Morrison's Demons

Morrison’s Demons

                  In Morrison’s Beloved, the presence of spirits and hauntings is prevalent throughout the entire novel. Beloved, the namesake of the novel is actually a ghost or spirit. Beloved, an otherwise unnamed character, was killed by her mother eighteen years previous to the novels beginning. Beloved becomes the focal point of Morrison’s novel as she haunts her mother’s house and drives away anyone who is close to her mother, Sethe.

                  Sethe, an escaped slave, saws Beloved’s neck in half when Sethe sees a band of slave catchers coming up the road to reclaim her family. Sethe believes she is performing an act of love, a terrible deed to prevent Beloved from living a horrendous life of slavery. Several years after the murder of Beloved, the baby girl who would have been 2 years old at the time of her death, comes back to play in Sethe’s home. Beloved’s haunts start as mere tricks, but soon turn violent. The baby’s spooky exploits chase off two of her brothers and eventually weary her grandmother to the point of death.

                  The baby’s spirit is only one of many things that haunts Sethe throughout Morrison’s novel. The spirits and haunts also take the form of memories. Memories in Beloved are all connected back to Sethe’s experiences with slavery. Beloved’s spirit is in fact brought on by Sethe’s need to never allow her children to be enslaved. Morrison categorizes these haunts as rememories. Sethe’s memories of slavery are brought on by sightings of people or similar events.  Events trigger Sethe’s rememories and the reader is consumed by a seemingly tangible memory of Sethe’s life in slavery.

                  Morrison’s story is played out through a series of Sethe’s remomories. Morrison sets the framework of her story in the first several chapters. Sethe’s rememories are able to fill the holes and flesh out Morrison’s novel so that the reader understands what has happened to Sethe throughout her life of slavery and supposed freedom.

                  Through rememories Morrison is able to prove multiple important overlooked tragedies of slavery. Morrison shows her reader the atrocity that slavery was by detailing brutal everyday scenes in the memories of the former slaves in Beloved. I think most people understand that slavery was an egregious societal institution, but how does it affect the people it touches. How does it affect society in the present day. Through hauntings and rememories, Morrison points out that very little was actually solved through the abolition of slavery. African Americans were still without rights and the economical and racial affects of slavery still haunt African Americans like an angry ghost.

                  Morrison personifies the haunting of slavery and puts it in specific context so that the reader does not have to comprehend a societal struggle. Instead Sethe’s struggle can represent the struggle of millions of former slaves, their posterity, and even African Americans who have no slave ancestors. The reader is able to understand a specific interesting circumstance that keeps the reader intrigued. This is effective because taking on a whole societal issue can be daunting for both author and reader. It often even discourages the reader. Morrison is able to make multiple amazing points about the struggle of being African American while pulling her reader into her story and connecting them to the main character Sethe.

                 

The Subtle Humors of The White Boy Shuffle

Paul Beaty, author of The White Boy Shuffle, constantly adds subtle jokes throughout his novel, filling scenes with intense satirical humor that becomes increasingly uncomfortable as the book continues. These satirical remarks made by Beaty’s main character, Gunnar Kaufman, often make the reader laugh out loud. As the book progresses the moments of humor become more and more dark until the culmination of an atom bomb threat that would wipe out all African Americans. Gunnar himself has a build up of tension, that by the end the reader can almost see him as a walking time bomb. This tension is caused by two factors. The first factor is that people expect him to change the world and please them because of his gifts in sports and poetry. The second factor can be seen in the daily racism received by African Americans that Gunnar both witnesses and receives.  

One of the first instances of this satirical joking occurs when Gunnar is in second grade. The teacher at his all white “multi-cultural” school tries to preach to children that they should not see color. When asked what kinds of things are colorblind, instead of responding like the other kids by saying the law, Gunnar responds “dogs.” Gunnar is acutely aware of the obvious racial distinctions of society even at a young age. The government as we can see today is not colorblind. Growing up in and around LA, Gunnar would be exposed to police brutality himself and in the news. Police brutality that is especially pointed at African and Hispanic Americans.

Later in the book Beaty points out the absurdity of the statement, the law is colorblind. Beaty blends his alternate reality with actual history and allows the reader to see Gunnar’s reaction, when the officers who beat Rodney King within an inch of his life are acquitted. Gunnar feels as though; he is not valued by America. He is a worthless human. Beaty captures the emotion of Gunnar extremely well, allowing a reader such as myself who was not alive during the trial, to feel the utter hopelessness after the decision of the court. Amazingly, in this moment of extreme sorrow and heartbreak occurring both to Gunnar and the reader Beaty drop a comedic seen yet again. Beaty eludes to the beating of a white man in actual history when Gunnar beats a white Wonder Truck driver and shames him. He creates a scene without context that would make the reader laugh out loud. Gunnar and a friend of his, beat the white men with fluffy white bread until the crumbs fall from the sky like rain. Beaty makes this scene extremely hard to work through because, the reader almost wants to laugh at his pros, but this heavy weight of Gunnar’s devastation is still present.

Beaty seems to master the ability to make light of even the darkest of moments or statements. His witty tongue and cheek humor never ceases throughout the book. As the reader moves forward, Beaty’s wit becomes harder and harder to enjoy as his novel takes on extremely dark themes. Beaty is calling to mind African American minstrelsy while showing the extreme hardships of being black in America. He makes his reader see that black life is not a vaudeville show. Beaty creates scenes complex scenes that deserve to be reread multiple times to garner its deeper meanings. The White Boy Shuffle is definitely a book I will reread, just to piece together all these subtle intricacies that cannot be understood with an initial reading.

