Beloved: Toni Morrison's Novel of the Cost of Freedom

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First Edition, Beloved, Alfred Knopf, New York, New York, September, 1987, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 1988

The task of the Underground Railway has been made more difficult. It is 1850. As a part of the Compromise of 1850, our Nation, in yet another effort to stall a War Between the States, has passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. A Federal Officer is subject to a fine of $1,000.00 if he fails to aid a slave owner in returning an alleged runaway slave to the property owner's jurisdiction. All that is necessary is an owner's sworn affidavit that the alleged runaway is his property. Those, such as members of the Underground Railway, are subject to a term of imprisonment of up to six months and a fine of $1,000.00 for rendering aid to an alleged runaway slave.

Beloved is Toni Morrison's novel based on the Margaret Garner case. In 1856, Margaret, her husband, Robert Garner, and children crossed the Ohio River from Boone County, to Cincinatti, Ohio. When slave catcher's attempted to round up Margaret's family, she attempted to murder her children, succeeding in killing one child, by cutting her throat with a butcher knife. Margaret's defense attorney attempted to circumvent the Fugitive Slave Act by having his client tried for murder in the State of Ohio. The effort was unsuccessful and Margaret and her family were returned to Kentucky.

The Garner family was transported South on a steamboat, ironically named "The Liberator." After colliding with another ship, both Margaret and her other daughter were thrown overboard. Margaret's daughter drowned, for which Margaret was happy to know her daughter would not be returned to a life of slavery.

The Garners were sent to friends of their owners in Kentucky to New Orleans where they disappeared from all records. Robert Garner was located in 1870 by a reporter of a Cincinnati newspaper. Garner reported that Margaret died of typhoid fever in 1858, imploring him not to remarry in a state of slavery, but wait until he could marry in freedom. Margaret Garner became known as the Modern Medea.

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"The Modern Medea" by Thomas Satterwhite Noble, 1867

Garner's is a tough story. Morrison made it tougher in "Beloved."

Sethe is Margaret Garner's fictional counterpart. Sethe did not end up in New Orleans, but was subsequently released from jail and returned to her home in Cincinnati. Eighteen years after murdering her child, Paul D, one of the men who had worked as a slave on the Kentucky farm, has entered Sethe's life as lover and potential husband. But, Paid Stamp, a former worker for the Underground Railway, shows Paul D the original newspaper clipping concerning the case. In denial, Paul refuses to recognize the drawing of Sethe in the paper as being her and approaches her with the article as if it were a joke.

"I did it. I got us all out...Up till then it was the only thing I ever did on my own. Decided. And it came off right, like it was supposed to. We was here. each and every one of my babies and me too. I birthed them and I got em out and it wasn't no accident. I did that. I had help, of course, lots of that, but still it was me doing it; me saying, Go on, and Now. Me having to look out. Me using my own head. But it was more than that. It was a kind of selfishness I never knew nothing about before. It felt good. Good and right. I was big, Paul D, and deep and wide and when I stretched out my arms all my children could get in between. I was that wide. Look like I love em more after I hot here. Or maybe I couldn't love em proper in Kentucky because they wasn't mine to love. But when I got here, when I jumped down off that wagon--there wasn't nobody in the world I couldn't love if I wanted to. You know what I mean?"

Paul D is beginning to see what Paid Stamp wanted him to understand. Sethe continues to explain,

"I stopped him," she said, staring at the place where the fence used to be. "I took and put my babies where they'd be safe."

Paul D's response comes as no surprise. "What you did was wrong, Sethe...You got two feet, Sethe, not four."

But was she wrong? How many mother's never knew if their children lived to adulthood, of if they did, what they looked like? The spirit of "Beloved," Sethe's slain child serves as a force to remind Sethe and Paul D of their lives in slavery. Perhaps it is not Beloved's spirit that haunts them, but their own repressed memories.

Toni Morrison has broken my heart twice with this novel. There is no doubt that she will yet again when I read it once more.

In her acceptance speech for the Frederic Melcher Award for Literature in 1988, Ms. Morrrison said “there is no suitable memorial or plaque or wreath or wall or park or skyscraper lobby” honoring the memory of the human beings forced into slavery and brought to the United States. “There’s no small bench by the road,” she continued. “And because such a place doesn’t exist (that I know of), the book had to.”

On Sullivan's Island, near Charleston, South Carolina, there is a bench placed by the Toni Morrison Society in July, 2008. It commemorates the port of entry for over forty percent of all sixty million and more African-Americans brought to this county in bondage.

n  In the beginning there were no words. In the beginning was the sound, and they all knew what that sound sounded like.n

I could leave it like that.

