A Marxist Approach To Toni Morrisons Beloved

A Marxist Approach to Toni Morrisons Beloved
Juan A. Caballero Prieto
A Marxist Approach to Toni Morrisons Beloved: Materialism and Class Struggle through Temporal Intertextuality
One writes out of one thing only one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.2
1 2
Thomas Satterwhite Nobles 1867 painting Margaret Garner (a.k.a The Modern Medea) [sic] Chapman p.319; quoting the African-American writer James Baldwin
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This paper explores the novel Beloved from the viewpoint of Marxism,3 a literary theory which focuses on materialism and class struggle by trying to explain things without assuming the existence of a world, or of forces, beyond the natural world around us, and the society we live in.4 In other words, individuals, in this case Toni Morrison herself, is writing of the culture in which she resides and from which she can neither emotionally nor consciously escape; Morrisons cultural materialism is not only prevalent, it is pervasive.5 Furthermore, any Marxist theorist would agree that the nature of literature is influenced by the social and political circumstances in which it is produced;6 as such, Morrison is already trapped in her own mind and experiences as she writes what Sethe would say and do. Marxism leads me to argue that all characters in Beloved are victims not only of the clear-cut, historical slavery to which they have been submitted to and then liberated from, but also to the authors Temporal Intertextuality;7 that is, to Morrisons understanding of her own time, which she uses to write about the past in a situation in which we do not know what the original characters thought. Although white idealism had been superimposed as the new base for freed slaves and, males in particular, seemed to have sought an over-expanding superstructure to which they felt entitled; Morrison argues that the only way to escape white expectations is the complete independence of the African-American. However, black males seem to leave their wives and daughters, causing family disintegration as most women remained behind to care of their progeny and culture. Morrison states that it was these women who had to find meaning within their current base creating, first, a superstructure that would first fit the existing idealism of their previous culture, that allowing for the creation of a new one later on that would be the path by which their children could become fully integrated into the new society liberation had created.
Virtual lack of use of the theory in North American scholarly circles makes this paper a challenge from which I can only draw conclusions based on Marxist Theory itself. There was little to no supporting works from other authors unless they were Russian or within the European Union. See Clecak cited below for a review on why the theory is in little use in America 4 Barry p.150 5 Barry p.151 (point four) 6 Barry p.166; revisit the quote in the title of this paper. Although James Baldwin was not a Marxist, his statement is the best definition of the principle I am defining
7
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Post-Civil Rights Movement, many African-American males also sought to become part of the Capitalist infrastructure they had been promised, though in the 70s and 80s they seemed to have failed in their attempt. Morrison states herself that a problem she faced while writing was being asked to write about Whites, as if African-American lives were meaningless without the white people who enslaved them.8 I will show how Beloved hides white idealism as 124, and seeks to make it a mere note in the lives of those the novel describes. 124 is the only thing that has not changed in Toni Morrisons mind from time period to time period. The house is the bond that ties the writers contemporaneous feelings and the narrative time in which the novel takes place. Further, I will defend that the need for individuals to demonstrate their upcoming status via material gain resulted in unforeseen circumstances; such as runaways regarding freed ex-slaves with anger and disdain, which is also a reflection of the 19th century. Morrison plays on her own feelings of high status and expresses herself as a freed ex-slave who could fall prey to the envying of others that, in their anger, may have even betrayed her in an attempt to maintain the status quo within the black community. These facts will show that Morrison is writing about her own material culture - more specifically, the material culture in which she lived at the time of writing her novel. Better said: Beloved is a representation, in history, of the writers base and superstructure.9 In essence, Morrison is writing about White Idealism in her own time, of the expectations whites have of African-Americans after the Civil Rights Movement, and how African-Americans were being affected. However, in so doing, albeit unknowingly,10 Morrison found, perhaps more effectively than it would have been otherwise, an answer to the problems African-Americans faced when a second slavery ended in 1968. The story of Margaret Garner11 (b. ca. 1826 d. 1858),12 and the history associated with her
8 9
Morrison 4:40-4:58 See the quote by James Baldwin at the beginning of this paper 10 Barry p.161 (point two) 11 Margaret Garner was a pre-Civil War slave who had chosen to kill her own child before allowing it to return to a life of slavery. She was trying to avoid the premises by which the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 demanded she returned to her master, despite her successful escape 12 There is no date to Margarets birth, whoever, she was married to one of her fellow slaves in 1848, and the average rate of marriage in the 1840s was 22 years old. In order to provide a more specific date, I calculated her birth based on these factors
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in the construct of Beloved is a subconscious attempt by Morrison to address the 1980s through the 1880s; it is Temporal Intertextuality at its best.
