sethe’s infanticide still remains a controversial topic No matter from which perspective each reader sees the event, it is undeniable that all mothers will their best for their children Slavery may force mothers to make such harsh decisions that no mother should have to make but it never can destroy maternal love Thanks to Morrison, all the moral truths are once again portrayed dramatically and clearly The next part reveals our thoughts on this novel and the first chapter in particular In other words, we will present outstanding features in terms of writing style and the plot as well as discuss subtle points which may cause confusions for readers Evaluations IV Strengths a Metaphors One of the factors making “Beloved” a popular novel is the author’s writing style full of sensations and meanings Morrison knows exactly what she wants to convey and how to it, and she exploits every aspect of her subject by using various techniques including metaphors According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (p.925), “a metaphor is a word or phrase used to describe somebody or something else, in a way that is different from its normal use, in order to show that the two things have the same qualities and to make the description more powerful” In the first chapter“124” serves as a metaphorical symbol “124 WAS SPITEFUL Full of a baby's venom” (p.1) “Beloved” opens with the house numbered 124, a repeated mantra that suggests numerological possibilities On one symbolic level, the numbers 1, and add up to 7which is the number of letters on Beloved's headstone In Christian lore, the number represents charity, grace, and the Holy Spirit, as well as completion and perfection As we will see later in the novel, Beloved's death signifies the end of all these elements in both Sethe's life and the life of her family When Beloved died, the family lost the charity of the townspeople, the grace of a happy life together and Baby Suggs's connection to the Holy Spirit The family became incomplete and imperfect Furthermore, the house numbered 124 is itself symbolic of the fact that Sethe's dead child's anger and bitterness continue to haunt and define 124 as her home (and her life) Howard and Buglar, Sethe’s first and second children are forced to run away years ago when the baby is angry, ghostly outbursts became too much for them to handle Denver, Sethe's fourth child, still lives with her mother in the house at the start of the novel The dead child whose spirit breaks dishes and clatters on the stairs was Sethe's third child, and her physical absence is represented by the fact that the house number lacks the number three b Flashbacks Apart from metaphors, Morrison also demonstrates her tremendous talent for using flashbacks effectively Liz (2014) defined a flashback in literature as an occurrence in which a character remembers an earlier event that happened before the current point of the story Flashbacks are often employed to provide additional information about characters and create suspense or add structure to a story Right in the first chapter of Beloved, the technique is applied to explain more detail about the current state of the house, “by 1873, Sethe and her daughter were [the ghost’s] only victims” (p.5) Flashbacks are also triggered by Sethe when telling Paul D about her two sons running away from 124 “by the time they were thirteen years old- as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered it (that was the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny hand prints appeared in the cake (that was for Howard)” (p.5) Thanks to Toni’s clever use of flashbacks, very few readers will miss the experimental structure of Beloved It is not a linear tale, told from the beginning to the end The novel, in essence, is written in fragments of memories The juxtaposition of the past with the present serves to reinforce the idea than the past is alive in the present no matter how many years have passed by As written in the first chapter, Sethe works hard to block her painful memories of the past but the appearance of Paul D once again evokes them all over Other authors like Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five and Julio Cortazar in Rayuela choose to tell their stories completely out of chronological order Unlike them, Toni structures her masterpiece in a way that flashbacks and present events are clearly switchable Therefore, it is easier for readers to determine the time when events really happen and to grasp the flow of the novel c Ironies Morrison’s works are often full ironies and Beloved is no exception In the first chapter, ironies are visibly manifested in various images such as the chokecherry tree, Sweet Home and the hat Let’s examine what lies behind Sweet Home Pretty obviously, the place sounds like a heaven based on how it is named However, it is literally more like a hell where slaves have to bear extreme hardships as Paul D noted “it wasn’t sweet and it sure wasn’t home”(p.6) Specifically, right in Sweet Home, Sethe was whipped and raped while Sixo was killed after years of ruthless exploitation By using this ironic symbol, Morrison subtly strips the essence of the contemporary society d The chapter’s plot The very first chapter presents a paradox about maternal love N.K Jemisin in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms once said “In a child’s eyes, a mother is a goddess” Tragically, Sethe, the goddess in this situation, ultimately decides to murder her own daughter with a handsaw even though she tries her best to make sure her body is storing enough milk for her children The question is why a mother can such horrible things to her own children With this paradox, right from the first chapter, Toni successfully works up the reader’s thirst for the answer From the beginning to the arrival of Paul D, the chapter is written in low and pleasant tone It is not until Paul D shows his sexual compassion to Sethe that the ghost vents its rage by rushing a table toward him and making the house pitch However, Paul D shouts at it “Leave the place alone! Get the hell out!” (p.11), and the house suddenly stops lurching Unlike other novels of horror genre, by letting the ghost appear right from the first chapter, Morrison wants to expose the unique African culture in which tales related to ghosts, poltergeists are passed down through generations as a result of the troubled psychic state of a person (Tiny Jump, 2010) Successive questions about the ghost come into reader’s mind: where it comes from, what it embodies and whether it disappears forever Its presence truly evokes the reader’s curiosity and readers are appealed to the novel right from the very first chapter 2 Weaknesses Despite being one of the greatest novels, Beloved stirs up controversy It is argued that the novel is selective about its readers because of