Beloved

Rating:
Summary: The Beloved tin can
Review: Beloved was written by Toni Morrison a world renowned author who won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Morrison has an uncanny ability to bring her characters to life. You may feel as if you know a character because their emotions, actions, and responses to events are similar to the people around us everyday. Sethe, a hard working mother, portrays mothers today with a strong love for her children. The children she loves so much are Denver and Beloved, with Beloved being the spirit of her dead baby. Sethe and Denver live in 124, a house in rural Ohio. At the start of the book "124 was spiteful", but then it became loud and in the ending it was quiet. When "124 was spiteful" Sethe and Denver lived alone in the house, except for the presence of Beloved who was Sethe's dead baby. Beloved comes back and makes life difficult for the family. In the end she mysteriously leaves and Sethe along with Denver feel as if Beloved hadn't actually been there. Beloved is a very difficult book to read, time changes, symbols and dialogue make comprehending a not so easy task.
Time changes occur throughout the book and at times you may not know what is going on because it is so abrupt. The first time change you see is in chapter one when Sethe is talking to Denver about the spirit. It then jumps to when Sethe was having a man engrave the name of her baby on the headstone which was a past memory. From chapter 14 to 15 there was a major time change. It starts with Beloved crying to Denver, then goes to Baby Suggs taking care of Sethe's beat up body when she came to 124 with newborn Denver. The gap between those two events was about 18 years. Time changes make it confusing as to when the events actually happened, because some time shifts are short and in the middle of an event going on in the story.
Symbols contribute greatly to the difficulty of the reading, because not knowing what they mean can lead you to different conclusions about an event. When you hear "tin can" you think of a metal can not a persons heart. The old rusted tin can referred to Paul D's heart and how he thought it would never be opened to reveal his past memories and inner feelings. Another symbol was "men without skin", you can imagine just what it says, a man without any skin. It is actually Morrison's choice of words to say, white men. "Men without skin" comes about because Beloved thinks African-Americans are people with skin and the whites were people without skin due to their color.
Dialogue like "men without skin" makes comprehending the story even harder than it already is. "Rememory", and "thought picture" are words Morrison uses to mean simple things. "Rememory" is Sethe's word for remembering the past and "thought picture" is the image Sethe has of certain past events or maybe even dreams. The word choice in Morrison's work is crucial to the tone of the story, but it also brings confusion.
Time changes, symbols, and dialogue all contribute to the difficulty of reading Beloved. It is hard to understand if you don't know the meaning of the symbols and get lost in a multitude of time changes. Morrison definitely has a unique style of writing which brings out the life in the story. If anybody else wrote the story it wouldn't have the same effect Morrison has on her readers. Would I recommend this book to people? Well if you are the type of person who gets frustrated easily with a play on words, and you don't catch on to symbols, this book is not for you. If you are the type of person who enjoys reading a story with twists, and a much deeper meaning, this book is definitely for you. Overall Beloved is an interesting story with twists and turns which could take you on an unforgettable journey.