Beloved, by Toni Morrison
Beloved is a novel which was written by Toni Morrison. I just finished reading it. I can declare that it is one of silliest that I have read. The novel tells the story of a mother who escape slavery with her children and when the slave master locate her and go to claim the family back; she refuses to go with their master and instead she kills her own daughter to prevent her from going through slavery.
The mother goes to jail, then after spending her time there she returns home. Once she return home she discovers that the house is haunted by the spirit of her daughter. Anyway, she live with the ghost for a while and then the ghost returns as a girl who demands to have her mother’s love.
What I did not like about the story is repetition, the plot is repeated many time in form of flashbacks. The author tends to make the characters repeat the story again and again. Every time a character tells the story he/she add more information about the story, or tell it from another prospective. This is nice when it is done a little, but when you have to read a whole novel whose story is repeated more than twenty times it is unlikely that you will like it.
Slavery plays a major role in the novel, the characters keep narrating their experiences with slavery and how they feel after being free.
The plot of the story is nice. However, if the novel was sequential I would have liked it.
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I began reading The Picture of Dorain Gray by Oscar Wilde, which is basically about two homosexual men in love. It appears to be an interesting novel. The relationship between the two men appears to be just like a normal man and woman even in the way they met.
August 4th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Hi there, just came across your comments about ‘Beloved’ as I was thinking about writing a review of it myself and did a quick google search. I think it strange that you think the plot of the story is “nice”. You didn’t think it was tragic and upsetting? Also, I think the reason why there is so much repetition is because the characters are reliving traumatic memories. It is quite a realistic representation of post-traumatic stress.