Beloved 5 Essay Research Paper BelovedNature often

Beloved 5 Essay, Research Paper

Beloved

Nature often times represents a unique calmness. Toni Morrison doesn t make any exceptions to this idea. In her novel Beloved, Toni Morrison uses trees to symbolize comfort, protection and peace. While Toni Morrison uses tree imagery as a message of serenity and comfort, she uses her characters responses to trees to show that perhaps when one lives through a horrific ordeal like slavery, people find comfort in the natural world for its calmness and seemingly harmless characteristics. With the tree s symbolism of escape and peace, Morrison uses her characters references to their serenity and soothing nature as messages that only in nature could these oppressed people find comfort and escape from unwanted thoughts.

Almost every one of Morrison s characters find refuge in trees and nature, especially the main characters such as Sethe and Paul D. During Sethe s time in slavery, she has witnessed many gruesome and horrible events that blacks endure such as whippings and lynchings. However, Sethe seemingly chooses to remember the sight of sycamore trees over the sight of lynched boys, thus revealing her comfort in a tree s presence, Boys hanging from the most beautiful sycamores in the world. It shamed her- remembering the wonderful soughing trees rather than the boys. Try as she might to make it otherwise, the sycamores beat out the children every time and she could not forgive her memory for that. (6) Although Sethe wishes she would have remembered the boys instead, she probably rationalized this thought because when she asks Paul D about news of Halle, she pictures the sycamores instead of the possibility that Halle has been lynched: I wouldn t have to ask about him would I. You d tell me if there was anything to tell, wouldn t you. Sethe looked down at her feet and saw again the sycamores (8). When Schoolteacher whips Sethe, leaving her back leathery with scars, she refers to the scar as a chokecherry tree to soothe and to lessen the physically and emotional pain that the scar represents: But that s what she said it looked like, A chokecherry tree. Trunk, branches and even leaves. Tiny little chokecherry leaves (16).

While Sethe thinks of trees to heal and calm her pain and suffering, Paul D directly looks for physically real trees as his escape from everyday slave life. During Paul D s time in slavery, he chose to love trees for their comfort and calm qualities: … trees were inviting; things you could trust and be near; talk to if you wanted to as he frequently did since way back when he took the midday meal in the fields of Sweet Home (21). Because of these qualities, Paul D chose one particular tree, larger and more inviting than other trees, to always return to. A tree which he named Brother and a tree that listened and comforted and was always there. But most importantly, Brother represents the comforting escape from slavery which Paul D didn t and doesn t have: His choice he called Brother, and sat under it, alone sometimes. Sometimes with Halle or the other Pauls… (21). After a long day working in the fields, Paul D would rest, often times under the towering but comforting presence of Brother with Halle, the Pauls and Sixo: He, Sixo and both of the Pauls sat under Brother pouring water from a gourd over their heads… (27). For Paul D trees represent a place where he can be at peace with himself, and place where he is comfortable.

While Paul D sits under Brother to find comfort, Sixo enters the woods at night to dance, escape slave life and to keep his culture: Sixo went among the trees at night. For dancing, he said, to keep his bloodlines open, he said (25). To him the woods were a place outside of civilization, where he could be himself, where he did not have to worry about the white man. When Sixo visits the Thirty-Mile Woman, he escapes into the secure woods before her master could catch him: But Sixo had already melted into the woods before the lash could unfurl itself on his indigo behind (25). The woods were unique to Sixo, they represented a foreign life where he was his own master.

While Morrison s main characters refer to trees for comfort, escape and safety, characters with lesser significance or lesser prominence in Beloved also refer to trees, not to themselves though, but to convey the message to others that nature helps provide comfort and escape. Amy Denver, the white woman who had helped Sethe through labor only appears once in the book during Denver s story. Although she only appears once, her tree reference to Sethe s scarred back helps soothe Sethe s physical and mental pain: It s a tree Lu. See, here s the trunk- it s red and split open, full of sap, and this here s the parting for the branches. You got a mighty a lot of branches. Leaves, too, look like, and dern if these ain t blossoms. Tiny little cherry tree blossoms, just as white. Your back got a whole tree on it. In bloom. (79) Amy Denver uses a euphemism for Sethe s scar, calling it a chokecherry tree to ease the pain and memory that the scar brings. The image of a chokecherry tree brings spring, bloom and peaceful nature instead of the shame, pain and sadness that the scar truly represents. Trying to ease Sethe s pain some more, Amy Denver searches for spiderwebs, another product of mother nature, to drape over Sethe s tree to cool the pain and to then refer to the scar as a Christmas tree to conjure images of pea