Beloved by Toni Morrison - Essay Example

In working to preserve a sense of the devastation caused by the slave trade in the American South, Toni Morrison allowed historic attributes to weavethrough her story of a young former slave who murdered her baby rather than give her up to the slave traders, but also attempted to demonstrate that history is not a single story of something that happened. Instead, it is a collection of stories, told from a variety of viewpoints that collectively manage to present an impression of historic events that can be more or less accurate. This is what is known as the fictionality of history, the concept that history can never be more than a collection of stories with varying degrees of accuracy and numerous different perspectives. She demonstrates this fictionality of history through her main character Sethe as well as in the narrative structure, making it clear that no amount of storytelling will ever be able to contain the true horror of those days. During the time of Shakespeare, fiction was deemed to be the appropriate place for explorations into a nation’s history perhaps because of a similar understanding that there is no means of separating individual human perspective from historical events sufficiently to form an actual, factual history, thus recognizing the same concept of a fictionality of history. One author who certainly understood this concept was Miguel de Cervantes as shown in his Don Quixote. Through the various narrative styles employed as well as through the storyline, Cervantes is able to make his point that no historical account can be completely free of some fictionalized element. Thus, despite the wide gap of time between the writing of these two novels, both Morrison’s postmodern book Beloved (1988) and Cervantes’ Don Quixote written in the early 1600s struggle to illustrate both the concept of history as well as the inherent fiction that must accompany history. In Beloved, for example, Morrison establishes quickly that she is relating a story that took place in the past, even establishing the date to relate its proximity to the end of slavery: “For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims” (Morrison, 1988: 3). This establishes the novel’s fictional ghost story element, but only as it could occur in a society such as that which existed in 1873. The story of slavery is told in the bits and pieces that were left, “in all of Baby’s life, as well as Sethe’s own, men and women were moved around like checkers. Anybody Baby Suggs knew, let alone loved, who hadn’t run off or been hanged, got rented out, loaned out, bought up, brought back, stored up, mortgaged, won, stolen or seized” (23). In her accounts of the two boys running off to make their own way in the world as well as the wandering of Paul D., Morrison begins to illustrate the desperate condition of the recently-freed slaves, when “walking off when he got ready was the only way he could convince himself that he would no longer have to sleep, pee, eat or swing a sledge hammer in chains” (40). The fragmented story of slavery presented is echoed in the fragmented story of Sethe, who can only handle small pieces at a time: “I am still full of that, God damn it, I can’t go back and add more” (70). The story is pulled out painfully as Sethe takes things one step at a time, “Go ahead, I can hear it” (71) and Paul D. struggles, “Maybe you can hear it. I just ain’t sure I can say it” (71). Although Sethe thought she knew her own history, she learns through Paul D. that she only knew half of her story. “Into the empty space of not knowing about Halle – a space sometimes colored with righteous resentment at what could have been his cowardice, or stupidity or bad luck – that empty place of no definite news was filled now with a brand-new sorrow and who could tell how many more on the way” (95). Through fragmented narrative and fragmented character knowledge, Morrison is able to illustrate how history is necessarily full of holes that may or may not lead to deeper or better understanding. Cervantes is perhaps more blatant in his mocking of the concept of a true history. This tendency for history to be fallible is introduced within the very first chapter as Cervantes begins to introduce his main character: “They say that his surname was Quixada or Quesada (for on this point the authors who have written on this subject differ)” (Cervantes, 1979: 57 – ch. 1). The narrative continues to poke fun at the claims of historians to have access to the facts through comments such as “His imagination became filled with a host of fancies he had read in his books – enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, courtships, loves, tortures, and many other absurdities. So true did all this phantasmagoria from books appear to him that in his mind he accounted no history in the world more authentic” (58 – ch 1). Through his shifting viewpoint, Cervantes also indicates the problem of having more than one available perspective and how this shifts the knowledge of history by alluding to another Quixote author, “You would like me to call him an ass, a fool, and a bully, but I have no intention of doing so. Let his sin be his punishment” (525 – prologue to part 2). In pointing out inconsistencies between the ‘real-life’ characters and their representations in books, such as “the bachelor was amazed to hear the style and manner of Sancho Panza’s speech, for though he had read the first history of the latter’s master, he had never believed that Sancho was as droll as he was described there” (575 – ch 7, book 2), Cervantes ensures that the narrative continues to point to the concept that even history considered factually based contains errors in judgment, fictional ideas to fill in gaps and fails to capture the entire character. Like the character of Sethe, whose fragmented personal history helps to illustrate the fragmented nature of general history, the character of Quixote is overly susceptible to the claims of history. “He believed that it was necessary, both for his own honor and for service of the state, that he should become a knight-errant, roaming through the world with his horse and armor in quest of adventures and practicing all that had been performed by the knights-errant of whom he had read” (59 – ch 1). His exploits styled after the histories he has read do little more than terrorize the countryside regarding the madman running about in their midst. After delivering an astounding speech praising the history of chivalry and the mighty deeds accomplished by the knights-errant of old, Quixote’s listeners “convince themselves that Don Quixote was out of his wits” (131 – ch 13). Throughout the story, it is seen how Don Quixote is unable to distinguish between truth and lies, illustrated through example and explicitly stated: “The canon was amazed to hear the hodgepodge Don Quixote made of truth and lies and to see the knowledge he possessed of everything in any way concerned with the exploits of his knight-errantry” (494 – ch 49). Just as the narrative continues to point out discrepancies between the ‘known’ record and the truth, so the character continues to illustrate how the truth and fiction become intertwined, misunderstood and reimagined to paint a more desirable image. Through narrative and characters, both Toni Morrison and Miguel Cervantes are able to illustrate the idea that recorded history can never fully capture the past, nor can it ever be considered to be wholly factual or truly representative of events and their effects upon people. In each story, the narrative continues to point out the inconsistencies, missing pieces and subjective natures of the tales being told, illustrating that attempts to capture the part are futile. However, the need to try remains an equal part of each story as Sethe struggles to recover her past despite knowing that the pain of it might kill her and Quixote struggles to bring back the past despite the resistance he meets on all sides and the degradation this brings him. Works Cited Cervantes, Miguel. Don Quixote. New York: Signet Classics, 1979. Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Penguin, 1988. Read More