Materialism: Beloved as a Re-Construct of the Authors World Events which may have led Toni Morrison to write about post-slavery America are varied in their complexity and legitimacy; clearly, she is African-American; not so clear is also her individual construct, which steers her writing in a certain direction and towards certain individuals. After The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), and Tar Baby (1981),13 Morrison has yet to write a postslavery novel, and after she lost her job or left it in 1983,14 she set to that very task. Morrison found herself connected to slaves who, in the 1850-80s, had either lost slavery (their job) through running away or left it by purchasing their freedom. Although it may seem petty to compare one to the other, is it the comparison itself which shows Morrisons state of mind when considering how someone freed from a state which hindered their progress toward something else felt. Morrison herself describes her own need to write the novel as the result of the shock of liberation which drew her thoughts to what free could possibly mean to women.15 When Morrison writes Sethes character to explain how Margaret Garner would have felt, she expresses her own feelings into the historical character by having the fictional one deprived of the freedom to feed her family. Morrison too was deprived of freedom to pursue her writing career which, ironically, also became the means by which she would feed her children. To Morrison, her job took away her milk, and by abandoning it and running away from it, she was able to get back to what she cared about the most: her children and the way to feed them. Considering Morrisons cultural setting, Beloved could address not only a post-slavery America16 that had freed (and arguably was planning to enfranchise) four million-plus slaves, but also an America that, in 1965, fought and won the proverbial war for Civil Rights; a war that had to be fought despite the
13 14
According to Toni Morrison, the novel is pre-slavery (0:49) Morrison Introduction.XVI 15 Morrison Introduction.XVI 16 As slavery considered illegal after Jan. 1865 with the passing (and later ratified) Emancipation Proclamation, also known as the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution
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15th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1870 which guaranteed African-Americans said rights. By 1955, after the optimism that emerged from African-American participation in two world wars had dissipated17 and further segregation and discrimination became apparent, feelings culminated in the Civil Rights movement which, by 1968, gave way to the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Alongside the legislation, the movement would cause changes to how whites viewed and understood racism in the United States. Twice in history had African-Americans been freed, and twice more did they find themselves made a Black Proletariat18 seeking to make their own way in society. Marxism argues, and Morrison seems to confirm, that the first instinct of the African American, was communal union; that is, communism. A communism defined by ownership and freedom; a communism in which African-Americans who dared step outside of the boundaries set by their own community were cut down by the very people who are supposed to be protecting them. Malcolm X (b. 1925 d. 1965) was not killed by a white supremacist; much like Beloved was not killed by School Teacher. Both of these figures, beloved as they were, one to the African American radical community, the other to Sethe who, arguably, represents said radical culture in the book, are killed by people whom they trust. Martin Luther King (b. 1929 d. 1968), as Baby Suggs, is looked to for hope as an individual who has been able to overcome the literal and figurative chains of slavery and become freed of his own right; both figures would end up destroyed physically only to be remembered as beacons of light and hope for all eternity.19 The clear connections between the two time periods are an expression of Toni Morrisons subconscious. What the writer understands is what she has experienced, and what she writes is what she thinks is a connection to a historical event upon which she extrapolates, writing herself and her times in it instead. In this overarching class struggle for material culture, that is, the need to adapt to Capitalism or remain who African-Americans think themselves to be, we find Paul D. as the average African-American
17
Dawahare p.73; the author explains, from pp. 73-91 how Marxism and Black Proletarian literary theory are interconnected 18 Cotten p.125; liberation meant coming into the next stage of being, the poor 19 Morrison p.133 is one of the many cases in which Baby Suggs speech speaks to Martin Luther Kings non violence
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male looking for his place in a new society created by the sudden liberation; he is a wandering figure who, like the African-American reformers of the 20th century, has been walking the land for eighteen years (1950-1968) to fight for Civil Rights. Paul D. however, returns more damaged than asserted to a construct in which he no longer seems to fit. Sethe and Denver, antagonists to Paul D., are the opposing females Morrison, in her Womanism, sees as the keepers of re-memory. Further, we also cannot ignore that Morrison herself is a divorcee (1968); certainly, the life of a single mother also plays well into Beloved, as Sethe tries to bring up her children on her own. Fathers gone in search of fortune brought about many problems to single African-American women and, both in the novel and in the 1980s, these