Collaboration with Cynthia-Jacob Ramirez

Cynthia S. Hamilton from Cambridge University press, documented her own ideas on Toni Morrison’s Beloved in her article; Revisions, Rememories and Exorcisms: Toni Morrison and the Slave Narrative. Hamilton’s main argument about Beloved in part I of her essay, states that what makes Toni Morrison’s novel so compelling unlike traditional slave narratives, is that Morrison’s writing style makes the reader feel way more connected with Sethe (the main protagonist). Stories such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and published accounts of actual slaves experiences from Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Harriet Tubman woke up America to the true horrors of their life styles back during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Even though slavery was abolished in 1865 and segregation was ended in 1964, America was still experiencing racism whose roots travel back to the days of when the first slave was brought to America. Toni Morrison’s purpose for writing her novel was similar to that of Douglass, but the way Beloved is structured is completely different in the sense of how connected the reader is and how her uses of the Active Voice further empowers her story.

One of unique tools that Morrison uses is her unique Characters and how developed they are and how we can see them either grow stronger as we turn the pages or how they slowly become mad. Sethe is the main character of Beloved, and what makes her story so compelling is that she was molded after a slave named, Margaret Garner who killed her children in order to protect them from being taken back as slaves. According to Hamilton, Morrison “explores the powers and limitations” on a personal level. In Sethe’s case, the constant theme of motherhood/parenthood surrounds the character just like how the ghost of her dead child haunts her throughout the novel. Just like Sethe, other character’s backstories are so engaging because even though their backstories happen during the times of slavery, their fears and hopes resonate with a lot of readers. In Hamilton’s example, “characters define themselves by relating and explaining their experience”, and because Toni Morrison’s storytelling allows the reader to form stronger bonds with the characters that are coming alive on the page.

Later on in Hamilton’s essay she has some criticism on Morrison’s writing with having boundaries on characters throughout the story. The character’s that Hamilton references for being too restrictive where Baby Suggs and Stamp Paid. Her reasoning for that statement is that these two characters were to bound to their past as slaves to have a chance to surviving throughout the story. The scary thing about the these characters though, is that they weren’t able to directly talk about baby Beloved’s death was. It was constantly referenced too. In the beginning of the book, upon hearing about Sethe’s haunting by the dead baby, Baby Suggs made the comment of saying all over the country, there are countless more dead African-slaves. This illustration shows the physiological effects of being a slave because one death of a relative isn’t important because there are many more deaths that have happened in the past.