Write a 1-2 paragraph response to Morrison's use of the slave narrative in Beloved. How does she rewrite/ revise the formula adopted by Douglass? What similarities/ differences do you see between the narrative of Douglass's life and Morrison's novel?
Morrison's approach to the use of the slave narrative is not nearly as straight-forward and direct as Douglass's. Whereas Douglass presents the events of his life in the manner in which they occurred, Morrison weaves the memories of the slave narrative throughout the present-day plot of the novel. In other words, she does not reveal all of the slave narrative at the beginning of the story, where it would chronologically occur. She instead reveals bit and pieces of Sethe's, Paul D.'s, Halle's, and Baby Suggs's individual stories as the events of the novel unfold.
ReplyDeleteIn choosing to rewrite the accepted slave narrative in this new format, Morrison creates a story that is not only factually accurate, but also deeply touching, shocking, and heart wrenching. Whereas Douglass's story appeared to be told with as little emotion as possible, Morrison's work would not be nearly as dramatic without the emotion. Douglass appears to give only the facts; Morrison takes those facts and breathes new life into them by giving them names, thoughts, actions, memories, heart break, sadness, and unthinkable violence. She takes Douglass's words and transforms them into a novel of a young woman who so desperately hopes for a better life for her children and family, truly revealing the horrors of slavery in the process.
Morrison uses the slave narrative in her novel Beloved, but she does it in a different way than Frederick Douglass does in his narrative. One of the major differences between the two works is that one is being written as a piece of propaganda to further the abolitionists cause, and one is to simply tell a story. Frederick Douglass was trying to get a clear message across about slavery in a society that participated in it. Therefore, he was careful about what details he could put into it. Morrison doesn't have that concern and can put whatever details she wants in her narratives to further the story. The narrative parts of the story also are a backdrop for the current characters and act to explain or justify some of their actions.
ReplyDeleteThe two works do share similarities. The stories and remembrances that are recounted by the characters of Beloved are very reminiscent of that structure around which the slave narratives were written. You have the extreme acts of violence, the kind master, the cruel master and all throughout the novel we are inside the heads of ex-slaves who are dealing, just as Douglass had to, with the sort of shock of being free after a life of slavery. Both are poignant, the matter of fact fashion of Douglass contrasted to the internalized thoughts of Morrison's characters.
ReplyDeleteChris Gering:
ReplyDeleteMorrison uses Douglass' format of the slave narrative more as an outline rather than strictly adhering to a set of literary rules to write Beloved. Several things are similar to Douglass' narrative. The account of living on a plantation/farm is told from several perspectives, but as the memory of Sweet Home is a collective memory this works to Morrison's advantage. She is able to give a large example from several points of view (Baby Suggs, Sethe, Paul D.) of living as a slave and also the decisions and events leading up to the escape to freedom. This is both an example of a similarity, as well as a way in which Morrison chose to rewrite the slave narrative.
Also, the strong Christian overtones in each characters' belief system. Everyone believes in God, Christ, and the afterlife, and especially in the soul and the existence of ghosts. This is interpreted through everyone's perception of the "ghost" in 124, and later Beloved herself who comes to live with them, and is supposedly the embodiment of the ghost.
The most important thing I feel Morrison kept was the type of people they each become after slavery has ended in each of their lives. No one is willing to go back to it. Also, the psychology of each person changes during, and after they have been slaves. Sethe's too strong motherly love, Baby Suggs inability to remember her children for she knows the futility of doing so, and Paul D. loving just a little. This is the most important aspect of Douglass' narrative that remained intact, and was not played with, in a sense.
The differences between Morrison’s novel and Douglass’s narrative are incredible. Although they are both clearly about the same topic – slavery - they each approach it in different manners. Douglass’s narrative was very blunt and straight-forward, where as Beloved seems to be more about telling a story, perhaps even making the issue of slavery more comfortable to read. By comfortable, I mean Douglass’s narrative may be too shocking and violent for someone who may be ignorant to the idea of slavery. However, in Beloved, Morrison uses the literary genre of a novel to weave some likable details into the horrible actuality of slavery.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest difference, in the end, would be their intended audience. I don't feel Douglass really cared about people who wanted to sit down and read a good story, but ultimately just wanted to get his message out through actual facts and events that happened. Morrison, on the other hand, gave people the understanding of the "big picture" without the blunt details.