complex syntax and vocabulary Firstly, Toni Morrison uses non-standard English syntax in Beloved "Syntax" refers to the order of words and phrases used to make sentences Many of the characters use non-standard or disordered syntax, and much of the narration in the novel is told with non-standard syntax For example, in Chapter One, the house in which Sethe and her daughter live is described in the following way: “It had been a long time since anybody (good-willed white woman, preacher, speaker or newspaperman) sat at their table, their sympathetic voices called liar by the revulsion in their eyes For twelve years, long before Grandma Baby died, there had been no visitors of any sort and certainly no friends No colored people Certainly no hazelnut man with too long hair and no notebook, no charcoal, no oranges, no questions” (p.7) The syntax in this chapter is disordered to replicate dialogue and the way characters in the book, brought up mostly as slaves, would speak Some sentences are not full sentences but fragments to show the way people might have told this story orally rather than in writing In addition, the confused syntax expresses the confusion and disorderly nature of the characters' world The African-American characters in the book are all affected by slavery, a horror that creates lives that are not orderly or neat The characters' language and syntax reflect their life experiences in a cruel and chaotic world Toni Morrison uses language to express the culture of the black community She makes use of idioms to help recreate the sense of a specific community, that of African Americans in Reconstruction Ohio When the characters use words like “ain't” and "reckon" and phrases like “sit down a spell”, it helps place their characters within that community One particularly interesting example of this idiom is the way in which it describes people of different races In compound words such as “whitegirl, blackman, and coloredpeople” a person's race is actually part of the word that describes them Both of them contribute to the success of this novel However, using non-standard syntax, unfamiliar idioms and compound nouns results in confusions As a result, readers without comprehensive knowledge of black people’s culture may find it difficult to acquire a full understanding of the content of “Beloved” Will Joyner (1998) In conclusion, Beloved is indeed one of the best literary works we have ever had It is not an easy book to read but if you persevere and want to enrich our knowledge about slavery, maternity and supernatural forces, it is absolutely a rewarding experience We would recommend this book to all lovers of great fiction Reference Barzey (2015) https://www.homework-online.com/beloved/writing-style-structure.html Liz (2014) http://www.literarydevices.com/flashback/ Mervyn Rothstein (1987) http://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/26/books/toni-morrison-in-her-new-noveldefends-women.html Oxford English Advanced Learner Dictionary A S Hornby 7th Ed Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948 Romans (9:25) http://biblehub.com/bsb/romans/9.htm Tiny Jump (2010) http://tinyjump.com/understanding-supernatural-events-in-toni-morrisons-beloved The Nobel Prize in literature 1993 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1993/presentationspeech.html Will Joyner (1998) http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/18/movies/film-staying-stubbornly-true-to-awriter-s-vision.html [...]... non-standard syntax For example, in Chapter One, the house in which Sethe and her daughter live is described in the following way: “It had been a long time since anybody (good-willed white woman, preacher, speaker or newspaperman) sat at their table, their sympathetic voices called liar by the revulsion in their eyes For twelve years, long before Grandma Baby died, there had been no visitors of any sort and... long hair and no notebook, no charcoal, no oranges, no questions” (p.7) The syntax in this chapter is disordered to replicate dialogue and the way characters in the book, brought up mostly as slaves, would speak Some sentences are not full sentences but fragments to show the way people might have told this story orally rather than in writing In addition, the confused syntax expresses the confusion and... disorderly nature of the characters' world The African-American characters in the book are all affected by slavery, a horror that creates lives that are not orderly or neat The characters' language and syntax reflect their life experiences in a cruel and chaotic world Toni Morrison uses language to express the culture of the black community She makes use of idioms to help recreate the sense of a specific... being one of the greatest novels, Beloved stirs up controversy It is argued that the novel is selective about its readers because of complex syntax and vocabulary Firstly, Toni Morrison uses non-standard English syntax in Beloved "Syntax" refers to the order of words and phrases used to make sentences Many of the characters use non-standard or disordered syntax, and much of the narration in the novel... When the characters use words like “ain't” and "reckon" and phrases like “sit down a spell”, it helps place their characters within that community One particularly interesting example of this idiom is the way in which it describes people of different races In compound words such as “whitegirl, blackman, and coloredpeople” a person's race is actually part of the word that describes them Both of them... the success of this novel However, using non-standard syntax, unfamiliar idioms and compound nouns results in confusions As a result, readers without comprehensive knowledge of black people’s culture may find it difficult to acquire a full understanding of the content of Beloved Will Joyner (1998) In conclusion, Beloved is indeed one of the best literary works we have ever had It is not an easy book. .. supernatural forces, it is absolutely a rewarding experience We would recommend this book to all lovers of great fiction Reference Barzey (2015) https://www.homework-online.com /beloved/ writing-style-structure.html Liz (2014) http://www.literarydevices.com/flashback/ Mervyn Rothstein (1987) http://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/26/books/toni-morrison-in-her-new-noveldefends-women.html Oxford English Advanced Learner... A S Hornby 7th Ed Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948 Romans (9:25) http://biblehub.com/bsb/romans/9.htm Tiny Jump (2010) http://tinyjump.com/understanding-supernatural-events-in-toni-morrisons -beloved The Nobel Prize in literature 1993 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1993/presentationspeech.html Will Joyner (1998) http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/18/movies/film-staying-stubbornly-true-to-awriter-s-vision.html