women are seeking independency in the new system just as much as men are. Boys like Buglar and Howard were too busy following the example of their fathers, seeking to avoid slavery as a past that haunts them, on their own terms. Sethe as much as Morrison herself knows different; she understands rememory and the need to face slavery head on as the key to truly advancing in society. Morrison wrote about the need for women to become keepers of the legacy of slavery, reminding their daughters of the importance of it. Denver, whose imagination has saved her from herself and the possible psychological scars that accompany the stories,20 is more inclined to stay home and listen to her mother, although she does not quite understand why. Like Sethe, Denver seeks to fit in, to become part of the older woman-community that seems to have been left behind by the males in the novel, although she feels the need, as a younger individual, to seek out her own future in an unsettled world filled with stigma for her color and preconceived notions of the African-American men then wandering its paths. Morrison depicts Denver as the successful and victorious individual of the novel. She alone emerges from the drama able to mingle in the outside world and make something of herself. However, it would seem, the world has moved on both for Sethe and Morrison, leaving no hope for the mother that raised the daughter. Finally, in the center of it all is Beloved, who is the spirit of slavery and the dead and gone who were victims not only of slavery itself, but also of those who loved them too much to let them suffer the ignominious fate of slavery themselves. Beloved is exactly the same both in the novel and the modern
20
Morrison p.35
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construct Morrison is trying to define. Television shows in the late 1970s, such as Diffrent Strokes, portray white idealism as a magnanimous father adoptive of forsaken black children, boys at that, as if the Black Community was too broken to fend for itself, as if Buglar and Howard had left 124 to land in the welcoming arms of White America, hindering the progress of the African-American where they lived. Whites, calling themselves abolitionists become, in their own mind, the saviors of the black race. Toni Morrison is stating that such is not the case, as the speeches of African-Americans in her own time reveal. The historical Margaret Garner, Sethe, and Morrison herself, as the writer admits, represent the heroic character and an unapologetic acceptance of shame and terror; [who] assume the consequences of choosing infanticide; claim[ing their] own freedom.21 Sethe, then, is Morrison as much as she is also Margaret. Finally, the story could not only be told from the perspective of Sethe herself; there was a second part to the narrative, that of the individual who had been killed, the lives lost along the way; victims not only to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 in its various forms, but to slavery as a whole. Hence, why write about post-slavery America and the way African-Americans reacted to it? It is a simple answer, really: because the herculean effort to forget the facts by those who suffered slavery or inflicted it had resulted in the numbing of the collective mind of individuals who, seeking to maintain the status quo in society, were utterly and completely ignorant of the facts which had led to the current state of affairs. If memory helps remembering, remembering helps avoiding the repetitious behavior that led Toni Morrison to feel connected to a woman who had lived over one hundred and thirty years before her. The construct in Beloved is purely Marxist; deep psychological strains drive the author through class struggle and poverty within the African-American culture she is trying to describe through the lens of her own Temporal Intertextuality; when Morrison is writing Beloved, she is speaking about the world she herself is trying to survive. In an interview in which Morrison speaks on Beloved and slavery, she states she wasnt writing about a black father; its yours. You know; the one you know? That one. So if I
21
Morrison Introduction.XVII
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am going to imagine what it takes to kill a baby; then I have to put it in my arms my baby. 22 This extreme personalization as the mode of writing that Morrison uses brings us to another interview in which she defends that she only writes about black people because race structure permeates all colors. If I can say when are you going to write about black people to a white writer, if that is a legitimate question to a write writer, then it is a legitimate question to me.23 We see then, that it is impossible to separate the world in which Toni Morrison lived at the time of writing her novel and that in which Sethe resides. The cultural construct of Beloved is, quite similarly and accurately, the cultural construct of post-Civil Rights Movement America. Now, to move on to my second point, the overarching narrative of Beloved deals with whites only as a passing note precisely to avoid the idea that African-Americans need whites to succeed, being mere stepping stones to an end goal put forth by Morrison, whites are given no voice in Beloved. Sethe, like Morrison herself, argues that full emancipation of the African-American from slavery can only be achieved by confronting its consequences head-on and yet, the greatest struggle is not in the contrast of class issues between blacks and whites but, rather, class struggle amongst African-Americans themselves. Even in this, was the White culture sent away in the novel, made a mere spectator as 124 Bluestone Road.
