October 27, 2006
Beloved: The Story of Margaret Garner
Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved (1987) is based on the true story of Margaret Garner, a fugtive slave who in her recaputre committed the act of infanticide rather than see her child grow up in slavery. Morrison’s rearticulation of Garner’s story through the character of Sethe is as much about telling and speaking as it is about silence; about the “unspeakable thoughts, unspoken” (Beloved 199). Morrison’s writing of a story “not to pass on” points to what is said in the silences, as that which is not said is often revealed through its very refusal of disclosure.
In a nation that repeatedly turns its head away from its racial history, the history of slavery and the vestiges of slavery that survive in institutional and idelogical racisms, Morrison’s repetiton of “It was a story not to pass on…This is a story not to pass on” (275) serves as a poignant reminder not to forget. Morrison articulates an alternate narrative occluded in American national discourse, especially in the years following the Civil War and national reconcilliation. But Morrison’s repeated turn towards the silences of slavery motions the reader to probe those silences and whay they say. The story of Sethe brings Margaret Garner’s story back into the United States consciousness and calls into question the silences and veilings that still remain in the legacy of slavery that still haunts America.
References and Further Reading Recommendations:
Gates, Henry Louis Jr. and K.A. Appiah eds. Toni Morrison: Critical Perpectives Past and Present. New York: Amistad Press, 1993.
Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1993.
Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diapsora.” Jonathan Rutherford ed. Identity, Community, Culture Difference. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990.
Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York: Vintage, 1992.