Beloved by Toni Morrison

 Beloved by Toni Morrison

 

Perhaps when we consider the “hard times’we have to live through, recession, euro crisis, political turmoil, we should remember history.

 

The novel of Toni Morrison is a story to remember. It is inspired by history- “the story of an African-American slave, Margaret Garner, who temporarily escaped slavery during 1856 in Kentucky by fleeing to Ohio, a free state. A posse arrived to retrieve her and her children under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which gave slave owners the right to pursue slaves across state borders. Margaret killed her two-year-old daughter rather than allow her to be recaptured...”

 

What can be more terifying than this?

 

It is not an isolated incident, the story of one slave. The book estimates the number at slaves who died in the slave trade to be” 60 million and more”.

Sethe is the main character of Beloved. Beloved is the ghost of the daughter, who comes to haunt her mother, who is also her killer.

 

There is a lot we can and perhaps should  say about this story.  Because if we just state that the mother kills her daughter, those who haven’t read the book can draw the conlcusion that we’re dealing with a crazy woman. Towrds the end, Sethe loses her mind.

 

There is a lot of pain in this book, which could also be included in the horror books list.

Reading Beloved, I tought of Epicurus’questions:

 

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

 

Among the evils which happen to Sethe is the stealing of her milk, the carving of a tree on her back, but nothing, nothing compares to the killing of her own child.

The book is full of mystery and suspense. Beloved is a ghost, but her presence is very real.

The writing of Toni Morrison is magical, it reminds me of Faulkner, I don’t know why. It is with pleasure and sadness that I’ve read this book, one of the best I have had in hand, even if I doubt that I will read it again.

From Wikipedia

 

„Beloved is a novel by the American writer Toni Morrison, published in 1987. Set during 1873 after the American Civil War (1861–1865), it is inspired by the story of an African-American slave, Margaret Garner, who temporarily escaped slavery during 1856 in Kentucky by fleeing to Ohio, a free state. A posse arrived to retrieve her and her children under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which gave slave owners the right to pursue slaves across state borders. Margaret killed her two-year-old daughter rather than allow her to be recaptured.

Beloved's main character, Sethe, kills her daughter and tries to kill her other three children when a posse arrives in Ohio to return them to Sweet Home, the plantation in Kentucky from which Sethe recently fled. The daughter, Beloved, returns years later to haunt Sethe's home at 124 Bluestone Road, Cincinnati. The story opens with an introduction to the ghost: "124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom."

The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. It was adapted during 1998 into a movie of the same name starring Oprah Winfrey. During 2006 a New York Times survey of writers and literary critics ranked it as the best work of American fiction of the past 25 years.

The book's epigraph reads "Sixty Million and more," the number of Africans estimated to have died during the Atlantic slave trade...”