Class Struggle: The Passiveness of 124 and the Ex-slave vs Freed-Slave Conflict It is no secret that 124 was spiteful.24 Whether one is for or against slavery, the home in Toni Morrisons Beloved seems to represent white culture and white understanding all of us as readers. The house is owned by whites and rented by whites for the sake of Baby Suggs;25 the building, like ourselves, seems to ask itself the questions we ask when in more private settings: are we for or against slavery? At the time Toni Morrison was writing her novel, she had not only to face these questions herself, but also help others deal with the fact that they were being asked in the first place. One may think that public
22 23
1:57-2:17 Morrison 3:11-3:24 24 Morrison p.3 25 Morrison p.162
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beatings and discrimination were in the distant past in the 1980s, but Morrison disagreed, and so should we. The consciousness of the general culture in the 1980s was spiteful because, as in Beloved, it had to deal with a ghost it had been trying to ignore for some eighteen years it was in 1983 that the novel was begun; eighteen years would place us in 1965, dead center in the Civil Rights movement. It is worth noting that Sethe does not describe 124 as haunted, rather, she states we have a ghost in here.26 The preposition in denotes the house and the ghost are separate, the same house of white culture in which African-Americans are allowed to live; the same ghost of slavery everyone is trying to avoid. In post-Civil War America, African-Americans were in the same situation in which they had been post-Civil Rights: given power to make up their own construct. In essence, their base is what they now chose it to be, and their superstructure can develop beyond that which previously would have been dictated by their masters.27 Some, like Sethe, have seemingly taken control of their lives by building upon their current culture, not trying to expand on it; others, such as Paul D., are wondering the land seeking better opportunities for themselves, in essence trying to enlarge what is allotted to them, something that can only be done outside of the local community and its sense of equal poverty. Considering that communities tend to become more socialistic when everyone is poor, anyone who wants to make more than his neighbor is labeled negatively; in essence, post-slavery African-Americans had a sense of purpose, a sense of rebuilding first, then to seek better things.28 Unwantedly, this very sense of purpose brings about the conflict between the African-American male and female, the clash between those freed and escaped, the struggle amongst those as poor as the community and those rising above it; class struggle in Beloved begun not as an issue between blacks and whites, but as an issue amongst AfricanAmericans themselves.
