English IV AP Literature and Composition Beloved Beloved Reading ...

English IV AP Literature and Composition
Beloved
“Dazzling. . . . Magical. . . . An extraordinary work.” —The New York Times
“A masterpiece. . . . Magnificent. . . . Astounding. . . . Overpowering.” —Newsweek
“Toni Morrison is not just an important contemporary novelist but a major figure in our national literature.” —New
York Review of Books
“A work of genuine force. . . . Beautifully written.” —The Washington Post
“There is something great in Beloved: a play of human voices, consciously exalted, perversely stressed, yet holding
true. It gets you.” —The New Yorker
“Stunning. . . A lasting achievement.” —The Christian Science Monitor
“Compelling . . . Morrison shakes that brilliant kaleidoscope of hers again, and the story of pain, endurance, poetry
and power she is born to tell comes right out.” —The Village Voice
“In her most probing novel, Toni Morrison has demonstrated once again the stunning powers that place her in the
first ranks of our living novelists.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Heart-wrenching . . . mesmerizing.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Shattering emotional power and impact.” —New York Daily News
A Review by Erica Bauermeister:
From 500 Great Books by Women
When slavery has torn apart one's heritage, when the past is more real than the present, when the rage of a
dead baby can literally rock a house, then the traditional novel is no longer an adequate instrument. And so
Pulitzer Prize-winner Beloved is written in bits and images, smashed like a mirror on the floor and left for
the reader to put together. In a novel that is hypnotic, beautiful, and elusive, Toni Morrison portrays the
lives of Sethe, an escaped slave and mother, and those around her. There is Sixo, who "stopped speaking
English because there was no future in it," and .... Baby Suggs, who makes her living with her heart
because slavery "had busted her legs, back, head, eyes, hands, kidneys, womb and tongue;" and Paul D, a
man with a rusted metal box for a heart and a presence that allows women to cry. At the center is Sethe,
whose story makes us think and think again about what we mean when we say we love our children or
freedom. The stories circle, swim dreamily to the surface, and are suddenly clear and horrifying. Because
of the extraordinary, experimental style as well as the intensity of the subject matter, what we learn from
them touches at a level deeper than understanding.
A critic has said that one important measure of a superior work of literature is its ability to produce in the reader a
healthy confusion of pleasure and disquietude.
Another critic has written: “Let’s face it: Toni Morrison’s Beloved can only be re-read. But the challenges posed by
this novel ought not to be confused with the mere ‘fascination of what’s difficult’ that Yeats complains has ‘dried
the sap out of [his] veins.’ To the contrary, the difficulties of Beloved should set our sap flowing….Morrison
describes the opening of Beloved as ‘immediately incomprehensible’ and ‘excessively demanding.’ She goes on to
explain that, for reasons both artistic and political, in the first pages of the book she wishes her reader to experience
‘compelling confusion…without comfort or succor from the author with only imagination, intelligence and necessity
available for the journey…’I want to shift the ending away from the notion of a novel as “Tell me what I need to
know” and “What is the solution to the problem” I want to shift the emphasis away from our need for a closed door.
I want the door open because I want the reader to think about it. I want the reader to take some responsibility for the
ending.”
Beloved Reading Schedule
Chapter 1—read together and discuss
Chapters Pages Due Date
1. Part One 2-8 24-100 Tuesday, 2/19
First Reader—1 st response over this reading section is due to your partner.

