by Tony Morrison
Genre: Fiction
What Went Down: Beloved is the heart wrenching story of trauma and resilience and slavery and its aftermath. The story takes place in the years immediately following the civil war near cincinati, ohio, after sethe escapes from slavery with all four of her children. Sethe and her daughter, Denver, are social outcasts who live in a house haunted by soul of sethe’s dead daughter, who would have been Denver’s older sister.
Although we never learn the name given to sethe’s first daughter, we learn pretty quickly that she was two when she died, and the only word etched onto her gravestone is, “beloved.”
The story unfolds as a man from the last place sethe lived as a slave, where she escaped with her children, shows up on her front door and shortly after, they are visited by a young woman who calls herself “beloved.”
Pros: The language. Oh my goodness. The story is so beautifully written. Denver is also a great character. At the beginning of the story she is young, and inexperienced. She is living in a house in fear and love of her mother. When she tried to escape her insular world as a child, she was traumatized by the people around her, and so she stopped going out – until her own life, and the lives of her mother and possible older sister were in her hands. She conquered her fears brilliantly, with self love and forgiveness. I loved Paul D as well. Also, the magical realism, and the sci-fi (ish) aspects were very well done, and to me, spoke to trauma and love (“you love too hard”).
Cons (Kind of?): The language. Because it was so abstract at times, there were moments that I had to read a few times, or scenes that I wasn’t completely sure what was going on.
Notable Lines:
“124 was so full of strong feelings perhaps she was oblivious to the loss of anything at all”
page 47
“Oh, no. I wasn’t going back there… I went to jail instead.”
page 50
“Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another”
page 113
