BELOVED by Toni Morrison ?? BOOK REVIEW [CC]

Hi, everyone.
It’s Juan and welcome back to another book
review.
So, today we’re going to talk about the
celebrated novel Beloved by the American writer
Toni Morrison.
Beloved was first published in 1987.
Toni Morrison is one of the most interesting
American novelists of the late 20th-century
and the very first part of the 21st-century,
and she sadly died in 2019.
Before I go into Beloved, I would like to
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Now, let’s talk about Beloved.
The first thing I want to say about Beloved
is that it is both a historical novel and
a ghost story.
The second thing I want to say is that it
is one of the most challenging novels I have
ever read.
I first read it in college, and I am glad
I was able to study it because Beloved is
not easy to follow if you go in cold.
And I am making this review

with that in mind.
As with all my reviews, I am thinking about
both people who have read this book and people
who have not.
For those who have, I will go into the plot
in detail later, but for those who have not
read it yet and might be thinking of doing
so, I am going to try to explain how best
to approach this beautiful yet challenging
novel.
I think Beloved is the best novel about slavery
I have ever read.
And that makes it tough to read.
But I think it is so important.
I think slavery could be written about in
a variety of ways and there is so much to
explore about it.
And so many perspectives to explore from,
as well.
Beloved explores how being a slave affects
the enslaved people’s identity.
These effects outlast slavery times and even
affect former slaves who are now free.
You have to think about the deep mark that
slavery would leave on those who were enslaved.
Imagine whole generations of people who were
treated as less than human.
How do you think that would affect them?
If you have ever wondered about this, you
need to read Beloved.
This novel takes the reader places where only
great fiction can.
Being African American, Toni Morrison was
herself a descendent from slaves, so I can
only imagine how hard it must have been for
her to write this novel.
I first read Beloved in an American literature
class.
And I think anyone interested in American
literature from the 20th-century should read
it.
And for American readers, black or white,
Beloved must be particularly difficult.
I have a bit of an outsider perspective on
this, not being American, but I think racism
concerns all of us no matter where we live
or what our background is.
I am not going to lie to you, some passages
in Beloved are uncomfortable to read, to say
the least.
Beloved is not a cozy read – I often recoil
at that phrase “cozy read”.
I mean, there is nothing wrong with searching
for solace in reading and wanting to be comforted.
I just think it is often more interesting
when art makes me feel a little uncomfortable
and pushes me to confront the not so pleasant
aspects of life.
And if you have similar inclinations, then
Beloved might be a book for you.
The characters in Beloved struggle with their
own identities at times.
And that is totally understandable as most
of them are former slaves.
One of the boldest narrative choices is letting
the characters – and not any characters,
but former slaves – tell their own story.
This is bold because slaves were denied public
speech so, at least, in fiction, they finally
get to tell their own stories.
But this is also a bold choice because it
can make the novel hard to follow because
of how their speech is reimagined.
Morrison does a great job at writing in the
vernacular these former slaves would have
expressed themselves in.
The novel begins in 1873, so less than ten
years after the US Civil War.
For those of you whose US history might be
a bit rusty, the US Civil War lasted from
1861 to 1865.
Beloved is not set in the south but in the
Midwestern state of Ohio, which is Morrison’s
home state and, therefore, a place she must
have known well.
But this is a historical novel.
Toni Morrison was born in 1931, so she didn’t
have any first-hand experience of this, although
I think it is possible that she could have
met former slaves as a child.
I don’t know.
But I do know that Beloved is based on a real
event that Morrison read about in the 1970s
but that had been reported by a newspaper
in 1856.
The newspaper article that Morrison read and
inspired her to write her novel was entitled
“A Visit to the Slave Mother who Killed Her
Child”.
That story was about a woman named Margaret
Garner, who had escaped along with the rest
of her family from Kentucky, where they had
been slaves.
They got to Ohio.
Although Ohio was a free state, there was
something called the Fugitive Slave Act of
1850, whereby any Southern slaves who escaped
to the Northern states and were captured there
would have to be returned to the South and
be enslaved again.
Margaret Garner, her husband, and her children
barricaded themselves in a cabin and when
the US Marshalls broke in, they found that
she had killed one of her children and found
out she did it because she did not want her
child to be enslaved.
Garner only did not kill her other children
and possibly herself (I guess) because the
Marshals burst in before she could.
I think most people would find it hard to
understand why a mother could bring herself
to kill her child but, in this case, Garner’s
act is an eloquent example of the brutality
of slavery.
For a mother to think her child would be better
off dead than to grow as a slave tells us
so much.
And that is what Tony Morrison decided she
wanted to explore in Beloved.