I should, really, I should. Leave it, in her words, in her meaning, in her context and effort and heritage and everything that is not mine. Never will be mine, these things that should rightfully flay me alive every time I happen to dwell upon them, whether in flight of fanciful musings or serious consideration as they so rightfully deserve. The only thing I own is the history, and god forbid I forget it for a length of breath.

Except. I see the decriers of her prose, and I wonder. I see the decriers of magical realism, and I wonder. I see the decriers of characters, of plot, of calves in particular, and I have to wonder, especially at the calves. That was what made you stop? Just that? You should know better, by now, there is no excuse calibrated enough to sail you past the port of truth. Especially that.

So I will try. I, descendant of Virginia landowners and parents who refuse to believe in the fact and face of the current US president, will try, and I can only hope for Toni Morrison to let me be.

n  This here Sethe talked about love like any other woman; talked about baby clothes like any other woman, but what she meant could cleave the bone.n

There, just that, are the words you really need. More of hers, I know, but truly, I have nothing to fall upon besides vague nuances of "slavery", "United States", "the evil that men do". And women, and people, and the days rolling by on the backs of millions, chokecherry trees bleeding through the centuries to a boy named Trayvon Martin today and so, so many others. No answers; no redemption. Just facts and figures and cultures spliced and split along veins of the void, how much can one thing break another, and how long, and how shall it ever be unbroken.

n  "It's gonna hurt, now," said Amy. "Anything dead coming back to life hurts."n

The voice, though. The voice carries all of that, and beyond it. Listen to the voice long enough, and you will begin to see the hazy and bloodcurdled outlines of the question, the content, the situational chaos bounded by need on one side and means on the other, and the world that will never be able to afford to stop picking up the pieces. All those cultures, crossed over and carted through and cultivated by greed and power, and the voice of a single woman, the last Laureate of Literature of her country, a country still obsessed with whitewashing its foundations.

n  “Here,” she said, “in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don’t love your eyes; they’d just as soon pick them out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face ‘cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it, you! And no, they ain’t in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don’t love your mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I’m telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver—love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.”n

There is the fiction, and then there is the reality. You will never get a grasp on the latter. But the former, here, will help you on your way. But only if you can bear it, and if and only if you have any hope for tomorrow. For if you have, you must.

n  Saying no more, she stood up then and danced with her twisted hip the rest of what her heart had to say while the others opened their mouths and gave her the music. Long notes held until the four-part harmony was perfect enough for their deeply loved flesh.n

The reasons that other people hated this book are reasons I liked it to be honest. I like this kind of writing and I understood what Morrison was trying to go for. I obviously haven't experienced anything as traumatic as the characters but I think the book does a good job capturing the sensation of certain types of guilt, isolation, dissociation, and intrusive thoughts/memories. I get why people may have had trouble following along, I did too at first but I feel like if you read the book through it isn't so bad. I think that are a lot of points at which there's clarification about things that were vaguely mentioned or alluded to before. I personally liked the book and am looking forward to reading more of Toni Morrison.

Absolutely incredible

first five star of 2024.

i would like to apologize to all of the dinners i ruined with friends, my boyfriend, family, and other loved ones because i could not stop talking about the brilliant, dark, vibe-ruining concept of this book.

this was my first toni morrison, my first new favorite of the year, and the first time in a long time i've been completely dumbstruck while reading.

beautifully written, cleverly constructed, populated with unforgettable moments and characters.

i don't know what to say!

bottom line: a book that makes me speechless. a nearly impossible feat.

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tbr review

by reading my first toni morrison i believe i will ascend into a higher plane

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“She just flew. Collected every bit of life she had made, all the parts of her that were precious and fine and beautiful, and carried, pushed, dragged them through the veil, out, away, over there where no one could hurt them.”

