Hauntings and Its Influence on Choices - Essay Example

Hauntings and its influence on choices, and the other way around Supernatural elements have been incorporated in numerous literary works to evoke various emotions. The authors writing such works will use the supernatural elements including dark and unusual settings, as well as supernatural characters or ghosts to heighten the atmosphere and to keep the readers excited throughout the read. Apart from the reader perspective, authors mainly use these supernatural elements as part of the plot and importantly as a ‘catalyst’ for the various thought processes and actions of the characters, particularly the protagonist. That is, these supernatural elements could ‘chart’ the course, the character takes as well as decide and justify the actions of the character. In addition, these supernatural elements could impact the mindset of the character so much, that they can bring back the painful memories of the past life of the character, thus negatively impacting the current lives and choices. A key perspective is, these supernatural elements appear due to the choices made by the character in the past life, and continue as hauntings, importantly leading to further choices, which can be clearly seen in Toni Morrison’s work, Beloved. So, this paper will first focus on the supernatural or ghostly presence in Beloved, discussing what the hauntings intends to represent and how those hauntings trigger memories of history, home, family, trauma, loss, and love. Continuing on the same line, the paper will discuss how those hauntings also prompted the protagonist to make a choice, although the hauntings are due to the protagonist choice’ in her past life. Choice is an attribute that allows a human being to control her life and define herself, and this attribute can be seen in the next part of the paper. This part of the paper will analyze how the characters in Beloved, “No Name Woman” and “Snapshots” confront choices that change the course of their lives, which in turn alter their internal feelings. In the final part, the paper focusing on two works, Beloved and “No Name Woman” will discuss how those choices of the main protagonist correlates with the hauntings presented in the works. Supernatural or ghostly presence in Beloved and its representation Beloved, a true story based on the life of Margaret Garner, was about the sufferings, choices and the resultant predicament of the female character, Sethe. Sethe, an Afro-American slave, works in a plantation farm, marries Halle Suggs and have four children with him. But, she undergoes some of the worst and inhumane treatment at the hands of her white masters in the plantation. She was continuously beaten and the owners even went to the extent of mercilessly sucking her lactating breasts. This incident traumatizes her so much that Sethe runs away from the plantation with her baby daughter, and also leads her to take the heinous at the same time mercy choice. That is, after escaping, she was traced and when she understands that there will not be any freedom for her as well as her daughter and their lives will become a living hell, she takes the horrific step of killing her own daughter. After passage of time, this choice of hers starts to haunt in the form of a ghost, which occupies their house, and importantly in the form an 18 year old young woman, Beloved, who suddenly appears in front of her house and who has the same name that was inscribed on her dead daughter tombstone. “Although there are many clues that she is the physical reincarnation of Sethe’s murdered daughter (the most obvious being that she shares her name with that which is inscribed on the dead daughter’s tombstone),” (Priestley). As the new girl exhibits various odd and even frightful behaviors, Sethe gets psychologically affected and could not come to terms with her guilt of murder and the resultant grief, and thereby struggles to quiet the turbulent ghost. Thus, the ghost figure represents her disturbing past, and how she has to face the troubles for the horrific mistake, she committed in the past. In a way, the ghost of Beloved kind of gives the voice to the silenced infant, who has been killed for no fault of hers. Although, Sethe kills her daughter to prevent her from suffering the same fate she faced as a slave, some inconsistencies - particularly why she did not kill herself? Or why she did not fight the white masters or even kill them? Or how can she take the decision for the infant? – kind of gives the justification for the ghost or the reincarnation of Beloved to return to torment her. Thus, hauntings clearly represents the awakening of the repressed past. Hauntings trigger memories As part of awakening of the repressed past, the ghost or the hauntings also trigger various memories and gives different perspectives. While triggering the past of Sethe, the supernatural elements in a way triggers the