Ashley Storch:
ReplyDeleteMorrison uses the slave narrative to give her story some backbone. It enables her to provide solid information to allow the reader to feel as if they are experiencing events through Morrison’s character’s lives. She uses the information from Douglass to portray accurate characters. Personally, I think it allows me to connect with the characters because I can read their thoughts and feelings and really get into their head.
Douglass wrote to get slave experiences out in the open and expose the cruelty behind slavery. His purpose was much different than Morrison’s. Morrison is writing a novel with portrays slave information but unlike Douglass she does not have to worry about abolishing slavery. Both authors have information that intrigues readers and reveals the shocking truth behind slave history.
Even though Beloved may seem like the more “emotional” book, both novels, I think, have a certain power to them. To me, it seems pretty much impossible to write about slavery and not generate some kind of emotional response from the reader. Even though Douglass doesn't spend a lot of time detailing the feelings of the slaves, I do think there’s some degree of feeling in his writing (anger, particularly). One of the differences is that Douglass’s novel has a much simpler, more direct purpose: to educate/enlighten anti-abolitionists, and persuade the reader that slavery is wrong. Morrison’s novel takes this idea of a “slave narrative” and turns it into more of a flesh-and-blood story, creating more complex characters and emotions.
ReplyDeleteShe’s also not constrained by some of the limitations that older works, like Douglass’s, were. With his novel, we basically have one person telling us a story in a very direct, straightforward manner. Beloved uses several narrators to move the reader through an abstract and non-linear narrative that’s as just as (if not more) focused on communicating a character’s mental state and inner thoughts as it is on delivering a “plot.” We can piece together what’s happening/has happened as thoughts and memories run through a character’s head. Reading Douglass’s book felt like hearing someone telling a story, while reading Beloved felt more like you were experiencing the story through the minds of the characters.
Morrison’s novel and Douglass’ life are obviously similar in that they are a slave narrative, and everyone in the stories has suffered. Although they are both slave narratives and show how one man or a family gets free, they differ in how the story is presented. So far in Beloved, we have jumped back and forth between present day and past events. Morrison gradually gives the reader the story through the characters remembering (or “re-memory” as she puts it), while Douglass writes chronologically.
ReplyDeleteI think Morrison uses Douglass’ story to help her get the details of the story just right. By being able to use Douglass’ story for sort of an inspiration, Morrison is able to write a story that makes the reader feel empathy for the characters. It allows them to know exactly what the characters are thinking, feeling, and doing and allows them to really get into the characters’ minds, and know what Morrison was trying to get across
Toni Morrison’s revisions of the slave narrative utilized by Frederick Douglass provide for a more personal look into the lives of different people suffering from the experience of slavery. Of course it isn’t Douglass’s fault that he could provide few viewpoints. He could provide examples of what he saw happening to other slaves, but he could never fully take over their narrative. As much as he could view and communicate the pain they seemed to be feeling, Douglass could never truly know what was going on in their hearts and souls. No doubt he could relate by looking at them, but ultimately he is not provided the same comforts that fiction provides Morrison. Through this medium she is able to look into the personal lives of multiple characters and provide insight into their minds. Her story may be partially based on real events, but Morrison is still the narrator in charge of these characters. She uses this position to go into emotional depths which Douglass was unable to reach not because he was not skilled, but because he was reporting events as he viewed them.