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this story is a very harrowing masterpiece that on the surface is a haunted house story. but it deeply discusses generational trauma, ptsd, and how “freedom” doesn’t feel very free while carrying so much trauma, and living with ptsd, from the true horrors you and your bloodline have experienced. ghosts can haunt you, but ghosts can also protect you. yet, community can sometimes be the greatest gift higher powers can give us.

toni morrison’s gift with language and prose is something of magic. the way this story is written is something i will never forget. truly some of the best craft i have ever had the honor of reading. beloved is a hard read, but i truly do recommend it to everyone who has yet to pick it up, because it is truly one of the best stories i have ever had the honor of reading and sitting with. i finished reading this a few days before super bowl lix, where kendrick lamar performed another masterpiece of art that, in my opinion, portrayed what america is really built on. slavery and white supremacy, things that white people will continue to create different names for, very much still in 2025.

trigger + content warnings: slavery, racism, colorism, plantation settings in past, torture in past, death, death of child in past, loss of so many loved ones, rape, violence, beastiality, pregnancy, birthing scenes, use of slurs (obv in a very negative light), segregation, ptsd, trauma, grief, talk of jail, sickness, caring for a sick loved one, captivity, talk of the kkk, vomit, war mentions, abandonment, fire

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Addio a Toni Morrison, Premio Nobel 1993, autrice di un romanzo bellissimo, intenso, terribilmente doloroso, indimenticabile.



It was not a story to pass on.

Un romanzo in cui l'orrore e la bellezza vanno sottobraccio come e la morte e la vita, come l'odio e l'amore.
Un romanzo che non è possibile leggere senza poi finire per trovarsi sporchi, macchiati di un peccato originale indelebile, da una macchia nera sulle nostre pelli bianche, apparentemente immacolate ma così insitamente sporche da essere infette.
Un romanzo che è vita, nascita, conquista della libertà, perché «liberarsi è una cosa, rivendicare la proprietà di quell'io liberato un'altra.»
Il clangore delle catene.
Lo leggo.
Lo rileggo.

«Avevo il morso in bocca.»

Cerco di fare chiarezza o di confondere ancora di più questa storia che è dolore e amore allo stato puro, in cui vivi e morti danzano insieme legati da un filo invisibile, o forse solamente dalle «migliori catene forgiate a mano di tutta la Georgia».
Cerco di capire come sia stato possibile che certe cose accadessero, che uomini fossero trattati come bestie, peggio delle bestie; che donne fossero utilizzate come schiave nelle proprie case e poi per dare sfogo ai propri istinti bestiali, di quelli che bestie, ma sentendosi umani, trattavano come bestie altri esseri umani; che a donne e uomini fosse negato persino il diritto di creare tra loro legami, ma non l'imposizione di accoppiarsi al solo fine di riprodursi: un mercato nel mercato, perché ogni donna capace di procreare, di generare uno, cinque, dieci esseri umani era una fonte di guadagno inestimabile nella vendita di un futuro schiavo, di cinque futuri schiavi, di dieci futuri schiavi.
Cerco di non pensare e mogli separate dai mariti, a madri separati dai figli, a figli che chiamavano la propria madre «Signora» perché ignari di quello che l'amore della propria madre potesse o volesse significare, un amore che non doveva voler dire solamente possesso o proprietà esclusiva, ma appartenenza, viscere, destino condiviso: un amore che alcuni potevano soltanto intuire o vedere sparire rapidamente dalle proprie vite ma che altri, i più, non ebbero mai modo di conoscere.

«Sotto di loro l'acqua risucchiava e inghiottiva se stessa.»

Cerco di immaginare quel fiume, quella riva, e una traversata che non è solo fuga ma anche rinascita e purificazione.
E poi l'acqua: corpi senza volti nell'acqua, acqua minacciosa, acqua fangosa, acqua che disseta, acqua che scorre via dal corpo come un fiume in piena, come vita nuova; acqua che guarisce, acqua che nasce, acqua che trasporta, acqua che lava, acqua che fugge, acqua che torna, acqua che scende come lacrime. E poi una città d'acqua.

«Non le sembrava ancora vero. Non ancora. Ma quando le portarono i maschietti addormentati e la sua bambina «gattona già?» non le importava di sapere se fosse vero o no.»
«Cadde la pioggia.»

Non posso.
Non posso immaginare tremila metri di terra «un metro e mezzo di profondità, un metro e mezzo di larghezza, in cui erano stati sistemati dei cubicoli di legno. Una porta fatta di sbarre che si potevano sollevare su dei cardini, come nelle gabbie, dava su tre pareti e un soffitto fatto di legnami di scarto e di terra rossa.»
Ce n'erano quarantasei di questi cubicoli, ma io non riesco ad immaginarli, non posso, neanche leggendolo e rileggendolo.
Però mi sento mancare l'aria e riesco a immaginare quarantasei uomini rinchiusi come topi e le catene, e i ferri.
E poi la pioggia.

«Perché lo ha fatto?»