26 27
Morrison p.15; emphasis added See Dawahare (p.87) for a better looks at the covert psychological state of African-American and their attempts to behave as a nation, albeit they were a slave nation. Also, see Cotten pp.135-6 as White culture only serves the purpose of further stratifying the African-American construct 28 Although set in the period between World War I and World War II, Anthony Dahaware in his book Nationalism, Marxism, and African American Literature between Wars: A New Pandora's Box , expresses this very notion of communist-nationalism in his book far better than I can here, due to the space limitations of this paper
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Despite 124s utter confusion at African-American internal struggles and its attempt to explain them, Morrison refused to accept the post-Civil Rights African-Americanism through the lens of the general culture; she wants us to see what is inside the construct; what the lives of individuals living within the community at large are experiencing. Since 124 was full of babys venom, unless we exposed the stories that caused it, we will never be able to understand the reasons for slavery, what those who suffered it are going through, or the need to avoid repeating the same barbarity in the future. Hence, we are forced to look at African-American stories and made to see its effect in detail. Our lack of control is exacerbated by our irrelevant opinion as non-African-American individuals, and as class struggles takes place in a world we cannot understand; because we have never tried to. The best example of this internal African-American conflict is the story of Baby Suggs. In a time when if you made it out to the northern states you were more than likely a runway, Baby Suggs Holy is something entirely different. Unlike most of the individuals in her neighborhood, she has been freed; she has overcome reification29 and made her hands not only her own, but also highly skilled. There is no danger lurking around the corner for her, she is not looking over her shoulder to watch the old slave master come at her with the authorities. Furthermore, in her freedom she has found a calling: preaching. Metaphors of hands that now belong to oneself and not the master are embedded in her speech. Clearly, there is a sense that the old grandmother is legitimized by her bought-for freedom; and in a community that is defined by its commitment to fostering a black national culture expressive of working-class life,30 people promote her above themselves and listen to her because she is, in a sense, beyond them. They will always and it definitely feels like always to them have to worry about who or what will come to haunt them. Whether it be the old master, slavery itself, or those who have died, runways will always be haunted. However, runways and freed slaves can go where no spirit can find them, the forest. Baby Suggs may preach in away from 124, but she herself does not hide; she is made a Bourgeoisie by those who receive her preaching, and she accepted the role by taking on the responsibility
29
Barry p.151; the result of exploitation through menial labor, reification is the de-skilling of any worker, in Marxist theory, by said standardized work 30 Dawahare p.87
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of caring for the newly formed Black Proletariat. The need for this responsibility is made evident in the absence of preaching men who, like Paul D., are using their legs for what seems like better purposes. Baby Suggs however, is a member of the community, an enlightened individual, but only until she throws a lavished banquet for too many people. The communally-chosen advocate of the people, seems to have taken it upon herself become an emperor, an imposed ruler over those that placed her in power. To the members of the community, who believe in social equality, she becomes an aberration, an anomaly, and as such, she must be brought to understand her mistake.31 Baby Suggs becomes is despised for her party, her gain. However, it was Stamp-Paid who started it;32 the capitalistic African-American male who has managed to stay home to help runaway slaves commits the mistake of thinking that a little bit more of what others dont have would not be a problem to the many that do not have it,33 resulting in a chain reaction that culminates in the hatred of the community. The superstructure is not ready for expansion beyond its base, and as it occupies more space others see it as an overgrown branch that must be destroyed. Stamp paid, who seems to support the Capitalist belief of upward mobility,34 gets berries for Sethes baby as the women [shriek], they think the baby is too young to eat such sweets; however, the babys enjoyment is the confirmation that allows for it all to begin.35 Out of these simple beginnings, ninety people join in what now is called a feast as 124, a passive participant in the celebration, shakes with the loud voices and the noise. Morrison here introduces a new character: they. Unknown to the reader, these individuals are angry at others within their own community who are [eating] so well, and [laughing] so hard; they are angry at waking up the next morning and remembering the cooking, eating,
31