ReplyDeleteThe emotion in Morrison’s work is also easier to display because she is capable of getting into the minds of her characters. Her work is also not being used at all – I would imagine – as an evidentiary piece on the horrors of slavery. Most of us are very well aware that slavery was a terrible, terrible institution and don’t need convincing of that. Douglass’s mostly matter-of-fact retelling of incidents is not necessary for us to realize how terrible the situation was. Because Morrison is now at liberty to write with as much emotion as she wants she is able to create characters who have deep emotions and psychological as well as physical scars. Morrison is able to present to her readers full pictures of the people in her slave narrative. She is able to trace their lives after slavery as well to provide us a fuller slave narrative – including what happens after slavery. She shows us not only how it alters those who suffered directly from it, but how it has altered their families – such as Sethe’s little girl Denver. Basically put Morrison’s revisions to the slave narrative allow for a much bigger picture which takes in all the different ways in which slaves were abused and devastated by slavery. There is no need for her to be as to-the-point as Douglass was. She can delve into all the little issues which he could not, not solely because he lacked the ability to provide psychological profiles of all the people he observed, but also because he had a goal which was different.
Morrison’s use of the slave narrative in Beloved is very different from Douglass’. Both slave narratives show and explain the cruel ways in which white people treated African American slaves. They both stress that slaves were treated as if they were animals and not human. Douglass’ narrative was to explain to white people that slaves were in fact human. I think Morrison’s narrative is to show everyone in America the history of slavery and the hurt and pain that haunts everyone that was involved in slavery to this day. Both are very strong narratives written in different ways.
ReplyDeleteDouglass’ narrative explained his life when he was a slave and after he escaped. His narrative is straightforward, explaining in great detail his story and also other slaves stories that he saw first hand. Morrison’s narrative is a bit confusing in some ways. She goes from talking about the present, to the past, to the future, then to the past again. Stories from the past are introduced many times, you might have a vague idea of something that happened to Sethe in the past and be a little confused but then later in the narrative it will be introduced again and made a lot clearer. Morrison’s narrative is like Douglass’ in the sense that they both talk about the terrible things that happened to African Americans during slavery, but you have to keep reading not to be confused in some parts. Morrison's narrative was made into a novel with much emotion, sometimes I feel as if I can feel the pain through the detail in the stories. Both authors did a great job at opening up my eyes to the secrets of slavery.
First and foremost, Toni Morrison’s rhetorical and stylistic decisions are vastly different from Fredrick Douglas’. Morrison’s use of roaming third-person, free and indirect discourse eradicates the sense of the subjectivity. Douglas’ intentions were to advocate human rights, to create a mechanism or form of propaganda for which black and whites could engage in a dialogue. His first person narrator is used largely to centralize the reader’s empathy. Douglas hones in on devastating moments in order to create an empathetic response in the reader. By revealing the heights of depravity and indignity he faced, the reader—who was presumably white and perhaps uncertain about the necessity of abolition—cannot help to desire, within the narrative context, the slave’s escape and freedom. Thus, Douglas’s rhetorical moves create a surrogate experience for the reader. Morrison’s narrative is not a testimony of facts—like Douglas’—but an emotional montage. But, more importantly, Beloved seems to be a work of metafiction, insofar as it is aware of the difficulties inherent to (and limited by) the conventional slave narrative. The characters—and the nature of their utterances--serve as a reflection of the novel itself in that storytelling (how we present the past and ultimately form our identities in relation to it) is of primary purpose. Characters like Paul D. and Sethe might not be so much in love with each other as they are in each other’s stories. Denver, too, constructs an identity upon the stories of her miraculous birth. We also see this working at the level of community. After Sethe kills her child, the community is at a loss as to how they can adequately organize and interpret (narrate) the experience. Unable to find a narrative that is suitable to convey the extent of the atrocity, they withdraw. However, the narrative persists as a metaphorical ghost, and the ramifications only materialize when Stamp produces the textual evidence. Interestingly, the “present” of Beloved takes place during the beginnings of the “reconstruction” period. What we are show are characters who are “reconstructing” or reremembering themselves. This “reremembering” is indicative of the novel-proper because Morrison’s redefining of conventions is analogous to reremembering slavery. So, the difference between Douglas’ and Morrison’s narrative—at least one of them—is that Douglas is presenting the “facts,” with the intention of gaining support for abolition, while Morrison is showing that African-American identity is in some respects contingent upon the ways in which we tell and interpret our stories.