historical past as well. That is, Morrison by focusing on an Afro-American slave wants to expose Africa’s historical past relating to slave trade as well as its mystic and unique culture. Apart from how slave trade is due to historical incidents that happened in Africa, the appearance of ghost of a dead child refers to African culture. “Sharon Holland’s…suggests that the ghost in Morrison’s novel is an “African retention”, linked to the Yoruba river goddess Osun. Likewise, Carol Boyce Davis refers to the Yoruba abiku, children who die young and return to trouble their mothers.” (writinghood.com). Morrison has incorporated number of incidents or sequences throughout the work to show how the hauntings is mainly triggering Sethe’s negative memories about her past life. That is, when the ghost Beloved surfaces from the river, fully covered in mud, the image yields meanings closely connected to the oppression suffered under the clutches of slavery and other such African experiences. (writinghood.com). While Sethe killed her daughter to save her from slavery, her reappearance in a dirtier state triggers her memories about the suppression during the slavery. In another sequence, after ghost Beloved’s arrival, Sethe starts to have uncontrollable urges to urinate quickly. When she urinates and enters the home, she finds Beloved drinking cup after cup of water. This again triggers the memories of Sethe of how she has ‘lost’ a child, which she ‘created’ and given birth. “As well as suggesting birth through the image of Sethe’s breaking waters, this incident establishes a supernatural relationship between Sethe and Beloved.” (Priestley). Thus, this triggering or activation of Sethe’s ‘rememory’ turns out to be very traumatic for her. Choice When the actions of the ghost Beloved becomes more prominent, Sethe decides to believe that she is her daughter or reincarnation of her daughter, whom she killed. As these hauntings prompts Sethe to takes this choice, she begins to mainly focus on Beloved, taking care of all her needs. She does not care about herself or her other daughter, Denver and fully focuses on fulfilling Beloved’s wants and expectations, mainly to erase her guilt of murder. Beloved for her part, recognizing Sethes culpability, becomes more demanding as well as irritated, even throwing hellish tantrums when her wants does not get fulfilled. This choice of hers becomes quite detrimental to Sethe as well, because with her full focus on Beloved, she does not cares much for herself and even sacrifices her own requirement of eating. Thus, even this kind of ‘self-realization’ choice of Sethe does not give favorable results for her. That is, as discussed above, Sethe wrong choice to kill her daughter only causes her traumatic experiences, however even the ‘corrected’ choice to fulfill ghost Beloved does not give her happy and satisfying experience. So, her choice to murder the child starts to haunt her after the appearance of ghost Beloved, but even the hauntings prompted-choice of fulfilling her wants leads to disaster. Analysis - how the characters in Beloved, "“No Name Woman”," and "Snapshots" confront choices On the same lines as the character of Sethe in Beloved, the character of aunt in Maxine Hong Kingston work, “No Name Woman” and the character of Olga in Helena Maria Viramontes’ “Snapshots” were also confronted with choices, which could have taken their lives either in the positive or in the negative direction. However, like Sethe, both the character of aunt and Olga took wrong choices, which altered their lives in the negative direction. Kingston created, “No Name Woman” from ‘pages’ of her life, by focusing on a forgotten aunt of hers, who lived in China. Due to the rigid traditions in early China, her aunt had no choice to select her husband and has to follow her parents’ diktats. After her aunt got married, her husband left for America the next day and during her lone stay, she becomes pregnant due to a forceful rape. Again because of the male-dominant nature of the Chinese society, she was not able to reveal the true reasons of her pregnancy, and gives birth alone in a pigsty. With no family support, when she was confronted with the choice of whether to live a shame-ridden, isolated life or end this suffering, her aunt went for the second negative choice and unlike Sethe jumped into the well along with her newborn. Thus, with her choice, she ended not only her life, but also wanted to prevent her child from facing the same brickbats and oppression. Helena Maria Viramontes The Moths and Other Stories is a compilation of short stories about Chicano culture and how modernization is impacting the culture, viewed through the voices and feelings of women, who are on the various stages of life. “Snapshots” is the story of a middle-aged women, Olga who becomes depressive because she is not able to live the way, she wanted to live. As she was a divorcee and showing