Readers have to accept supernatural explanations in order to understand what's going on in Beloved. While ghosts and haunting aren't usually considered "real", they take center stage in the novel and there's no way to appreciate Morrison's work without them. I'm not trying to pull a Scooby Doo and disprove all the fake ghosty stuff, though I've been interested in how the seemingly unexplainable events could have really happened.
For example, Stamp Paid suggests that Beloved could be the recently escaped girl who had been locked up by a white man nearby. What if she isn't the ghost of Sethe's crawling-already? baby come back to torment her, but just another abused girl with no place to go? Following the end of slavery, Paul D rationalizes that the whole nation is full of displaced people, and Beloved could be another one of them. Beloved does have some characteristics that line up clearly with the baby (unlined hands, marks on the forehead, craving for sweets, and of course the neck scar), but those physical markers could concievably come from being locked up in a barn for years. The one scene that confuses this interpretation is when Beloved goes into an abstract monologue on her experiences after death and before the haunting, when she's smothered by skinless men and can't find her mother. This would suggest that she really did come back from the dead. Spooky!
Additionally, Sethe's concept of rememory could be explained by PTSD. I first thought of rememory as some kind of magical shared memory that returns at random intervals. But couldn't Sethe's sudden recollections of Sweet Home's horrors be some kind of flashbacks, brought on by unprocessed trauma? According to the very helpful WebMD, PTSD can include "triggers that can bring back memories of the trauma accompanied by intense emotional and physical reactions". I think that description sounds exactly like Sethe's experiences, especially her intense reactions to rememory.
Considering the tensions between reality and ghostiness in Beloved can bring up interesting points, though I think part of the beauty of Morrison's text comes from the way she immerses readers in a completely new situation. The novel doesn't need to be factually proven to be an amazing work. Maybe the novel's power comes from the fact that nothing can be proven -- that readers must trust the characters to tell their stories exactly how they want to tell them.
For example, Stamp Paid suggests that Beloved could be the recently escaped girl who had been locked up by a white man nearby. What if she isn't the ghost of Sethe's crawling-already? baby come back to torment her, but just another abused girl with no place to go? Following the end of slavery, Paul D rationalizes that the whole nation is full of displaced people, and Beloved could be another one of them. Beloved does have some characteristics that line up clearly with the baby (unlined hands, marks on the forehead, craving for sweets, and of course the neck scar), but those physical markers could concievably come from being locked up in a barn for years. The one scene that confuses this interpretation is when Beloved goes into an abstract monologue on her experiences after death and before the haunting, when she's smothered by skinless men and can't find her mother. This would suggest that she really did come back from the dead. Spooky!
Additionally, Sethe's concept of rememory could be explained by PTSD. I first thought of rememory as some kind of magical shared memory that returns at random intervals. But couldn't Sethe's sudden recollections of Sweet Home's horrors be some kind of flashbacks, brought on by unprocessed trauma? According to the very helpful WebMD, PTSD can include "triggers that can bring back memories of the trauma accompanied by intense emotional and physical reactions". I think that description sounds exactly like Sethe's experiences, especially her intense reactions to rememory.
Considering the tensions between reality and ghostiness in Beloved can bring up interesting points, though I think part of the beauty of Morrison's text comes from the way she immerses readers in a completely new situation. The novel doesn't need to be factually proven to be an amazing work. Maybe the novel's power comes from the fact that nothing can be proven -- that readers must trust the characters to tell their stories exactly how they want to tell them.
I've thought this too! Some part of me tried to rationalize all the supernatural things in Beloved, and now that I think about it more, some things are not consistent. Like, what are the 'rules' in this universe? At the beginning, everyone living at 124 seemed to just go along with the ghost that randomly had fits of rage, but the town people always avoided it. Later, when we find out what happened with SEthe and the baby, it's almost like they avoided 124 because of Sethe and not because it was clearly haunted by a ghost??? Also, it was weird to me that Beloved, who was supposed to be the baby, grew up after being murdered as an infant and could appear pregnant (that was almost Twilight-esque, but I digress)? At the same time, like you said, the infant hands and neck injuries line up with the murdered baby, but something isn't right. I also agree that these weird inconsistencies set aside, Beloved is an amazing work.
ReplyDeleteI love how Morrison doesn't let us know everything in the novel, how she leaves so many things up to question. Like HOW does Beloved suddenly morph into this pregnant figure that just disappears into the horizon?
ReplyDeleteI also wonder if it's something psychological underlying Sethe's denial of Beloved being the reincarnation of her late daughter, which could likely be linked to PTSD. We understand why Paul D doesn't think so; he doesn't know what happened to the crawling-already? child, and he's seen displaced, virtually shell-shocked former slaves strewn about the streets in his escape.
Hm, so I'd always interpreted rememory as being PTSD-like, or in any case just Sethe's description of how her memory works, instead of having any supernatural components. Considering it as maybe semi-natural is very interesting though, and gives a sense of the sort of generational longevity that we know trauma can have.
ReplyDeleteI think that it's really strange how Morrison provides possible alternate explanations for Beloved's arrival. She just throws ideas and factual explanations around, but spends much more time developing the supernatural explanations and seems to want the reader to believe in the reincarnation of the dead Beloved. I think Morrison provides the alternate explanations for Beloved's reappearance if there is a reader who absolutely rejects all possibilities of any supernatural realm, even within the novel. She gives those readers possible explanations, but by not developing them shows that there is no way to back them up. Funnily enough, there is more evidence to back the supernatural claims than the logical ones.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard in this day and age to try and believe in ghosts, what with science and stuff. Who knows, maybe they really do exist! But I also think maybe Beloved's character as she comes into human form isn't just that of a baby, but also just a bunch of bad vibes. Vengence and greed are the main ones that come to mind for me. Perhaps that's what Morrison was going for when she brought Beloved back to life - to give Sethe's bad feelings a person to feed them into.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting post! Definitely didn't think about this one. With the way that Morrison introduces ghosts at the beginning of the novel, I never really questioned Beloved's existence. I assumed Beloved was a ghost because of the novel's acceptance of the supernatural, and never really questioned that.
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to read the book and not be able to disprove of any of the supernatural things occurring in the novel. The book was a very interesting book and like you said, I don't think that a book has to be good while staying only to the real aspects of a person's life. It reminds me of the dreamlike chapters we got in invisible man where we had to think about whether the scene could of actually happened, but instead of focusing on that we had to focus on how the character reacted to the scene, whether it actually happened or not. That is how we had to read this novel. Instead of looking at what happened, we had to look at the character's reactions.
ReplyDeleteIts very interesting to go into this book and into a world where ghost exists everyone takes that for granted. The book is very interesting in that way. Yet, to me, it seems very dream or illusion-like. Especially near the end of the book, I couldn’t take what exactly happened. Should we take the events in the book for what they are or did some of it not actually happened? I think we could even take the ghost of Beloved as just more of the haunting memories and vibes that are returning to Sethe. I think it’s funny also how the book could make sense without supernatural explanations, but there is so much more evidence to explain it with supernatural reasons that other explanations. Its a really interesting novel in that way.
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