4- 2.
*Introduction (how to develop an argument);
*paragraph unity (one ¶ one idea) and coherence (key words and transition)
* in the writing means a new topic.
Memories can weaken one’s sense of identity and even fragment it when they are
burdensome, repressed and/or traumatic. Slavery is one of such traumatic experience
for Afro-Americans. (Gap^)Toni Morrison is a Pulitzer winner as well as a black
female writer. Her works mostly deal with racial and female issues since she herself is
also an activist for (article) Civil Rights Movement. *She finished Beloved in 1987
when she is a single mother herself after reading a news event in 1851 about a mother
who kills her child for saving her away from slavery (Sentence Structure). It is the
time after the Civil Rights Movement (around 1945 to 1970) and the Second Wave of
Feminism (originated around 1960s) appear and infanticide rate is high in the United
States (according to the statistics of SPI; citation—really?). In Toni Morrison’s
Beloved, the protagonist Sethe, an ex-slave mother, lives under her traumas of losing
her mother, having her milk thieved, being treated like an animal, and murdering her
daughter out of love. Her youngest daughter, Denver, suffers (article) loneliness of
being in an incomplete family and without-siblings’ accompany, as well as (article)
fear of being killed by her mother. Beloved, the daughter Sethe kills as an infant, is
insecure and capricious by the abandonment. The dirty and traumatic memories result
in their splitting and broken identities. However, in this chapter, they try to construct
their incomplete subjectivities through one another. This unnumbered chapter of 23 is
a poetic prose of Sethe, Denver and Beloved’s conversations. Without identifying the
names of the narrators, there are only voices responding to one and another. This is
time when Sethe has recognizes Beloved as her returned daughter she kills eighteen
years ago. Following three monologues of Sethe, Denver and Beloved, the chapter is a
mixed part of all their minds. Sethe wants Beloved to come back and forgive her.
Denver warns Beloved against Sethe and wants her to be with her. Beloved wants to
have Sethe’s smile and face and never leave her. (thesis statement?)
(Gap^) *Mother-and-daughter becomes a popular topic in contemporary
literature. *The trauma that causes the incomplete subjectivities are widely studied
and discussed these years, especially in the maternal or female experiences, by the
methods of Psychoanalysis, Feminism, Postmoderinism, Postcolonialism, New
Historicism and so on. *For Beloved, scholars show protagonists’ fragmented
identities are reconstructed through dealing with the past or history by rememorying
and telling even with gothic or supernatural ways(awk). By doing so Morrison can
revise the black history and reassert black female identities in social and cultural
contexts dominated by whites. Besides, healing and heading future will be possible
through connecting the community. The chapter is the turning point while facing their
trauma and communicating with one another, Sethe, Denver and Beloved form an
exclusive community which is both healing and suffocating.
Rev. 1 If memories can weaken, and even shatter one’s sense of identity when
they become burdensome, repressed and/or traumatic, “slavery” must be one for
Afro-Americans. Toni Morrison, as a Pulitzer winner as well as a black female writer,
contributes mostly her works to racial and female issues since she herself is also an
activist in Civil Rights Movement. In 1987 she was a single mother who read a news
event about a mother who killed her child in order to save her away from slavery in
1851; after that she finished Beloved. It was the time not only after the Civil Rights
Movement (around 1945 to 1970), but of the appearance of the Second Wave of
Feminism; therefore, infanticide rate was high in the United States at that time. In
Beloved, firstly, the protagonist Sethe, an ex-slave mother, lives under a series of
traumas of losing her mother, having her milk been thieved, being treated like an
animal, and murdering her daughter out of love. Her youngest daughter Denver thus
suffers from the loneliness of being living in an incomplete family without any
company because her mother kills her sibling, and from the fear of being killed by her
mother. Beloved, the other daughter Sethe kills as an infant, is insecure and capricious
because of being abandoned. These dirty and traumatic memories cause their split and
broken identities; however, in this chapter, they are trying to construct their
incomplete subjectivities through one another. This unnumbered chapter of 23 is a
poetic prose consisting of Sethe, Denver and Beloved’s conversations. Without giving
the names of the narrators, there are only “voices” responding to one another mutually,
and showing the three monologues as mixture of their minds. This is the plot of
Sethe’s recognizing Beloved as her returning daughter she killed eighteen years ago,
and her wish that Beloved can come back and forgive her. On the one hand, Beloved
is warned against Sethe by Denver who wants her company; on the other hand, she
wants to have Sethe’s smile, facing her and never leaving her again.
In recent years, the trauma that causes the incomplete subjectivities is widely
studied and discussed especially in the maternal and female experiences, which makes
the mother-daughter plot become popular in contemporary literature. It can be studied
with the methods of psychoanalysis, feminism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, and
new historicism and so on. In Beloved, scholars assume that the shattered identities of
protagonists are reconstructed through dealing with the personal past, or history, by
rememorizing and telling it with elements of the gothic or the supernatural. With these
strategies, Morrison can not only revise the black history, but reassert the black
female identities in the social and cultural contexts dominated by the whites.
