Beloved (Plume Contemporary Fiction)

Rating:
Summary: Phenomenal
Review:
"124 was spiteful."...

Thus begins Toni Morrison's epic, moving, technically astounding novel. And upon reading the opening chapter, the reader will be rendered confused, moved, horrified, and gripped in six or seven pages of fantastic writing. It is impossible to really say that "Beloved" is the tale of the ghost of a baby, embittered and vengeful, or "Beloved" is the tale of Sethe, an ill-treated black woman who is too afraid to "go inside" and face her past. No. "Beloved" is none of these. In fact, Morrison's novel (if indeed it can be called a "novel") is written in such a way that it cannot be described as one story. It is a collection of memories, "rememories", and haunting images, collectively compilled to create a harrowing reminder to the people of today that the slave trade must NOT be forgotten. It must be remembered.

But to remember is to move on. And to move on is to forget.

"This was not a story to pass on...this is not a story to pass on."

Morrison's non-linear narrative style plunges the reader into a world of memory. The book is non-chronological and therefore more than a little confusing to begin with, but, on delving deeper into the secrets of Sethe's past, the supressed memories of darker times are slowly uncovered. Aided by impressive language techniques and a unique style of writing, Morrison proceeds to break down the genre of "Slavery" writing and creates a new, ingenious type of story. By combining the historical elements of a novel about black slavery and the chilling, spine-tingling terrors of a ghost story, Morrison draws the reader in hungrilly, thirsting for our attention and causing us to thirst for more...just as Beloved thirsts for Sethe, acceptance...and revenge.

"Beloved" is more than a book. More than a tale, a fable, or a fiction. "Beloved" is a memory. A protest against forgetting what is almost already lost. "Beloved" is spine chilling, heart-warming, and eye-opening. Most importantly, "Beloved" is unforgettable.



Rating:
Summary: Read this interesting book!!!!!!!!!!
Review: I believe the book Beloved by Toni Morrison was somewhat interesting. I had to expand my mind in order for it to be interesting. The setting was believable because of the story having to do with slavery. You have to have an imagination to set the big picture. The plot was believable for that time period that the book was set in. In my opinion I relate to the characters in no way, shape or form. This book would be good for a teenage reader wanting to expand his/her mind. Read it. It's great.

Rating:
Summary: A Marvelous Achievement
Review: "Beloved" tells the story of survivors of slavery living in Ohio, before, during, and after emancipation: a mother, Sethe, who makes terrible sacrifices to save her family; a daughter, Denver, who was miraculously born on the road to freedom; and Paul D. who bravely comes to terms with inhuman attempts of slaveholders to destroy his soul and his sense of himself.

When a young woman named Beloved comes into their lives (no one is sure from where), she embodies the pain of slavery, the unrelenting anguish over the loss of loved ones, the rage and sorrows that are legacies of enslavement.

The novel gradually reveals its mystery and its meaning and tells of horrifying aspects of slavery. Toni Morrison's language is beautifully poetic. I will remember her vivid portrait of slavery, and the window she opens into the souls and psyches of her characters for a very long time.



Rating:
Summary: B-E-L-O-V-E-D...beloved
Review: Beloved, written by Toni Morrison, is set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War. Sethe, one of the main characters, lives at 124 with her daughter Denver, mother-in-law Baby Suggs, and the ghost of the baby she murdered 18 years ago. When a strange woman named Beloved arrives at their house, Sethe is forced to confront her past, including murdering her baby girl. Beloved also makes Denver become more independent and self-sufficient.
Beloved acts as the catalyst in making Sethe remember her past. She asks questions that help to trigger painful memories, such as her illegal marriage to Halle, another slave. Sethe then finds out that Halle betrayed her in the worst way. Beloved's presence helps to fill in the gaps that Morrison leaves in the beginning of the book.
Beloved also helps Denver become an independent woman. In the beginning of the book, Denver is a recluse who rarely goes beyond the fence around the house in fear of the "evil thing" that made Sethe kill her baby so many years ago. However, when Sethe's attention turns to Beloved, Denver must start taking care of herself. She conquers her fear of the world beyond the fence and gets a job to support herself, Sethe, and Beloved.
I would recommend this book only to certain people. I would recommend this book to you if you had someone else to discuss it with. This book is difficult to read and just as difficult to understand. You also need to have a certain level of maturity to understand the meaning behind all of the swearing and graphic sexual content in this book. If you do read this book, I know that you will experience a powerful, moving novel.




Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, sensual, daring...
Review: I absolutely love this book. It's certainly my favorite, and I've read it about 4 times through thus far. Everytime I opened it up and begun to read I realized that I found something new, a new perspective, hidden meaning, etc. that I thought wasn't there before. My first Morrison book was "The bluest eye" and she really caught my attention with that one, so I decided to read Beloved and was absolutely blown away by her astounding abilities as a writer. The only thing I didn't like the 1st time around is the open ended question in the conclusion that a reader can feel trapped in when she/he wonders where Beloved went, how, why...it takes patience :). Aside, it's magnificent! I recommend this book fully!

Rating:
Summary: Beloved by LaShandra
Review: I think that Beloved was a great novel. It was very suspenseful. In a way it made me a little scared to finish. If you are not a comprehensive reader then you will have trouble with this novel. It tells of a dark-past that has came back to haunt Sethe. She is faced with the reality of how cruel,yet understood that killing her infant daughter was. She also tries to put her past at Sweet Home to rest. But simply can't bacause she has been scared so badly from her experiences that she has come to think of the one on her back as a chokecherry tree with different branches. As her daughter Denver is presented with some suspicious evidence, she then puts all the pieces together that would eventually lead up to the explaining of who the baby ghost was. She was indeed the ghost of the girl whom walked out of water from over there. Her sister Beloved. As Denver wanted to keep the secret dark and unknown, Beloved had other plans. She intruded in their house and came back for her family. As the story was brought to a close, it all made since to me why such actions had taken place. I was able to understand everything i hadn't understood in the beginning. This is a very complex book that should be read with very extreme cautions. I would recommend this book to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: Magic done with words
Review: The painful memories, the dreadful experiences, and the hurt placed inside one's heart. Remembering the past is a thing some do not want to face.

This is the challenge that Sethe and Paul D have to face in Toni Morrison's Beloved, awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for Fiction.

Set in the late 1800s in rural Ohio, shortly after the slaves were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, Beloved is a novel about Sethe, a former slave who once worked at a slave plantation known as Sweet Home. Along with her daughter Denver, the two women reside at 124, a home haunted by the ghost of Sethe's murdered infant child. Paul D, another ex-slave from the Sweet Home plantation, visits Sethe at 124. It is he who forces Sethe to look back at her past experiences and reveal the secrets hidden within her. One day, a young woman named Beloved arrives at Sethe's home. Believed to be the embodied spirit of the dead child, Beloved's arrival causes chaos at 124. In her own way, Morrison causes chaos in the mind of the reader.

Many argue that Beloved is confusing and was not pleasurable to read, and I agree. But this is why Morrison is so effective in Beloved: she allows the reader to experience the flashbacks (known as "rememory") and the pain at the same time the characters are going through them in the novel. I have yet to read another novel that can make the reader suffer as much as the characters do.

Morrison varies her style of writing throughout the book to emphasize the thoughts of a certain character in Beloved. Although most of the novel is written in the third-person view, Morrison writes as Sethe, Denver, and Beloved in these "stream-of-consciousness" chapters. Sethe's lack of education is easily seen as she rambles on. Denver, on the other hand, seems to be an intellectual young woman who seeks to protect the loved ones she has. Beloved's erratic and haunting section adds to her mysterious appearance.

While reading Beloved, one must ask his or herself, "is Morrison racist?" There are many instances which hint Morrison is attempting to degrade the white race. Take schoolteacher, for instance. The name "schoolteacher" is not capitalized. Morrison implies that schoolteacher does not deserve respect and is low in social status, but his actions in the book prove otherwise. "Men without skin," a reoccurring image from the character Beloved, also refers to whites as being inferior to the blacks. Morrison speaks to the reader as if whites are void of life.

