Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Haunted Beloved

We are reading Beloved in English class. If you have not read this book, here is a short summary that is all you need to know to understand my frustration. It is a serious book taking the reader through the terrors of slavery, however it is hard to take the book that seriously. You may be thinking, what an insensitive person for not taking slavery seriously. But that is not what I am saying at all. The slavery part is very serious but the book is too supernatural. There is a ghost, it is not a metaphor, an actual ghost in the book. How can you take a book seriously that just decides to throw a ghost in the mix. It is justified in way, it just seems wrong to read such a serious novel with an out of place ghost just roaming around the text. Toni Morrison (the author) has very cool hair, so I am a fan of her, and well Beloved is good, the ghost just seems wrong. The story would have to be different, but could be just as powerful without the ghost. The ghost is a burden on Sethe (the main character) but, more so, it is a burden on the readers. Moral of the story, no ghost belongs in Beloved.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I very much enjoyed the book "Beloved" by Toni Morrison. I must have missed something, though (when I was reading it), because I do not recall there being a ghost in the book. Can you cite some quote from the book that denotes or connotes the existence of a ghost? If it is there, as you say, then I wonder how many other books use that as a device within the fiction. I know of another one. It is "Deus ex Machina; Logos" by Charles Matthew Sauer.