Janie the Woman who Never Succumbed to Society

Janie the Woman who Never Succumbed to Society

Zora Neale Hurston courageously created a strong, independent, African American, female character, in a time in which females were not meant to be main characters and no African American character met a truly happy ending. Janie, Hurston’s main character, is a strong woman who is thrust into an unwanted marriage at the age of 16. Janie is entrusted by her grandmother to an old farmer who reeks and crawls into bed at night dirty. Unable to stand her treatment in the hands of the old farmer, Janie takes matters into her own hands. She shows that she is able to think for herself and that she will do what is best for herself. Many girls in this situation may have dreamed of fleeing, but Janie took action.

                  Janie meets a man with which she will run away with, Joe Starks. Janie is not dazzled by love or the need for a man. Joe Starks, the man she elopes with, is a risk, a chance at a better avenue of life than what she has already. Janie does not necessarily need Joe Starks to escape. She tells the reader that with or without Joe, she would have still left and never turned back. Joe Starks however was able to aid her in leaving and served as a good husband—in the time the book was written. Joe Starks became a man of power and influence. He became a mayor and a store owner, putting Janie in charge of much of the stores operations. Joe often tried to influence Janie, wanting her to act as a doll in the window of his huge store and home. Janie though not able to totally disobey Joe, rarely agreed with him. Janie thought she should have more free will to do as she pleased, she wanted to go to social events and sit on the porch and joke with the men at night. Janie refused to succumb to societal standards and just be a house wife to look at. After Joe died, without anyone to hold her back, Janie was able to join the community. Without anyone to stop her, Janie took a seat with the men on the porch every night. A seat as the only woman in town able to take part in the men’s antics.

                  Janie did not worry long about the mourning of Joe Starks. She started to wear more vibrant colors, and she let her hair down (something Joe jealously never let her do). Ignoring the whispers of the town Janie refused to be pressured into marriage with a “dignified man.” She did not need a man to take care of her, make her happy, or provide financial support. Janie was able to her own person, without an overbearing husband. A freedom earned after twenty plus years of being put in the dark and she was not willing to give that up lightly.

                  Janie found a rough man who she able to deeply love but, even he was not essential. Tea Cake, Janie’s last husband, made her happy but did not complete her. Janie becomes more independent and strong as Hurston’s story progresses. She leans less and less on anybody for true support. The readers see that she enjoys the companionship of other but, she is able to be her own independent person. She was an independent woman in a time when being an independent woman was looked down upon. In the end, Janie did not need a man to complete her and she did not need the approval of anyone, but herself.

Caution versus Nature/ Old versus New

Caution versus Nature

Old versus New

Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston is a novel set in Florida during the late 1800s. After the civil war slaves who were freed, and did not migrate north, often had no choice but, to continue to work on large plantations for little or no pay. Hurston’s novel presents somewhat of a solution for African Americans in the South. In some parts of the South, exclusively black communities were created to help African Americans partially escape white scrutiny and, to allow black men to hold a position of power in their communities. These positions include government like a mayor. These African American communities like the Eatonville, the all black community in Their Eyes Were Watching God, were often times successful. Hurston takes the reader into the dynamics within a town like Eatonville. Hurston is often telling the story from the perspective of Janie, the wife of the mayor often talking from a woman’s perspective.

                  The novel introduces the argument of Nature versus Caution in chapter 6. Two men from Eatonville are sitting outside the store when one asks “whut is it dat keeps uh man from getting’ burnt on uh red-hot stove—caution or nature?” (Hurston 64). This argument is impossible to give a definite answer on, but I believe we can see it as a combination of both caution and nature. Nature tells us that as our hand feels the heat emanating from the stove, we should pull away as to not get burned. Many people do not allow themselves to become close enough to the stove to be burned because of advice given by friends or parents.

Nature versus caution is seen even earlier in the novel when Nanny forces the main character, Janie, to get married at the budding of her sexual exploration. Married off at the age of sixteen. Nanny, the narrator’s grandmother, does not even allow Janie to become close enough to a fire to be burned by a particularly vicious tongue of flame. Nanny is cautious of sexual freedom because, both nanny and her daughter, Janie’s mom, were raped. Janie is the child of a vicious crime. To make sure Janie has a safe adulthood, Nanny tries to force Janie to shut out her sexuality, and live a quiet hard working life as a farmer’s wife. Marrying an African American man who owns land was the best Nanny could do for Janie to secure a safe but, somewhat boring life.

Shortly after Nanny dies, Janie throws caution to the wind and elopes with another man. Multiple factors play into her decision but, one of the largest is her curiosity and attraction to a well spoken nicely dressed man. Janie’s natural sexual curiosity in the end wins over her caution to be safe and secure for the rest of her life. At 16 or 17, Janie’s farmer husband who was a smelly dirty old man, was unable to satiate her desire to be in love. Janie saw love as a natural occurrence, not something that could be learned.

Nature versus Caution is a topic that seems to often end in a conflict between young and old. Their Eyes Were Watching God starts as somewhat of a coming of age novel. The old caution Janie to be happy with what she has, safety, and to not explore. What many parents and guardians do not seem to understand, is that teenagers want to be allowed to make their own mistakes. Teenagers can be told to not do something, but often teenagers will still perform the action deemed inappropriate until they suffer a consequence. Luckily for Janie, eloping with the smartly dressed African American man who came strutting down the road was not a mistake.