Beloved is a well-written novel that reveals the physical and emotional torture slaves had to endure, even long after their release from captivity. However, Morrison's graphic, detailed descriptions of horrific events may be sickening to the stomach for some readers. I was not fond of having to visualize human beings sodomizing cows, nor women bashing their own baby's head against a solid wall. Just for Morrison's magic in delivering this story to the reader, I recommend Beloved for most readers (some may be offended by the graphic images and themes in this novel).


Rating:
Summary: Pure Genius
Review: The writing in Beloved is nothing less than genius. Toni Morrison is at her absolute peak in this novel. I've read this book several times and each time I discover something new and amazing. Morrison masterfully weaves the construct of time into themes of this work. There are so many poetic, philosophical and spiritual nuances to this piece that I would do this novel no justice by trying to explain them or list them. Of the hundreds of books I've read in my life, Beloved is my favorite and I recommend it for anyone who enjoys reading....it is a treasure.

Rating:
Summary: A life changing experience...
Review: This should be required reading for every person in the US. She made me FEEL slavery. I walked away understanding slavery in a way I never thought possible. We all think we know what slavery did to those in bondage, but until you read Beloved, you can't possibly understand. She made me understand that slavery affects those in the African American community today. The utter obliteration of the family and of love: how can a people who experienced this ever be able to heal. This is truly the most important book I have ever read.

Rating:
Summary: Read thoroughly, then repeat
Review: To read a book like Beloved is bewildering, for it requires immersion into an institution so depraved, so removed from the human experience that the main character's actions seem terrifyingly fantastic, as do their supernatural consequences. But Morrison doesn't expect us to fully understand the story, at least not in a single reading, only to experience it and to feel the same frustration and terror her characters feel. She doesn't attempt to explain or unravel slavery; what Morrison does is merely show it to us, not from the circumspect historical perspective, but from the perplexed individual experience. Admittedly, the structure of the novel is dreadfully confusing, but Morrison is making a statement here: See if you, any of you, can get your bearings in this world where the ultimate expression of love is murder.
To further complicate things, Morrison doesn't prepare us for anything, particularly the elements of magical realism. Instead, she delves right into a ghost story. But realize that the supernatural is not only accepted as realistic in the African tradition from which these characters were uprooted, it is welcomed. Baby Suggs holy remarks that having a ghost is nothing extraordinary. She tells Sethe to be glad the spirit is that of an infant's and not a full-grown man.
I must concede that even with the advantage of first reading this novel in college, with the added wisdom of my professor, Beloved was still a bear of a book to read. Shifts in voice and point-of-view baffled me, particularly the section in which the voices of the three women merge. The story does not offer itself up easily, but neither does the subject of slavery itself. Neither is linear, at least not to the individual memory, which moves in and out and often overlaps or reinvents itself. This is what Morrison calls rememory.
In spite of the difficulties, Beloved is a story that every literate person should undertake. Morrison's lyrical prose is nearly reason enough to recommend it, but for the student of literature, especially, the book should be teased apart and combed for the multiple layers of meaning. I've personally looked at the symbolism of trees in the story and felt I only scratched the surface of what Morrison so masterfully weaves into this relatively short book.
The basic plot was borrowed from the true story of Margaret Garner, and though it is certainly the unique female chronicle of slavery, of having children "rented out, loaned out, bought up, brought back, stored up, mortgaged, won, stolen or seized" (23), the book is also a painful examination of the male slave's experience, as seen primarily through the character Paul D's eyes. In many ways, the stripping away of hardwearing manhood is even more poignant than the demoralization of women. A rooster named Mister, which walks about freely on the plantation, mocks at the male slaves, who, though sexually depraved, manage to refrain from raping Sethe, the only woman among them. For me, this section of the book was the most painful to read. In another section, Paul D. says to Sethe: "A man ain't a goddamn ax. Chopping, hacking, busting every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can't chop down because they're inside" (69). Who but Morrison could say so much with so little?
Beloved is a horrendous, beautiful book too intricate to absorb in an isolated reading. It's one for the collection, to take in slowly. Don't give up on this deservedly acclaimed work of art.