Race and the American Novel Project: Critical Commentary

In The Cambridge Companion to Toni Morrison, Claudine Raynaud devotes a fifteen page chapter to the novel Beloved. She claims it is "one of the most important American novels of the post-war era" (Raynaud, 43). The point Raynaud makes in this chapter is that Beloved captures the true history of the African American slave life; she explains that this is purposely left out of slave narratives. Morrison "rips the veil" that these narrators were forced to draw over the stories and reconstructs and recovers the memories that both black and white people try to repress. Raynaud states:

          "The porosity of the characters' consciousness['s], made possible by subtle transitions from one [focalization] to another, the leveling out of different time frames enable the novel to mimic and reflect the process of memory: the actual act of remembering as well as the incorporation of told memories into the oral tradition." (Raynaud)

I think Raynaud does a great job describing this in her text as she explains the metaphor of the antelope portraying the slaves. When Sethe tells Denver about her birth and the kicking she was doing she said, "When she stopped the little antelope rammed her with horns" (Raynaud, 44). Sethe talks again about slaves who "danced the antelope" in another part of the story as well. Raynaud insists that since Sethe has never seen an antelope, she cannot possibly know the secret meaning of the word. The dancing she refers to means to be transported to Africa free and unchained.

This chapter really helps understand what Morrison is trying to convey in her novel. It forces both white and black people to confront the past, the true past, that is being buried and disfigured throughout history books and narratives. The graphic scenes descripted, rape, torture, all make it impossible for the reader to distance themselves from the true nature of what went on during this time in history. Raynaud also believes that the character Beloved is to represent the memory of slavery, hence, the reason for her name being repeated, and even spelled out, so many times. This is also why it is so hard to pin down what she is, a ghost, an actual living person, etc. "Identities overlap because of the similarity and the persistence of traumas uttered in a common language" (Raynaud, 46). Beloved represents three atrocious events, rape on the slave ship, during slavery and even after the Emancipation Proclamation; this is representative of the so-called progress being made against racism.

I agree with Raynaud and her interpretations; I do believe slave narratives were repressive and both black and white people are uncomfortable dealing with the realities of history. This is made clear in the lack of true events in the teaching of history, both in the classroom and outside it. Morrison forces society to confront, to remember and to pass those true memories on so that they will not be forgotten, the way Beloved was.

Raynaud, Claudine. "The Cambridge Companion to Toni Morrison." (n.d.): 43-58.