signs of aging, she feels that her past life was better. In addition, in that past life, she had ‘snapshots’ of even better life for the future, but that was not to be. However, when she has the choice to make the present life better, she abhors and instead ‘lives’ in the past, as nostalgia gave her a ‘high’. “I did consider my addiction (to alcohol) a lot more incurable. I had acquired a habit much more deadly: nostalgia” (Viramonte 101). Thus, her choice of holding on to the past is quite different from the choices of Sethe and the aunt, but still it alters the direction of her life. Choices correlation with the hauntings in Beloved and “No Man Woman” As discussed above, the choices that were made by the two principal characters of Sethe and the Aunt in their lives only leads to the initiation of supernatural elements and the resultant hauntings. That is, in Beloved, because of the choice of Sethe to mercilessly murder her young daughter for no fault of hers, upsets her psychologically and leads to the entry of ghost in the form of Beloved, the young woman. When she was about to recaptured, she had minimal choices and as she was exposed to the horrors of slavery, she did not want her daughter to undergo the same ordeal. By killing her, she thought she is ‘transferring’ her to a safer place. “I took and put my babies where they’d be safe” (Morrison 15). However, when viewed from another perspective, it appears that she had other choices and thus could have saved her daughter, thereby could have averted the traumatic hauntings as well. However, she did not think about those other choices and took a wrong choice of murdering, for which she had to face agony throughout her life in the form of appearance of ghost Beloved, and the resultant hauntings and torments. “She attempted the most unnatural thing. Killing was not the only alternative. She could have killed the slave owner, or even herself. The supernatural existence of Beloved proves that Sethe’s act was guilty of the murder and was to be condemned.” (Gupta). On the other hand, in the “No Name Woman”, the principal character of aunt or Maxine’s aunt was limited with choices, and took the only choice of taking her and her child’s life. Unlike in Beloved, there is no real person, who is viewed as ghost, instead the narrator, Maxine after hearing about the story of her aunt and how her existence was erased by the family, tries to create a narrative and gives her aunt a ghost voice to tell about her. Maxine thought of doing this, as she felt the sympathetic side of her aunt’s story. Unlike Sethe, who had choices, Maxine’s aunt had no choices and her traumatic single choice makes Maxine feel for and gives her a ghost voice, thus exhibiting the correlation to haunting. That is, aunt’s family, which was expected to provide all the support to her and even punish the culprit, instead blamed her and even cursed her as a “ghost” even while she was alive. “Ghost! Dead ghost! Ghost! You’ve never been born.” (Kingston 14). With no support forthcoming, she gave birth alone, and her newborn child also became an outcast like the mother. She could have easily abandoned the newborn, but “mothers who love their children take them along.” (Kingston 15). The aunt feared that if her child grows up, he/she (there is a hypothesis that the baby could not be a boy, the preferred sex of the villages, and could be only a girl and that is why the aunt did not wanted to take any chance) would also be treated dismally. Thus, as the author wants to put the ‘outcast’ in the ‘mainstream’, and to give justification to her choice, aunt is made to haunt. Even then, the fact that her family made the choice to forget and disband her is an act of pain, which could continue to haunt aunts’ ghost even in her afterlife. Thus from the analysis, it is clear that the choices made by the two principal characters have a lot of correlation to the haunting experiences, though with different perspectives. Works Cited Gupta, Monika. Infanticide and Mother- Daughter Relationship in Toni Morison’s Beloved. 18 October 2010. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/ewf1gupta.pdf Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts. Vintage Books. 1989. Morrison, Toni. Beloved: Toni Morrison. Edited by Harold Bloom. Infobase Publishing. 2009. Priestley, Brenton. The return of the Dead and the Repressed in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. 2002. 18 October 2010. http://www.brentonpriestley.com/writing/Beloved.htm Viramontes, Helena Maria. The Moths and other Stories. “Snapshot”. Arte Publico Press. 1995. writinghood.com. The Journey Back: Images of Africa, Africanism, and Motherhood in Toni Morrison and Alice Walker’s Literature. 21 October 2008. 18 October 2010. http://writinghood.com/literature/national/the-journey-back-images-of-africa-africanism-and-motherhood-in-toni-morrison-and-alice-walker%E2%80%99s-literature/ Read More