Desperation

– Misery(King) And Beloved(Morrison) Essay, Research Paper

True desperation, even when unobserved by the desperate, is never a comfortable experience. Acts of desperation appear in both Misery, by Stephen King, and Beloved, by Toni Morrison. Characters in both novels reach several levels of desperation throughout the narratives. There are both similarities and differences in the desperation shown by Sethe and Paul.

One of the first things one always notices about a novel is the title. The titles of both novels, Misery and Beloved, have particular significance within the aspect of desperation in the two plots. Each novel is titled with a character in the story that is the central cause of desperation in the current actions of the novel. Beloved, although a manifestation becomes an active character when she appears in human form and Misery, (although not an active character) still has enough impact to be thought of as an actual character in the storyline.

In Beloved, although they can be seen as two identities of one character, both Sethe and Beloved experience separate forms of desperation. Beloved is a physical manifestation of Sethe’s guilty conscience and she knows this. Throughout the novel, Beloved is desperately trying to keep her place in Sethe’s life. Beloved herself was conjured by Sethe’s desperation to continually punish herself. When Sethe’s conscience manifests a separate character, Sethe’s desperation is redirected to trying to save her humanity.

In Misery, Paul is desperately trying to save his own life and free himself from Annie’s captivity. Annie’s desperation stems from her needing Misery to live, so that she can continue to live her life vicariously through the fictional character. With acts of desperation, one is usually trying to make things better or trying to save one’s life. For Beloved and Paul, this holds true: Beloved needs to survive in Sethe’s reality as much as Paul needs to survive Annie’s captivity. For Sethe and Annie, however, the opposite is true. Annie only needs to satisfy her psychotic urges and Sethe’s conscience is desperately trying to constantly punish her.

Sethe’s desire to save her children from slavery was stronger than her humanity, and as a result (in her desperation) she brutally murdered her baby, and buried it under the headstone “Beloved.” Sethe chose to have this engraved on the tomb, because this was the “word she heard the preacher say at the funeral (and all there was to say surely)…Dearly Beloved” (5, Beloved). The baby is first christened at death, with a name by which the preacher refers to the spectators at the burial. Sethe thus named the child after herself, insofar as she, Sethe, was whom the preacher was addressing as “dearly beloved.” In this way she brands her detached conscience with guilt.

Her conscience is detached because in order to go on with life, Sethe needed to remove herself from her guilt. She removed herself so completely that her neighbors, already upset at her crime, isolated her because she seemed to feel no remorse for her awful deed. Sethe’s stoic resolve continues until Denver loses her hearing, which was caused by Denver not being able to deal with hearing what her mother had done. Only when her mother’s conscience manifests itself as the ghost of the baby does Denver’s hearing return.

Misery’s Return is shown to be an escape from reality for Annie in Misery and even more so for Paul, as he “falls into the hole in the paper.” Paul writes not just for the reason to stay alive but also for an escape of the horrors of his current situation.

In both Beloved and Misery, the two main characters need help overcoming their desperate situations. Sethe needs the help of Paul D and the women in the community to rid herself of Beloved and her guilty conscience while Paul Sheldon needs the help of the local authorities to finally gain access to freedom from Annie. In both novels, outsiders throw the antagonists into desperation.

The appearance of Paul D throws everything into turmoil. To Sethe, Paul D is a man that knows what her life was like before she escaped, and might understand why she killed her child. This was a man that she could share herself with. In the stage when the ghost is still in its intangible form and Paul D presents himself at the house, Sethe almost lets the “responsibility for her breasts, at last, [be] in somebody else’s hands” (18, Beloved). As soon as she has this thought, the ghost attacks and wreaks havoc. Sethe’s conscience, manifested in the ghost, wouldn’t allow her to be freed from her past by Paul D. But Paul D angrily rebukes the ghost, “God damn it! She got enough without you. She got enough!” (18, Beloved), and effectively drives the ghost out. Sethe seems to be relieved, because “to Sethe, the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay” (42, Beloved). However, Sethe’s guilty conscience shows up again, but now in human form, as Beloved.

When the local authorities and news teams show up at Annie’s house, she goes berserk. She either threatens to kill them or actually goes through with it. These are her desperate attempts to buy time for her Misery to live. It doesn’t matter who suffers, as long as she (and Paul) stay alive long enough for Misery to make it through. While she still has Paul trapped, she has control over Misery’s destiny. What makes this a new aspect to Annie is that this