I am not a parent, but I don’t think you
need to one to see how horrible being a slave
would be that someone who has experienced
that would not only think her child would
be better off dead but could actually kill
the child with her own hands.
Because thinking (well, not just thinking
but knowing from first-hand experience) that
life as a slave is not worth living is one
thing, but actually killing your child to
prevent her from enduring the same life you
had is something else.
It is easy to see why reading this old newspaper
story would have made such a big impact on
Toni Morrison, and why she decided to write
about it.
But in the hands of a lesser writer something
like this could exploitative, but not in Morrison’s
hands.
Beloved is deeply sad and moving.
Sad because of the history of violence that
is to a large extent the history of black
people in the United States, and moving because
there is a strong sense of community that
also comes through in this novel.
The comfortable option would be for people
to forget about this part of recent history.
But I don’t think that was an option for
Toni Morrison and in her novel Beloved she
makes it clear that we ought not to forget
the past.
Okay, there is a lot more I would like to
say about this novel, but I can only do that
if I talk about the plot in more detail.
So, if you haven’t read Beloved yet or don’t
want to hear any spoilers, you should probably
stop watching this video right about now.
Because between now and the end of this video
I am going to talk about the plot of Beloved,
its characters, and some of its themes in
a lot more detail and there will be some spoilers.
So, if you don’t want any spoilers, you
have been warned: you should stop watching
now and I’ll see you again soon, I hope,
for another book review.
Okay, for those of you who are still here,
I am going to summarize the plot of Beloved
now.
The year is 1873 and the place is Cincinnati,
Ohio.
There is a former slave named Sethe who lives
with her daughter Denver who is 18.
Sethe’s mother-in-law also used to live
with them, but she died eight years before
the novel begins.
Her name was Baby Suggs.
Sethe has two sons, Buglar and Howard, but
they ran away before Baby Suggs died.
Sethe is convinced that her house is haunted
by her dead daughter and that is why her sons
left.
The only person who seems to like the ghost
is Denver.
That’s the background you need to know.
The novel begins with a visit from Paul D
who is another former slave who used to work
on the same Kentucky plantation as Sethe.
Paul D’s visit makes Sethe remember the
events of almost 20 years before.
That opens a second temporal plane in the
novel.
The rest of the narrative jumps between 1873
and two decades before.
So, we have all the characters in Ohio, the
haunted house, and all that, on the one hand;
and the events that happened 20 years before
in Kentucky on the other hand.
The events of the past are told through flashbacks
of some characters.
This fragmentary structure is one of the most
challenging aspects of the novel.
Often the same event is told over and over
from the perspective of different major characters
and as it is often the case with this kind
of structure the different narrations add
different information.
This makes reading Beloved feel like putting
together a puzzle, at times.
So, what happened twenty years before in Kentucky?
Well, we learn that Sethe’s mother was from
Africa and that she was born in the South.
Sethe was sold to the Garner family as a slave
when she was thirteen.
All the other slaves at the Garners’ plantation,
Sweet Home, are men and while they all desire
her, thankfully, they never act on it.
The male slaves are Sixo, Halle, Paul A, Paul
D, and Paul F.
Sethe marries Halle, and they have two sons,
Howard and Buglar, that I already mentioned,
and a daughter that remains unnamed throughout
the novel.
Mr. Garner dies and his brother becomes in
charge of Sweet Home and he proves to be a
lot less benevolent than the late Mr. Garner,
so the slaves decide to run away.
The new owner, known as schoolteacher, catches
Paul D and Sixo.
He kills Sixo but takes Paul D back to the
plantation.
Sethe also wants to escape, and she has already
sent her three children to Cincinnati to stay
with her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs.
However, before she can escape, schoolteacher
rapes Sethe.
Halle watches the rape, but he is so terrified
that he freezes and can’t do anything.
He later goes insane probably because of witnessing
this.
Later, schoolteacher finds out that Sethe
has complained to Mrs. Garner, so he punishes
Sethe by whipping her.
Just imagine how despicable a person must
be to whip someone, let alone a pregnant woman.
Finally, Sethe manages to escape but while
she is traversing a forest she faints.
She is pregnant and has been whipped savagely.
Amy Denver is the name of the white girl who
finds Sethe in the forest and looks after
her until she is healthy again.
And then Amy helps her deliver her daughter,
whom Sethe names Denver after her benefactor
Amy Denver.
Sethe and her daughter Denver cross the Ohio
River and make it to Baby Sugg’s house.
In Cincinnati, Baby Suggs is considered some
kind of preacher in the black community made
up of former slaves.
Sethe is happy there for a little while, but
less than a month after her arrival, schoolteacher
arrives to take her and all her children back
to Sweet Home.
