Beloved

I finally got around to reading (and absolutely loved) Toni Morrison's Beloved. I had not read anything by her before, but her voice is gorgeous and brilliantly executed. She's a masterful storyteller. I grabbed my copy from Barnes & Noble with a gift card I got a couple of months ago.

Cover of Toni Morrison's "Beloved"

This book follows the trail of a woman, Sethe, who had to make some terrible decisions when faced with a terrible circumstance. I don't want to spoil anything, though I understand I often do in these blogs. But I'm also not going to weigh in on the morality of what she had to choose. Suffice it to say, it is shocking and moving at the same time. A man by the name of Paul D lives with Sethe and her daughter briefly. They later take in a stranger, who calls herself Beloved, who they found by their home, and who is both mysterious and elusive.

As I think back on the book, though, I really felt like Sethe's daughter, Denver, was the character I grew the fondest of. As her home life deterioration escalated, she breaks out of her comfort zone and leaves her home, which she hadn't left in a long time, to interact with others, which she also hadn't done in a long time, so that she could get help and start finding work. It's a moving arc, though it is secondary to the story's main arc, which I am being deliberately vague about.

Beloved is set in the time of the American Civil War. The characters' lives were torn apart by slavery, then by that conflict, and then by poverty and everything that goes along with that. It's a heavy book and a tough one to read in long sittings. It left me with a lot of gratitude for the immeasurable blessings I have in my life for myself and for my family. The book also struck me as a tale of fortitude and perseverance. These folks lived and loved and suffered but they also survived. They just kept pushing forward and forward. Don't get me wrong - there is an abundance of tragedy in this book, but I found the characters to be tough ones.

Later in the book Paul D asks how much a black man is supposed to take and he is answered 'all he can.' It's survival because of the necessity of it rather than out of an inherent impetus to fight strife. They're not fighting for the sake of fighting; they're fighting for the sake of life. Life is tough and it calls on those in situations like this to be tougher. Even the characters who don't prevail over every last one of stages of their turmoil are still strong for even rising to face it.