Truth in Timbre: Morrison’s Extension of Slave Narrative Song in “Beloved” by Peter J. Capuano

Truth in Timbre: Morrison’s Extension of Slave Narrative Song in “Beloved” by Peter J. Capuano

For my first examination of an expert’s opinion, I chose to focus on Peter Capuano’s text Truth in Timbre, an analytical essay with a concentration on the importance of slave songs in “Beloved”. Capuano chose to compare the importance of slave songs in Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”, and Frederick Douglass’s “Narrative”. Both Novels focus on slavery and its numerous injustices to the slaves, as well as former slaves in the time period just prior to and just following the emancipation of slaves. The key difference that Capuano focuses on is the differing audience’s for the two texts. For Douglass’s novel, the audience was majority white, the burden was on him to justify why slavery was harmful to people and the nation. For Morrison’s novel, the audience is wider and more diverse, which changes the message from ending the damages of slavery to reflecting as a whole on how these damages need to be repaired.

The essay itself has a historical grounding in the difference in the time periods that both novels were written, and the wildly different social situation that impacts the author’s mindsets. Frederick Douglass’s “Narrative” was published in 1845, eighteen years prior to the Emancipation proclamation, and almost one hundred and twenty years prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act. For Douglass the audience was hostile regardless of what Douglass’s message was, at that time for African Americans were essentially muzzled. Whereas for Toni Morrison, the atmosphere was far more open, “Beloved” was published in 1987 following the key events Douglass preceded. This Allowed for Toni Morrison to take a more aggressive stance in her display of the brutality of slavery, where Douglass chose to censor himself for the sake of his audience, Morrison chose to expand and go deeper on sensitive subjects.  
In “Beloved”, slave songs are a means for characters to deal with, and express, their inner anguish caused by the institution of slavery. Prior to reading this essay I had not considered how telling these songs were, they act as a coping method for the former slaves to deal with the trauma they faced and overcome its impacts.