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Chengyi Xu
4/23/2018
ENGL 110
Prof. Iles
The Writing Techniques in
Beloved
“It was not a story to pass on.” (Morrison 323)
Shortly after the Civil War, the war that took nearly a million lives, the whol
e America is still struggling in mourning and rebuilding. Lives, during that era, see
med to be the cheapest and most negligible thing, especially the black lives. How
ever, even at that time, that brightest and darkest time, those black slaves did no
t give up and surrender themselves to their brutal slave owners, did not surrender
themselves to their “fate”. On the contrary, they fought for themselves, fought for
their children, their love, and sought for their new lives. The “Story”, told us about
the journey of one of them. And the storyteller is also very good at telling the stor
y using her own, special techniques.
Beloved
is a novel written by Toni Morrison, which talks about the journey
of Sethe and Denver to seek their new lives after Beloved, the baby that Sethe kil
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led come back to the world. In this novel, especially in Book 2 and Book 3, while t
he story is reaching the high point that After Sethe, Denver, and Beloved finally c
onfessed with all the things they have done, all the things they experienced, all th
e love. The narrative techniques that Morrison chooses, however, has become m
uch more challenging, profound, and intriguing, just like Bao jin ping said in the a
rticle “On Magic Narrative Technique in Toni Morrison’s
Beloved
” which I agreed
very much, “The most outstanding characteristics of this novel is its narrative str
ucture, … contributes a lot to the magic characteristic of the novel.” Indeed, she
uses the uninterrupted narration, free direct speech and the free indirect speech,
multi-point of view, the ambiguity in narration and the repeated sentences to pre
sent us the characters more vividly, analyze the personalities more thoroughly. Th
us, with these narrative techniques, the high point, the main idea and the ending
of the story are elevated even higher, further.
In all the writing techniques that Morrison used in this story, the uninterru
pted narration in
Beloved
Chapter 22 to me is the most attractive feature which e
xplains to us how the ghost girl “Beloved” sought and found her new life more int
erestingly. This chapter started with a clear statement that tells us it is Beloved’s
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turn to talk. Although we do know that Beloved is never a good speaker because
according to Toni Morrison, “her voice was so low and rough” (Morrison 60) “Said
the raspy voice” (Morrison 62), we never expected that when comes to a long con
fession, the speech for a whole chapter, she “talks” in such a special and strange
way that she doesn’t use real sentences, her thoughts are totally disjointed and t
he gaps in her logic is everywhere, just like a baby talks about the horrible experi
ences even no adults can bear. However, after a painful reading of this chapter, h
er speech seems to be kind of poetic and impressive, she describes a horrifying “
hell” she lived, and all the dreadful conditions she has endured, crouched in a tig
ht ship; surrounded by the rats, dead men, and the skinless men; no water to drin
k; cannot urine or sweat; tortured by “a hot thing”; cannot die. All these torments
she experienced, expressed in this uninterrupted way by a girl, make the atmosph
ere even tighter and tenser, make us feels like it all happens at the same time, an
d Beloved just states it in one sentence, quick and calm like all these things did n
ot happen to her, but they did. However, even she was just barely “surviving” und
er that condition, because of the love for Sethe, she did not give up the hope to fi
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nd Sethe’s face, finally, after she found it in 124, Beloved’s love brought her a ne
w life and brought her back to 124, to Sethe. “Now we can join” ( Morrison 241).
Another intriguing technique that Morrison uses is the free direct speech,
unlike the uninterrupted narration that she used only in Chapter 22, she used this
technique to narrate all the big events in this novel, especially the core event that
the confession of the Beloved, Sethe, and Denver. With this writing technique, wi
thout the interruption of the narrator, Morrison showed us this confession in the
closest range, in the most accelerated pace. “Tell me the truth. Didn’t you come f