ReplyDeleteThe two novels seem to have the same goal: To educate those who were not able to see the harshness of slavery first hand or even hear about it at all. While they do have similarities in being narratives about slaves/blacks, they are distinctively different from one another.
ReplyDeleteDouglass' narrative is filled with blunt details, so blunt and sometimes gory that it's almost impossible for a reader not to believe every word written in the text. His narrative is definitely more straight-forward than Morrison's in that it reads like a biography with no fiction, symbols or a certain style to direct the reader. What you read from Douglass' novel is what you got from it. It left little for imagination beyond his writing because it was so specific and obvious.
Morrison, on the other hand, wrote Beloved almost as if it were a mystery of some kind. The reader has to imagine, and at times, guess what she is trying to say within the novel. There are many interruptions of points of view and many names that go unexplained and the reader must use context clues to gain a better understanding. What is significant about Morrison's style or writing is how she uses punctuation and grammar to tie into the emotion that the character is expressing. For instance, when Beloved is finally speaking from her point of view, the use of spacing of the words as well as punctuality is confounding at first but then it resonates very raw emotions from within the reader if they read closely. This is something that Morrison does that Douglass does not, which is allow the reader to feel emotions, raw and sometimes unthinkable, but emotions nonetheless just by words on a paper. She is not only telling a story but she is unraveling the details subtly almost as if to tell the reader "but wait, theres more..."
Both narratives are incredible and deserve their place in literary history. Douglass seems to have a theme of 'knowledge=power' so to speak which can relate to anyone reading it. Morrison's theme is unclear until you finish the entire novel and then after that it is still up for discussion just because of the wide range of imagination that it takes to truly read and understand what she is trying to say. Also, I think it is important to note how different the slaveowners are in each narrative: Douglass had some harsh owners and experiences (covey/hughes) whereas the people from Sweet Home had Garner (before he died) who treated them as if they were men and even granted them gun rights. Still though, the truth of the matter is evident: Slavery is slavery no matter the tactics of the owners.
Morrison’s form of narration develops into a story that reads like a novel. In comparison to Douglass’s slave narrative, his form of writing plays out chronologically as an autobiography. Both focus on the topic of slavery but express it in different ways. Douglass’s approach to slavery is extremely forward. He acknowledges the reader and his or her expectations at the beginning of the narrative by expressing the importance of his story. Morrison approaches the topic of slavery by submerging the reader into a fictional situation of a family of slaves. Morrison mixes memories of the past with ongoing events in the development of the plot. Douglass briefly reflects on past events with each memory that unfolds. Both Douglass and Morrison utilize dialogue in their stories. What’s so interesting about the form of dialogue is that it’s not the typical southern speech that can be found in novels like The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. A final factor that distinguishes Morrison’s novel Beloved from Douglass’s slave narration is the intended audience. Douglass wrote his narrative in 1845 whereas Morrison wrote hers in 1987. Understanding the historical impact of slavery in America is just as important today as it was when it was happening.
ReplyDeleteI have noticed that when compared to Douglass's narrative, Morrison's seems more like a novel. She uses the same basic outline as Douglass, but uses dialog and third person more, which tends to make the work sound like a novel. Like Casey said, the audience is a huge factor in why the two works are written the way they are. Beloved seems like the type of book that one would sit down and read for pleasure, whereas Douglass's book is more something that would be read to gain knowledge of the subject of slave narratives. Since they were written for different audiences, Morrison had more freedom to be metaphorical and imaginative with her story. With the house being the way it is, and the wounds on her back being a "tree", if Douglass were to describe things in these ways, it would seem very out of place.
ReplyDeleteToni Morrison’s novel Beloved is not only a haunted story, but a slave narrative. She writes about Sethe’s past at Sweet Home and some of the experiences that she encountered there as a slave. Sethe was brought to Sweet Home to take Baby Sugg’s place. From what I can tell Baby Sugg’s was there to entertain the men. Sethe was the only woman on the plantation with six slaved men. Another way Morrison makes it into a slave narrative is she writes about Sethe’s journey of running away to freedom. At one point the book talks about the marks on her back from where she had been wiped as a slave.