Remember that federal law was on his side
because of the hateful Fugitive Slave Act.
And just like real-life Margaret Garner, Sethe
takes her children to a shed and tries to
kill them so they would not have to live as
slaves.
But, Sethe only gets to kill her third child,
that daughter of whom the reader never knows
the name.
“Beloved” is the word carved on the daughter’s
headstone, but I am not sure if that would
have been her name.
Sethe is sent to jail with her baby daughter
Denver.
There is a group of white abolitionists who
try to get Sethe and her daughter free.
They are led by the Bodwins.
When Sethe is freed, she goes back to Baby
Suggs’s house.
But because of the recent events, the community
has shunned Baby Suggs and she has become
depressed.
We also learn that while all this had been
happening, Paul D had been sold by schoolteacher
to a man named Brandywine, whom Paul D had
tried to kill and had been sent to a chain
gang in Georgia.
Paul D tries to forget everything he has been
through because it is just overwhelmingly
sad.
One day, Paul D escapes from the chain gang
and goes North, and years later he meets Sethe,
I think, rather fortuitously in Cincinnati.
Well, that all brings us to the present time
frame in the novel.
So, Paul D gets rid of the ghost haunting
the house where Sethe and Denver live.
Denver resents him for it – remember that
she thinks the ghost is her sister.
Paul D moves in and things seem to be looking
up for him and Sethe.
However, one day, they meet a woman near the
house.
The woman calls herself Beloved, which
makes people believe that she is the reincarnation
of Sethe’s dead daughter.
Because of this, Denver becomes obsessed with
Beloved, and Beloved becomes attached to Sethe.
However, there is only hatred between Paul
D and Beloved.
Strangely, Beloved controls Paul D against
his will.
Then, Paul D finds out that Sethe had killed
her older daughter (he didn’t know that)
and he leaves her.
Now that Paul D is out of the picture, as
it were, Sethe and Beloved get closer.
Beloved becomes abusive and manipulates Sethe,
who, in turn, does all she can to please Beloved.
There is this intense and abusive relationship
between the two women.
Sethe wants Beloved to understand why she
had to kill her in the past.
Denver gets worried about her mother, so she
goes to see her former teacher, a woman named
Lady Jones.
The community rallies around with the intention
of exorcising Beloved from the house.
The leader is a woman named Ella, who, as
part of the Underground Railroad, had helped
Sethe and many other former slaves escape
from the South.
The group gets to the house and they find
Sethe and Beloved on the porch.
Beloved is naked and visibly pregnant.
Okay, remember the Bodwins?
They are the white abolitionists I mentioned
earlier.
Well, Mr. Bodwin also arrives at the house
because he has arranged a new job for Denver
and wants to pick her up.
However, Sethe thinks Mr. Bodwin is schoolteacher
so she attacks him with an ice pick.
Luckily, someone restrains her.
However, Beloved manages to run away in the
melee.
And she will never come back.
Now that Beloved has gone, Paul D returns
and he comforts Sethe who is mourning Beloved
and wants to die.
And that is the end of the novel.
Belove makes us examine a part of American
history that I am sure many Americans would
like to forget.
In a way, Beloved makes us think about this
part of history and examine it so we can then
forget about it.
I don’t know.
The ending is very ambiguous, which I think
only makes the novel better.
It is definitely a thought-provoking book.
You know, I said at the beginning that Beloved
was both a historical novel and a ghost story.
And I think that’s great.
Toni Morrison explored a metaphorical ghost
from the past by making it a literal ghost.
I think Sethe had to confront her own story
and the ghost of the daughter she killed.
I think Beloved is also a novel about family.
We have this concept of family that has changed
little since the 19th century.
But in our concept of family, we don’t include
slaves or former slaves.
This is so hard to talk about…
If your mother, if your father, … were slaves
how do you think that would affect your relationship
with them?
I don’t think we should read Beloved as
merely the story or history of other people.
Particularly, if we are not African American.
I think we should read Beloved and the characters
as us, as our own family.
I can’t even begin to fathom how being enslaved
would affect my sense of self, my sense of
identity, and my worldview.
And the closer I have ever been able to get
to that is by reading Beloved.
I think that reading fiction (good fiction)
is an exercise in empathy.
Good novels and short stories ask us to walk
in somebody else’s shoes only for a few
hours, but those few hours that takes to read
Beloved could leave a lasting mark on us,
and get us a little bit closer to understanding
other human experiences.
And Beloved does that.
But now I would like to hear what you think
about this great novel.
So, please let me know in the comments section
down below.
I’m signing off now.
So, thank you for watching.
I hope that you are all doing very well and
hope to see you again very soon for another
video.
Bye for now!