2. Part One 9-18 101-195 Friday, 2/22
Second Reader—2 nd response over this reading section is due to your partner.
3. Part Two 19-25 199-277 Thursday, 2/28
First Reader—3 rd response over this section of the reading is due to your partner.
4. Part Three 26-28 281-324 Tuesday, 3/4
Second Reader—4 th response over the last section is due to your partner.
Your Beloved writing assignment will an ongoing Google document that you and your partner
create as you read Beloved. When you create your document, invite me (mwilcox4@gmail.com)
along with your partner. Begin reading logs (two each) with someone assigned to you from your
class—designated “first reader” and “second reader.” Focus on a specific and prominent motif
you and your partner notice, tracking its development throughout the novel.
The day your assigned reading log is due, you have some choices. You may print off a hard
copy or you may show me a copy on your electronic device. Suggested length: no less than a full
page, but do not go over two.
At the conclusion of the book, in partnership, edit, clean-up, revise your reading responses,
combine them in chronological order in some kind of bound, thematically decorated notebook or
other organizer and turn in. Please designate in different fonts or colors whose thoughts belong
to which responder.
In your logs, consider the following:
Characters—How do they change and interact with Beloved? Who is the protagonist? Who is the heroine?
Consider the growth of the following characters:
• Baby Suggs
• Sethe
• Halle
• Paul D
• Denver
• Beloved
• Stamp Paid
Symbols
Biblical Allusions
• tree on Sethe’s back, scars “I will call them my people…”
• water/baptism Romans 9:25, 9:26, 1:22, 23
• fetters/chains
• colors Loaves and Fishes/Last Supper
• milk of motherhood Matthew 15:15, Mark 6, Luke 9
• ghosts
• characters as symbols Horsemen Riding
• birds, rooster Revelations 6:2, 7:17
• ribbon in water
• address 124
• Trees
• feet
• pregnancy
• metal, tin box, red heart
• Amy D’s velvet
• Butter/churn
• Community or lack thereof (isolation from a community and devastating toll)

Language—Toni Morrison says of her writing, “My language has to have holes and spaces so the reader can
come into it.”
• Poetic
• Beautiful
• Paradoxical
• Reveals/conceals at the same time
• Repetition of the words and phrases—unspeakable thoughts unspoken
• Stream of consciousness monologues
• Intermingling of the voices within a chapter—especially the later
• Repetition of words and phrases. For example the schoolteacher’s story is told 12 times. Only the last time
is the story fully revealed.
Irony
“Sweet Home”
Garner says of his slaves, “My n***** are men”—yet everything they do negates their “manhood.”
Sethe becomes a slave to Beloved.
Irony in the graphic descriptions.
Baby Sugg’s freedom is bought at expense of her son’s bondage. Baby Suggs is amazed Halle can understand the
need to be free when he himself has never experience the joy.
For years Paul D believed school-teacher broke into children what Garner had raised into men. Can you declare
someone to be a man?
Graphic descriptions—detailed accounts of the horrific/ understatement. When she wrote she tried to use the most
quiet language to describe what was really the most horrific experiences (the epitome of understatement).
Mystery—who is Beloved?
“Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child” Billie Holiday sang.
Do you resent Beloved? What must have been like to be a motherless child?
Who is Beloved? Who is she and what does she represent?
• Sethe’s conscience
• Catalyst for confronting the past
• Horrors of slavery
• Confronting the middle passage
• Spirit of a disenfranchised people
• A ghost
• Catalyst for revelations/healing
• Adult and child
• The voice of the middle passage
• A daughter looking for her mother
• A freed slave
Setting
Sweet Home vs. 124
Community—the clearing/ the river, etc.
The effects of African Americans after the Civil War, Reconstruction, Fugitive Act of 1850.
Structure & Progression of novel
Beloved does not follow a linear plot line. It circles from past to present with series of flashbacks that gradually
reveal the central characters’ stories. Keep track of the events as they unfold. When you are finished create a visual
of the events, contrasting them to a standard chronological order.
Points of View—the haunting story of a mother’s love that frames a series of interrelated love stories. Keep track of
who is speaking and how this voice affects the message.
Themes
• Rememory—importance of past and its connection to the present and how it defines the future.
• Community—healing power of women, sisterhood and ties that bind
• Isolation of the individual
• Slavery’s destructive effects on all aspects of life, especially motherhood and masculinity, humanity and
identity.
• Freedom