ReplyDeleteMorrison writes about slavery in a whole entire different way then Douglass did in his novel. Douglass wrote about not only events that happened to him, but ones that he saw happen to others. When he wrote about them it was very detailed and it allowed readers to see the characters pain and suffering. Douglass’s main goal in his novel was to tell about the unfairness and what the slaves had to face each day. Morrison talks about slavery as a past memory for Sethe. She makes it a memory that no matter how far away from Sweet Home Sethe is she can’t run away from it or forget what happened. Beloved is more of a store with flash backs to the past rather then just coming out and telling the dehumanizing facts of slavery.
One major difference between the two works is that Morrison’s Beloved does not flow in a straightforward fashion towards freedom. We are given the story of Sethe’s journey in bits and pieces, but the focus of the goal of the narrative is not the goal of freedom. Sethe and her family start out the novel as already being free, and Morrison’s narrative then tells of how life after slavery is still deeply effected by the enslaved past. Beloved does contain many of the scenes of brutality towards slaves, especially those of violence against women. Similarly to Douglass Sethe’s attachment to her parents is almost nonexistent, and she has only recollections of her mother at night. Unlike Douglass she does not believe herself to be part white, and even mentions that her mother threw away the children who were products of rape by white men. A major concern of Douglass’s story is the process of gaining literacy, something which is never an issue in the story of Sethe. Her freedom comes from determination, physical hardship, and the assistance of a poor white girl. Douglass was concerned with the reasons for freedom and the path to achieving it, but Morrison was concerned with the lasting psychological effects of slavery on families and individual people.
ReplyDeleteWhen Morrison discusses Sethe's slavery experience and the events that had occurred, it definitely is told differently than Douglass'. Whenever Sethe goes to tell of her past, in a way it seems she goes blank and has to stop because she feels she is back in Sweet Home. Bringing up the past for Sethe is in a way reliving it. She also does not discuss her experience in concrete detail as Douglass does. Throughout his narrative he gave details such as names, places, and the events that had taken place either to him or others. He was straight forward in his narrative about slavery. Also, Bleoved is not solely based on being free as is Douglass' novel. The similarity I notice that they shared is not being able to recall family members. Neither could remember being with their parents or siblings if either had any. They were both taken away early in life that it did not give them a chance for a bond. However, Sethe was attached to her children and showed her love. In the novel, Paul D makes a remark that no one should love something as much as Sethe loves her children. I think both novels has a different goal in how they recall what life was like in slavery. You have Douglass who wants people to know what life was like and then you have Sethe who can't bring herself to discuss it in detail. Also, Beloved is not a narrative solely on discussing slavery but also for the purpose of what happened to her children as the effects of slavery. Douglass' narrative was solely for the purpose of having the reader understand slavery and the extremism of it.
ReplyDeleteMorrison's Beloved is not written in a set chronological order. The story arc consists on touching the main characters' story; whether it be Baby Suggs, Sethe, Paul D, etc. For Morrison to achieve the heart wrenching ending, we needed to feel a connection with Sethe; we needed to see that she first is a mother and is human, not a crazed killer. Morrison kind of wanted to make us feel that her actions are legitimized by putting the beginning at the end. If the murders were placed at the forefront of the novel, the rest of the read would've been an entirely different experience for us as our perception of Sethe would be dramatically different.
ReplyDeleteThe Narrative of Frederick Douglass is meant to be written in a chronological order as it is an autobiography. Granted, he does touch on several other small stories along the way, but the time never shifts future or past when going on these side stories, always parallel to the topic at hand; one small exception is possibly when he discusses his grandmother. Douglass also wanted The Narrative of Frederick Douglass to drive a point home to the Northerners; that there are free thinking slaves in the South, this is what is happening to them, and we need your assistance. Stat.