See Dawahare p.75 in order to ascertain the natural need for individuals to define themselves into oppressors or oppressed. The case is made evident by the anger the community shows, and which is reflected on the rest of this section. Further, Nationalism also brings together class co-operation 32 Morrison p.159 33 The capitalistic notion of self-gain is purposely brought up here. Despite being a single community, AfricanAmericans are still more driven by equal poverty than self-determination. The assumption of Whites was that Blacks would adapt to Capitalism immediately but, after spending hundreds of years under the yoke of slavery, communism had arisen amongst them, and was the defining characteristic the community in which Stamp Paid resides 34 Cotten p.134-5; the little indulgences in life are only afforded to those con can afford it. In other words, by his action, Stamp Paid is challenging the communal poverty of the town 35 Morrison p.161
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and carousing; they are angry at 124, the construct of white consciousness rocking with laughter, goodwill, and food for ninety.36 They were upset that an ex-slave who had probably never carried one hundred pounds to the scale, or picked okra with a baby on her back. Who had never been lashed by a ten-year-old whiteboy as God knows they had watched on and remembered.37 The bitterness in Morrison is thick; they have become an us and those in the house an other. Separation is such that it is unavoidable. Baby Suggs is singled-out as a freed-black woman living in a two story home notice the cursive in two within the novel itself thanks to the hand of white people only because they hated slavery worse than they hated slaves, a fact which made the furious.38 The anger is simply too hyperbolical, too grand to ignore. The disapproval smells, it is so thick, they take baking soda to calm the stomach violence caused by reckless generosity, and whisper to each other about fat rats, doom[,] and uncalled-for pride.39 It continues for almost two pages: the smell of disapproval was sharp, there was free-floating repulsion, her friends and neighbors were angry at her because she had overstepped, given too much, offended them by excess.40 In this situation, the flaunting of power and wealth is too much for they who make up the other part of town; although they are close enough to see, they are close enough to hear, and they are watching when, immediately after, the terrible episode of Sethe being found by School Teacher takes place.41 Even in this highly complex scenario, Toni Morrison is writing about her own time as post-Civil Rights America is still littered by African-Americans purchasing their own freedom, attending school, and seeking higher education in non-segregated schools. These individuals, many preachers and pastors such as Martin Luther King and Jessie Jackson, or just plain revolutionaries like Malcolm X, are wandering through the country seeking their idea of what a black man should be, while many women are left at home, having purchased the same school degrees with just as much danger, and becoming
36 37
Morrison p.161 Morrison p.162 38 Morrison p.162 39 Morrison p.162 40 Morrison p.163 41 Morrison pp.166-73; Morrison breaks her narrative to explain Baby Suggs freedom
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preachers in and of their own right. However, should one seek to undermine the balance of respect, especially when someone has been chosen by the community, it seems the betrayal will come directly from said community. In Beloved, of course, whether betrayal or just pure cause and effect, Baby Suggs is delegitimized in the dinner act and retires, forever shamed, into her room to ponder color. She is exiled, like a Napoleon Bonaparte, by the will of the people. She, of course, was no tyrant, but she and the community believe her preaching has been proven untrue by Sethe, who dared commit infanticide. Baby Suggs, no doubt to establish what makes one color better than the other, as Toni Morrison attempts to explain in her novels, disappears from the text until the very end, when all that remains of her is what she said, not the personal problems that assailed her, or her supposed betrayal of the mainstream African-American community. Baby Suggs becomes the inspiration that allows Denver, the future of African-Americans, to leave 124, stepping away from the White construct, and becoming a person in and of her own right. Class struggle in Beloved, then, is not about whites versus blacks, but rather about how African-Americans saw themselves through the eyes of Morrison in the 1980s.
Conclusion What follows in Beloved after my analysis of the sections above is a natural expression of all of the aforementioned forces. The writer, unaware of her own preconceptions wrote, biased by Temporal Intertextuality, about the problems her society was facing in 1982, some eighteen years after the Civil Rights Act was enacted in 1964 by projecting them into the 1880s, some eighteen years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, in 1863. The hidden parallelisms in Beloved between times are unavoidable, as much as we cannot avoid finding in Morrison the Sethe that brings it all to fruition. It is clear that Marxism can not only explain Beloved in a better light, it can also describe the elements that form the novel and make it what it actually is far better than any other Literary Theory.
