DISCLAIMER: This was originally written for a language arts class. Sorry if it gets a little dense.
It’s not often that I’ll dislike a book involving history. I
especially enjoy stories set in the early days of the US, when the wilderness
was wild and the people were larger than life; they speak a character to me
that I feel has been lost by modern principles in all of their cybernetic glory.
That said, I could not bring myself to enjoy the book Beloved. It had
everything I could love in a novel: a post-Civil War story involving former
slaves being haunted by their past in the form of a lustrous poltergeist; at
least three subjects rolled into one book. But no matter how often I
scrutinized the tone, diction, and imagery of Toni Morrison’s award-winning
“masterpiece”, I just couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see why I was supposed to
care for any of the characters at all, and got extremely caught up in
Morrison’s attempt to glamorize her own writing with dense descriptions and
not-so-subtle allusions. For all intents and purposes, I was just plain bored.
The problem for me began with
the characters themselves. Almost instantly upon opening the first chapter, I
had at least seven people thrust upon me with so much fast development that I
was re-tracing my steps to see who was related to who by page 15. The novel’s
focus on the widowed Sethe and her daughter Denver, and Sethe’s fellow
slave-turned-lover John D, almost seems stretched too thin. Because of this, I
felt no connection to any of them by the end of the first chapter, and this
ended up being a major problem when Morrison tried getting me to play
sympathetic. The tone of regret and remorse is also just poured on way too
thick, and it made me nervous that the sadness I would feel for Sethe and her
years of torture at her plantation and her possessed home would be misplaced
(as I found out, it was). The point I’m trying to make here is that it just
seems faked; as if the characters are in a bad play and trying their hardest to
emote but just can’t do it right. The character of John D was also a thorn in
my side for much of the novel, mostly because his mood swings involving his
love/hate for Sethe detract from the main message of the author. A message which,
for the life of me, I still don’t know.
But I could forgive all of this,
if it wasn’t for Morrison’s writing style. In short, I hate it. In length, it
reads like an edgy teenager decided to research about the Civil War, became
obsessed with ghosts, and then tried replacing every simple noun with the most
outrageous synonym imaginable (with a few f-words and n-words thrown into the
mix) without even trying to form a sentence that conveyed realism. Granted,
Morrison is an honored author, and I am a lowly English student, but if a
student can see through the boring allusions of the book to grasp what little
plot exists and still can’t find the
purpose, then perhaps the student is not the right audience for such advanced writing.
Even such imagery as Sethe’s “tree” (scars retained from the whippings at Sweet
Home plantation) is so forced that I felt like I was being spoon-fed a metaphor
every two paragraphs. Hell, even the name “Sweet Home” for a plantation is so
blatantly a symbol that I laughed when I first read of its existence. I did not
laugh at the baby’s name.
To be quite honest, I haven’t
read a book quite like this, nor would I choose to. If I had to compare it, it
seems more in line with the filth that is A Separate Peace by John
Knowles. Both novels take place historically (Knowles’ in WWII), and involve
characters that deal with regret and anger at how life has given them the short
end of the stick. The difference, however, is I chose to read Beloved,
and even with all of its faults I could at least see development of a coherent
story. The names Gene and Finny still haunt my nightmares to this day. So yes,
I did not like Toni Morrison’s attempt at a historical novel, mostly due to her
writing. Among the red badges and soldier’s hearts, it doesn’t capture the
image of the Civil War and all of its aftermath; rather, it focuses too much on
sending a message to those living almost a century after it.
So, in the end, while the book has a colorful setting in the post-Civil War society, I would NOT recommend you have your students read this. Unless, of course, you want them to read about a lot of sex.
-Pharaoh Noh-Tyep
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