{"id":492,"date":"2009-03-24T22:17:49","date_gmt":"2009-03-25T03:17:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=492"},"modified":"2009-03-24T22:17:49","modified_gmt":"2009-03-25T03:17:49","slug":"unity-in-fragmentation-and-brokenness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=492","title":{"rendered":"Unity in Fragmentation and Brokenness"},"content":{"rendered":"

In many ways Toni Morrison’s Beloved<\/em>\u00a0reminds me of William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0Both speak to issues of slavery and race; both narratives are told from multiple points of view and in non-chronological order, steadily fleshing out the many facets of the story. \u00a0I may be putting more faith in my reading of Beloved <\/em>than Absalom, Absalom!<\/em>\u00a0when I say that I think Faulkner’s work is more post-modern in that in the end the reader is not sure what is true and what to believe; I think Morrison gives us a much more solid reality and a “center” that we can stand on.<\/p>\n

I feel that the fragmented structure of the novel parallels the fragmented and broken nature of the characters in the work. \u00a0The setting of the narrative jumps around so the idea of home is difficult to pin down. \u00a0Sethe separates herself from the memory of Beloved, but Beloved cannot be repressed (sound familiar? \u00a0House of Leaves<\/em>\u00a0is back!). \u00a0At the same time, even though the characters lives and bodies are in pieces, the past of fragmentation brings them together and unifies them in the end. \u00a0I think that Paul D goes to Sethe with the hope that she might satisfy his needs and make him feel whole, unbroken. \u00a0He would not return were it not for some shared connection. \u00a0Granted, he does not understand the whole picture and when Beloved enters on the scene he gets uncomfortable and leaves. \u00a0Still, at the end, he returns and tries and offers to help heal and piece Sethe back together. \u00a0I also think that it is interesting that Sethe’s scars, her bodily brokenness, appears to form a tree. \u00a0The tree seems reminiscent of a family tree, showing that all of the characters, Sethe, Denver, Beloved, Paul D, are connected by the physical and not so physical wounds they bear.<\/p>\n

The appearance of ghosts in this novel and postmodernism in general is an interesting one. \u00a0Going along with the theme I’ve already got rolling here, I think ghosts are great symbols for fragmentation: a ghost is a spirit separated from its body. \u00a0In the instance of Beloved, <\/em>the ghost serves as a symbol of the mental wounds, the repressed, too. \u00a0With regards to Alyssa’s comments about ghosts, Morrison may not attempt to separate ghosts from religion, but I don’t think she tries to marry the two ideas together. \u00a0I feel the religion within the work comes out more in the form of a general spirituality than rigid establishments and dogmas. \u00a0If the work had been more about religion, then I think Morrison would have had the ladies at the end sing a hymn instead of one of Sixo’s(?) old tunes. \u00a0Ghost does not immediately connote religion; just think about how many horror movies have ghosts and then think about how many have priests in them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In many ways Toni Morrison’s Beloved\u00a0reminds me of William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!\u00a0\u00a0Both speak to issues of slavery and race; both narratives are told from multiple points of view and in non-chronological order, steadily fleshing out the many facets of the story. \u00a0I may be putting more faith in my reading of Beloved than Absalom, Absalom!\u00a0when … Continue reading Unity in Fragmentation and Brokenness<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[56,60,59,61],"class_list":["post-492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-10-beloved","tag-beloved","tag-faulkner","tag-fragmentation","tag-ghosts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=492"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":501,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions\/501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}