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Much like 124 is quieted by the single voice of a returning father to the home in which family resides, 42 white idealism is quieted, nay, shut up and forced to listen, to the stories of African-American ex-slaves, their struggles, and their resolutions to said problems through the eyes of someone writing about her own experiences in a different time. Paul D. is the average African-American father figure of Beloved; all he has to do to resolve the situation is arrive, so the loud male voice that quiets 124 single-handedly can allow it to receive within its walls the revived corpse of slavery.43 Paul D. thus, as the quintessential African-American man, arrived at 124 and broke up the place, making room, shifting it, moving it over to someplace else, then standing in the place he had made. White opinion had to be moved, broken in essence, to entertain the idea of an independent AfricanAmerican individual who didnt need the help of his money or resources to succeed. Morrison, like Marxist Theory, seeks to change [the world];44 she seeks to write so that others may understand the possibilities of a new future. Only unity, Morrison seems to say, will save the African-American community from falling back into a state of slavery; only women, as they seek to keep alive the vestiges of a by-gone slavery can educate future generations on preventing such problems, and only they, as they break the bonds of economic idealism and realize the value of their own race, will become that which they dream of becoming. Paul D.s words at the end of the novel ring all too accurate now: You are your best thing, Sethe. You are.45 Morrison, purposely or not, writes the same thing for all people of her race that she wrote to herself: African-Americans are the best thing they have. Beloved, then, is a moral tale for the African-American; it is a drama that, when read with a sense of possibility for the future rings truer than any other. No matter how bad things were in 1965, African-Americans will overcome if they can unite, as they seem to have done today; evidence that Morrison was right. In this, I believe, any literary marxist theorist would agree with Morrison: the African-American proletariat was that best thing it had to a proper hope for the future.
42 43
Morrison p.281 Morrison p.45 44 Barry p.150 45 Morrison p.322
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Fortunately, there is an unforeseen circumstance about a drama such as Beloved; despite its ties to the African-American struggle both in post-Civil War and post-Civil Rights Movement America, and also its narrative of African-American intra-relations, the novel has become an all-encompassing narrative for moving forward by accepting and dealing with the past. It has become, to readers of many creeds and colors, an example of resilience and love beyond that of human capability. Beloved and its story is also its best thing indeed.
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Works Cited
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: an Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester University Press, Third Edition, 2009. Chapman, Abraham, ed. Black Voices: An Anthology of African-American Literature. New York: Signet Classic, 2001. Clecak, Peter. Marxism, Literary Criticism, and the American Academic Scene. Science & Society Vol. 31, No. 3. Guilford Press (Summer, 1967):275-301 Cotten, Angela L. Womanist Interventions in Historical Materialism. Cultural Sites of Critical Insight: Philosophy, Aesthetics, and African American and Native American Women's Writings. Albany, NY: State U of New York P, (2007):121-136. Coundouriotis, Eleni. Materialism, the Uncanny, And History in Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie. Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory 8.2 (1997):207-225. Dawahare, Anthony. Nationalism, Marxism, and African American Literature between Wars: A New Pandora's Box. Jackson, MS: UP of Mississippi, 2003. Gilenson, Boris. Afro-American Literature in the Soviet Union. Negro American Literature Forum 9.1 (1975):25. Gugelberger, Georg M. Marxism and African Literature: A Survey of Developments. The Growth of African Literature: Twenty-Five Years after Dakar and Fourah Bay. Trenton, NJ: Africa World, (1998):47-57. Liebman, Arthur. Patterns and Themes in Afro-American Literature. English Record 20.3 (1970):2-12. Lifshitz, Mijal, Angel Flores, and Stella Mastrangelo. Literatura Y Marxismo: Una Controversia. Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 1981. Marx, Carl, Engels, Frederick, The Communist Manifesto (by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels) with Related Documents) Edited with an Introduction by John E. Towes. University of Washington Press, 1999. Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Vintage International: New York, 1987. - - -. "Toni Morrison: Beloved." Youtube. Youtube, 20 Apr. 2010. Web. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP6umkgMRq4>. - - -. Toni Morrison Refuses To Privilege White People In Her Novels! Youtube. Youtube, 12 Apr. 2010. Web. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4vIGvKpT1c>. Reyes, Angelita. Politics and Metaphors of Materialism in Paule Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow and Toni Morrison's Tar Baby. Politics and the Muse: Studies in the Politics of Recent American Literature. Bowling Green: Popular, (1989):179-205. Sen, Sarbani. How 'Red' Is 'Black'? An Analysis of the Relationship of the African-American Movement with Marxism. Literature and Politics in Twentieth Century America. Hyderabad: Amer. Studies Research Centre, (1993):32-40.
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A Marxist Approach To Toni Morrisons Beloved

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A Marxist Approach To Toni Morrisons Beloved

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A Marxist Approach to Toni Morrisons Beloved

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