Beloved Toni Morrison\'s Pulitzer Prize

Beloved

Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize winning Beloved is at least two stories told at once. On the surface is the story of Sethe and the ghost of Beloved. Beneath the surface is the story of the African-American experience and the legacy of slavery. This story is the one told through symbolism. Although Beloved is full of symbolism, one of the most prevalent symbols, and the most recurrent, is that of the color red.

Red is a powerful color that has many meanings associated with it. In human color psychology, red is associated with energy and blood. Further, red is also viewed to describe emotions that stir the blood, such as anger, passion and love. (Gagliardi). These emotions, along with blood, are major parts of the themes found in Beloved.

The book tells the story of Sethe and her daughter Denver, two African-Americans who are trying to rebuild their lives after escaping from slavery. At one point a young lady by the name Beloved appears at the door and Sethe believes is one of the her daughters whom she murdered at the age of two in order to spare her a life of slavery. Beloved's return home takes over Sethe's life, especially as Beloved's demands become more and more demanding, to the point that she ignores Denver.

Although the story is about the impact of slaver and emancipation on individual African-American's this plot line is carried further with several central themes. In general, these themes include motherhood, history, and manhood and how these all relate, and were affected by, slavery and emancipation.

Motherhood is used as a metaphor for love, which is an emotion symbolized by the color red. The lesson is that motherhood is a form of love that can conquer all due to its overbearing strength. Thus, Sethe, who in Biblical terms means "father of the world" is love and motherhood personified. Sethe's unselfish love is demonstrated by her escape from the plantation for her sole desire to keep the "mother of her children alive" and not for any personal reasons. Further, even the murder of Beloved, another emotion (blood) which is symbolized by blood, was done out of love. Ironically, Sethe's love for Beloved almost causes her own death, as Beloved comes seeking revenge for her death.

Beloved is also the story of African-American history, as Toni Morrison based the story on actual historical events, including the case of Margaret Garner who murdered her children to prevent them from being recaptured and taken back into slavery under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Also, the middle passage is alluded to, along with the Underground Railroad. All of these atrocities are associated with death and blood, which is the color of red.

Finally, the concept of manhood is another central theme in Beloved. Although Paul D. is the only main male character in the novel, and described as "the kind of man who could walk into a house and make the women cry," he is also consumed with emotions locked up inside a "tobacco tin" and "rusted shut." These emotions remain trapped until Beloved releases them through the uncontrolled repetition of "Red Heart, Red Heart...," in reference to the concept that the heart stores emotions and the heart is red.

Clearly, color, specifically the color red, plays a significant symbolic role in developing these aforementioned central themes. At the most basic level, in a book that is primarily about slavery, color is a powerful theme as the colors of black and white divide society and is the entire reasoning for the conflicts of slavery. Even after emancipation, the colors of black and white continue to create conflict, as even Sethe determines that there are "no good white people." Likewise, even white people who do not believe in slavery, such as the Bodwins, assume the worst of black people. According to Baby Suggs, "There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks." (Morrison, p. 94).

This black vs. white color conflict creates the tensions that drive the novel and create the emotions that are symbolized by other colors. For example, Baby Suggs eventually gives up on life and only wants to "think about colors" because "colors are safe." She tells Stamp Paid, "Blue. That don't hurt nobody. Yellow neither." (Morrison, p. 187). Even when she is dying all she thinks about is colors, having Sethe bring them to her, believing that colors are alive and "not false and dangerous like people or trees." However, this statement is not true, as is seen by the deceiving color of red, which simultaneously represents both the polar opposite emotions of love and death.

Stamp is the character who first understands the dangers of color when he finds a red ribbon with strands of hair still attached to a piece of scalp off of a little girl, most likely lynched. To remind him of the dangers in color, he keeps the red ribbon in his pocket. The book states, "The skin smell nagged him, and his weakened marrow made him dwell on Baby Suggs' wish to consider what in the world was harmless. He hoped she stuck to blue, yellow, maybe green, and never fixed on red." (Morrison, p. 189).