Ghost Baby, Guilty Mother

Ruth Van Den Akker’s writing, “Hush, Little Baby-Ghost: The Postcolonial Gothic and Haunting History in Toni Morrison’s Beloved”, looked through the book with a postcolonial lens and a gothic lens as well. The lens that she uses allows her to see the cause and effect of suppression that happened in the past that dictate how the future moves forward. Den Akker mentions how the past has an emotional toll on a person especially from those who were slaves and not just explaining facts about what happened.

Den Akker claims that Morrison wrote “a narrative” that “the unspeakable is spoken or signified”. The unspeakable is the harm and terror that the main character, Sethe, and other slaves undertook while being forced to do labor. Those slaves took an unimaginable amount of harm to their well being and that harm “still haunts” Sethe with “traumatic memories” of the past. The stress that she was under only made sense that after being set free the past can’t be forgotten. Even though she tries to push those memories somewhere she can’t remember, she still lives in the past and can’t move forward from it.

Den Akker makes it clear that the terrible choices Sethe had to make caused damage that her guilt won’t let go of her. The novel, as she claims, includes “history of slavery, genocide, racism, [and] infanticide” while also having a “gothic” theme coincide with the story. The character Beloved, as described by Den Akker, is introduced to “taunt her guilt-ridden mother” as a “young woman”. This becomes apparent when Morrison describes Sethe as “the flesh between [Sethe]’s forefinger and thumb fade. Saw Sethe’s eyes bright but dead, alert but vacant, paying attention to everything about Beloved… (285)”. As she was slowly fading away, Beloved was becoming more prominent when she describes her that of “a pregnant woman, naked and smiling in the heat of the afternoon sun (308)”. The roles and stature of the two characters seem to be switched with one another showing that the guilt she sustained over killing her own child as devoiding her of living her life and making sure that she tries to cleanse that sin by pampering Beloved. Beloved seems to be sucking the life out of Sethe and making it into her own. That supernatural ability seems similar to a succubus in that they drain the life of somebody to turn it into their own. Now that Beloved has been draining the life out of Sethe, Sethe has been going back to the slave times and treating somebody as though they were better than they were; something that she didn’t want her children to have to deal with that she had to.

Beloved Vs. Narrative: Two Perspectives of Slavery

In the essay, “Truth in Timbre: Morrison’s Extension of Slave Narrative Song in ‘Beloved’” by Peter J. Capuano, compares two pieces of literature that talk about slavery in America, but the way that each one is developed and told is in two different formats. Mr. Capuano sees that Douglass's 1845 book, “Narrative”, was more developed in the sight of factual events and what actually happened, while Morrison’s 1987 book, “Beloved”, was focused on the emotions, slave songs, and integration into “personhood”.

Capuano’s description of Morrison’s “Beloved” as “it chronicles her characters’ endurance and ability to survive during and after these periods of physical brutality and psychological abuse”. The characters that were around during the slave period, Sethe and Paul D, were dealt a lot of turmoil that they fought through to survive and have to now engage into society with all of the past haunting them.

Capuano mentions that Morrison relies on “slave songs” to “[acknowledge] of slavery’s brutality”. “Beloved’s” purpose is to enlighten not just what happened during that time period, but what it felt like to those who were the subject to it all. We get lost with what just happened and why things ended up the way they are, but we forget how emotions affect how people perceive things and Capuano was spot on that “Beloved” gave another light to slavery.

The slave songs that Morrison created were to show the former slaves’ emotions while they were under slavery. The slaves were considered, and what Schoolteacher called them, “animals” and that they were there to do tasks and chores. The slave songs showed the emotional toll that was under them while being oppressed by those who thought they were of a better race. The songs allowed the slaves to actually show their human side of themselves and have that strength to believe that they were still human. It also allowed themselves to be rebellious against that of the oppressors. The oppressors wanted their slaves to do work without any obstacles that could come about, but the emotions that came out of the songs would prevent complete dominance over the oppressed.