E poi Sethe.
Cosa può l'amore di una mamma?
Cosa può l'amore di una mamma che non ha conosciuto l'amore di una mamma, ma ama di un amore così puro i propri figli da decidere ogni cosa per sé, per loro, anche la più terribile?
Cosa può l'amore di una mamma che ama di un amore troppo grande?

«Troppo grande? (...) L'amore o c'è o non c'è. L'amore piccolo non è amore per niente.»
«A me non importa quello che è. Grande non significa niente per una mamma. Un figlio è sempre un figlio. È chiaro, crescono, invecchiano. Grande, però, che cosa vuol dire? Nel mio cuore non vuol dire niente.»

Questa non è una storia da tramandare. Questa non è una storia da tralasciare.
Come potevano Baby Suggs, Sethe e Denver passare oltre?

«Mettili giù Sethe. La spada e lo scudo. Giù, giù. Mettili giù tutti e due. Giù in riva al fiume. La spada e lo scudo. Non pensare più alla guerra. Metti giù tutta quella roba. La spada e lo scudo.»
Come poteva Beloved dimenticare ed essere dimenticata?
«Perché ti fai chiamare Beloved?»
Beloved chiuse gli occhi. «Perché al buio mi chiamo Beloved.»

Come può la vita incontrare la morte, in un abbraccio senza fine?
Come si può continuare a vivere senza prima fare i conti con il passato e perdonare prima se stessi?
Come si può vivere come fantasmi nel mondo dei vivi o vivi in un mondo di fantasmi?
E noi, come possiamo passare oltre?
Toni Morrison non ce lo permette, non vuole permettercelo, e lo fa scrivendo un romanzo che evoca un'epoca in cui la crudeltà e la disumanità hanno fatto scempio dei diritti umani, ma in cui, incredibilmente, è possibile ravvedere a fianco della malvagità e degli orrori umani parole colme di speranza, di poesia e nel quale insieme a vita e morte si intrecciano indissolubilmente schiavitù e maternità, bene e male, bianco e nero, passato e presente.
Un romanzo in cui niente è chiaro, niente è completamente messo a fuoco, niente è immediato e lampante.

«Volevo che il lettore fosse rapito, scaraventato brutalmente in un ambiente estraneo; lo vedevo come il primo passo di un'esperienza da condividere con i personaggi che popolavano il libro, proprio come gli stessi personaggi venivano strappati da un luogo e scaraventati in un altro, da un luogo qualsiasi in un altro luogo qualsiasi, senza che fossero preparati a farlo né potessero difendersi.»

Forse perché non sarebbe possibile sopportarlo, forse perché non riusciremmo a crederlo completamente... Meglio allora spostare la messa a fuoco, permettere ai nostri occhi, alla nostra mente, ai nostri cuori, di abituarsi lentamente all'oscurità, di ascoltare i suoni, di sentire gli odori, di ascoltare le voci che popolano questa storia e, lentamente, di capire.
Se poi c'è veramente qualcosa da capire.
Tuttavia.

A woman, a child, a brother - a big love like that would split you wide open in Alfred, Georgia. He knew exactly what she meant: to get to a place where you could love anything you chose - not to need permission for desire - well now, that was freedom.

Not every story can survive a second read in my experience. And this powerful book does, the second time it's even more engaging instantly since you don’t spend any time confused and disoriented in the beginning, trying to piece it all together.

This is a ghost story about trauma, as all of the best ghost stories are, about slavery and the ghosts of it, haunting for generations.

Honestly, it’s about so many things, Toni Morrison masterfully layering so many themes, and making it all into a fantastic touching story.

For example, this is a novel about mothering while enslave. We are presented with three very distinct types of slave mothers: there’s Baby Suggs, who, so broken by her babies being taken away from her, as a survival mechanism dissociated from her children for a while until her last son finally made her a mother and then broke her heart; a woman whose body was used by her owners, who only saw her as a breeding opportunities of the new property.

There’s Sethe,whose “love is too thick”, a mama bear, who’ll go to any lengths to save her children; a woman who was enslaved by the “better” slaver who saw his slaves as slow children who should not be abused, who believed himself to be a good one while infantilizing them and yet treating them as his property.

And lastly, there’s Sethe’s mother, a proud woman who killed her children that were conceived after the rapes by white men, the only child she left alive was Sethe, her love child with a man.

Also it's about emasculation of a black man shown through the stories of Halle, Paul D and Stamp Paid (another trio).