Moreover, it will be possible to heal and head the future through connecting
(constructing?) the community. This chapter is surely a turning point that, while
facing their traumas and communicating with one another, Sethe, Denver and Beloved
are forming an exclusive community which is both healing and suffocating.
Rev. 2:
Memories can weaken one’s sense of identity and even fragment it when they are
burdensome, repressed and/or traumatic. Slavery is one of such traumatic experience
for Afro-Americans, the sadness, shame and disgrace of which Toni Morison digs
into in . Beloved. The burden of the past is heavier, considering the fact that what
she presents is something not only sad, but also shameful: a story based on a news
event in 1851 about a mother who killed her child to save her from slavery.
(moved to the third ¶) This infant-killing incident has been a traumatic experience
in Belovednot only to the protagonist Sethe, but also to her daughters; i.e., Denver the
youngest and Beloved, the killed baby who returns as a girl. Moreover, (If
infant-killing is a horribly drastic measure,) Morrison shows how it is caused by
the slavery system which dehumanizes the blacks and breaks up their family. Sethe
for instance, suffers from losing her mother, having her milk thieved, being treated
like an animal, besides having to murder her daughter out of love. Denver suffers
from (article) the loneliness of being in an incomplete family and without siblings’
company, as well as (article) the fear of being killed by her mother. Beloved, likewise,
is made insecure and capricious by the experience of abandonment and loneliness in
death. Their dirty(? bloody?) and traumatic memories thus result in their split and
broken identities.
Morrison, however, does not simply digs up the past or pulls the skeleton out of
the closet. Rather, the whole novel presents the healing process of these traumatized
characters, as well as for the whole Afro-American community. This healing process
starts with . . . and culminates in chapter 23, where the mother and daughters try to
construct their incomplete subjectivities through one another be expressing their
desires, or even merge with one another in unidentifiable voices responding to one
and another.
[Scholarship: e.g. Many critics have analyzed how the protagonists’
fragmented identities are reconstructed through dealing with the past or history—or in
Morrison’s words, by rememorying-- and how slavery is presented in some gothic and
supernatural ways. Rememory, for Morrison and as the critics have shown, is a
way to revise the black history and reassert black female identities in social and
cultural contexts dominated by whites. In their analyses, according to Brooks, they
have to deal with the issue of who is to blame for the infanticide (or being involved in
the “shame-and-blame drama” 133).
Brooks himself also sees the incidence, as well
as the other race matters Morrison presents, as “painful and shameful” (IX). I,
however, want to define shame, different from guilt, as being induced by the
community. In other words, neither Sethe herself, nor her daughter Denver, feels
ashamed. To the mother and the daughter, as I will show, it is more a matter of how
to connect with their mother/daughters while staying independent from and/or
connected with the other members of society at the same time.] (later) (thesis
statement?) Although the community sees the infanticide—or even slavery--as
something shameful to be exorcized, I will argue that, for the mother and the
daughters, it is a radical break to be mended through a long process of both
connections and individuation. (* This is just a hypothetical thesis statement, made
with no research on current scholarship!)
(Gap^) The novel, besides showing how slavery emasculates Afro-American
men, is mainly concerned with the traumatic experience of slavery by mothers and
daughters, which brings a new angle to the discourses (and even debates) on the
issues of motherhood and mother-daughter relationship brought up by the Second
Wave feminists around 1960s and more feminists afterwards. (Gap^: should discuss
the issues brought up by the feminists.)_ Mother-and-daughter becomes a popular
topic in contemporary literature.(delete if you don’t have too much to say.) . .
[While white feminists are concerned with how daughters establishes their identities
while retaining their connections with their biological mother, Afro-American writers
such as Toni Morrison ask: what if black women’s motherhood is denied during
slavery, and their mothers, unavailable? How do they connect when the ones to
connect with are no longer there and when their memories are repressed? What do
they separate themselves from if oppression and support come from the same sources,
i.e. the community and their mothers?]
[new ¶].In other words, both connections and individuation of the mothers and
daughters are more difficult in Beloved because of the trauma they experience.
(later) . (moved forward)To heal themselves and to head toward future, therefore,
they need to connect first with the traumatic experience and with each other.
. The
chapter marks the turning point when they face their traumaby expressing what they
lack, and explaining what they did, and by forming an exclusive community which is
both healing and suffocating.
Ref:
Quiet As It's Kept : Shame, Trauma, and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison (eBook)
SUNY Series in Psychoanalysis and Culture
by Bouson, J. Brooks.
Publication: Albany, N.Y. State University of New York Press, 2000.
P. IX
My aim in the following pages is to offer an in-depth analysis of the painful and
shameful race matters that pervade Morrison's novels.
p. 133
The fact that critic-readers, as we shall see, are repeatedly drawn into the acts of
judging and sometimes of justifying the infanticide—which is presented as an
example of excessive mother love that is, at once, brutal and protective, shameful and
heroic—reveals the power of Morrison's narrative to involve readers in the
shame-and-blame drama that it stages.