I know this might not really be addressing the prompt, but…
ReplyDeleteWithin Beloved , Morrison presents several central instances of what I can most accurately describe as supernatural fantasticism. These instances include the haunting of 124 by Beloved’s baby ghost and its eventual transmutation into (what appears to be) an adult female. Generally speaking, you have to be a bit of a nut job to believe in ghosts and you have to be nuttier than a fruit cake to believe in a baby ghost that becomes a weirdo woman-child seductress. Obviously Morrison’s employment of the slave narrative provides Beloved with a historical backdrop, or foundation, but, in my estimation, the history Morrison attaches to her novel justifies its more fantastic elements, making them almost…believable. Because, HONESTLY, in the context of 2010 (maybe more accurately the “western context”) , both the atrocities endured by characters like Paul D. and Sethe and generalized slavery (one man owning another man) seem as unimaginable as the existence of ghosts. In some way, Morrison asks, “is the belief in the supernatural really that farfetched?” To clarify, I realize that this could be interpreted in a really offensive manner, but I’m in no way trying to suggest that slavery is as believable as the supernatural, or deny slavery’s existence.
Though Beloved does play off of and borrow from other slave narratives like Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the life…the voice in Douglass’ Narrative of the Life… completely contrasts Morrison’s Beloved voice. Douglass’s work reads with accessibility, ease, and nothing extraneous to the incredibly linear storyline, while Morrison’s narrative “reads poetic” and bordering on the hallucinatory, full of original figurative language (“..autumn with its bottle of blood and gold had everybody’s attention.”) and disjointed temporal elements. The difference in presentation of the two slave narratives can best be attributed to their different authorial motivation. Douglass’s narrative functions like an exposé, attempting to communicate the horrors of slavery to every literate individual who comes in contact with it.
It is very apparent after reading Fredrick Douglass' slave narrative compared to Toni Morrison's Beloved that there are many similarities and differences. The most apparent difference that I have found within the two novels is the context in which they were written. Douglass wrote his slave narrative during the time period of slavery in hopes to provide abolitionists with the evidence of the horrible treatment of slaves. His narrative is written in a very straightforward manner that is easy to understand and analyze. Using this type of writing, I conclude that Douglass was attempting to reach all members of society to portray his life as a slave and perhaps encourage those individuals to join the abolitionist movement in the eighteen-hundreds. Toni Morrison, on the other hand, wrote Beloved in a more 'story-like' context. Unlike Douglass' narrative, one must pay close attention to the detail in Morrison's writing to fully comprehend what she is intending to portray. Though it is still regarding the life of slavery, it was written many years following the period of slavery which lends the idea that it is written to be strictly informative, instead of used as some sort of propaganda. Many of the same, or similar, aspects of slavery can be found embedded in both writings, though they were intended for different uses and are written in a different manner.
ReplyDeleteMorrision draws heavily upon the slave narrative in telling the story of Sethe. Like Douglass there is a paced buil-up to the more horrible aspects of slavery. Nothing is told all at once but rather threaded throughout the story. Douglass concedes that he himself had not suffered the worst atrocities of slavery but referenced otheres who had. While Sethe's treatment was too horrible to imagine it was a single instance (the rape and stealing of her milk) while Paul D serves as the character to show the worst that could happen to a single man under slavery. The themes of dehumanization are obvious and everpresent for at heart that is what the slave narrative is. It is an account of how the mind, body, and soul are cowed (at least attempted) to revert blacks to an animal persona.
ReplyDeleteWhat I found incredibly interesting is a section that Morrison seems to quite literally draw from Douglass. This occurs (in my edition) on page 198 and 199. The passage speaks of how whites are always afraid of the jungle in blacks but it is a jungle which whites planted. The section continues to talk about how this fear of the jungle infects whites and destroys the morality they once had, turning them into hateful creatures because of slavery. Is this not almost identical to the account of Douglass' young mistress in Baltimore?
Matt Cain
Douglass and MOrrison are obviously both very strong slave novels but in different ways. Morrison bases her novel off of the story of Margaret Garner. This story os very unique because it starts sort of at the end. She makes us fall in love with Sethe and then almost makes us turn against her when we find out she killed her child. Douglass, on the other hand, bases his novel off of his own experience. We really see what he went through and how hard it was for him to escape once he knew that he could escape. It is just outstanding the differences but they both were true slave novels because they both explained what it was like to be a slave in the South.
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