Seriously, this book has so much more to unpack. The way she alternates in telling her story in past tense and where she needs to up the intensity switches to present one. That harrowing culminating scene of that fateful night of the escape.

But in the end, this is just a fantastic story of love, craving for a family (yet another thing slaves were robbed of), a name to pass down to his children, destructive hunger ending on the hopeful note, a possibility of healing.

How to review a book like this, and it is a great book; I’m not sure I have the superlatives it deserves. Morrison based the novel on the story of Margaret Garner, an escaped slave who killed her child as she was being recaptured, to save the child a lifetime of slavery. The setting is around the time of the civil war. The plot and the storyline are well known and it seems most of my GR friends have either read it or have it on their tbr lists.
The writing is great and there is a strong sense of place;
“And in all those escapes he could not help being astonished by the beauty of this land that was not his. He hid in its breast, fingered its earth for food, clung to its banks to lap water and tried not to love it. On nights when the sky was personal, weak with the weight of its own stars, he made himself not love it. Its grave-yards and low-lying rivers. Or just a house—solitary under a chinaberry tree; maybe a mule tethered and the light hitting its hide just so. Anything could stir him and he tried hard not to love it.”
But it is a horror story (and I don’t mean the ghost), horror in the true sense of the word, slavery. It has been argued that Morrison is confronting and highlighting things not recorded or told by histories narrated by white historians. It isn’t comfortable and it is difficult to read; as it should be. I think this is also where some of the negative reviews come from; because the novel is not polemical and the characters have and enduring humanity with nuance. There are reviews saying this is the worst book ever, expressing hatred and loathing for the novel. Hatred and loathing; worst book ever! There are so many bad, bad books out there. This isn’t a bad book, I can understand difficult, I can understand not really liking magic realism or the use of the ghost motif. I don’t get the hatred. I wonder if it is being forced to look at something in the past, that is still in the present and that we are unwilling to face. It seems that slavery has now to be a topic studied in history; making it too real and present creates strong reactions. We still minimize and gloss over in the west the horrors we perpetrated on other parts of the globe. The European powers and the US killed far more than the Nazis did in the slave trade and we still have a problem calling it genocide.
Morrison makes it all human and personal and brings it home.

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داستان در مورد زنی سیاه پوست و برده به نام سِت و خانواده ش هست. بعد از فوت صاحب مزرعه ای که سِت در اون به بردگی گرفته شده مزرعه به شخص دیگه ای واگذار میشه. با توجه به بد رفتاری صاحب جدید مزرعه، سِت به همراه فرزندان و همسرش تصمیم به فرار از مزرعه می گیره اما اتفاقاتی باعث میشه تا همه به صورت جداگانه و پراکنده فرار کنند و در خانه مادر شوهر سِت به هم برسند. اما در این بین اتفاقاتی باعث ناپدید شدن همسر سِت و مرگ دختر کوچکش میشه. روح دختر کوچک خونه اونها رو تسخیر میکنه و باعث ناراحتی ساکنان خونه و همسایه ها میشه...
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نظر شخصی: کتاب با این جمله شروع میشه " ۱۲۴ کینه جو بود، پر از زهرِ کودکی شیرخواره..."
۱۲۴ اسم خونه ای هست که سِت و فرزندانش بعد از فرار در اون ساکن میشن. همین اولین جمله کتاب باعث شد درک کنم کتاب متفاوتی در دست گرفتم که قراره بیانگر واقعیات تکان دهنده ای باشه.
رنج و عذابی که برده ها و سیاه پوستها طی سالها متحمل شدند به قدری تکان دهنده بود که بعضی جاها کتاب رو میبستم و به فکر فرو میرفتم و بعضی قسمتها به چند صفحه قبل بر می گشتم تا دوباره بخونم و ببین درست متوجه شدم که چه بلایی سرشون اومده یا نه...

3.75 or 4
I definitely appreciated the generational and continual trauma writing but I struggled too much with the complex narrative and didn't vibe with the magical realism. Let's hope I fell better with The Bluest Eye

5 stars. Beloved evokes huge swells of emotion with seeming ease. Morrison gives voice to inarticulate feeling, lends words to the oceanic pulls of grief and joy and hurt and love that rock below our conscious thoughts. Fluid in style, graceful with words, secretive and cautious in tone, Morrison writes with a poetic sensibility and asks us to consider our identity and how we might bear the awful weight of the past.

She did not tell them to clean up their lives or to go and sin no more. She did not tell them they were the blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek or its glorybound pure. She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it. (103)