Diplomsko Delo

UNIVERZA V MARIBORU

FILOZOFSKA FAKULTETA

Oddelek za anglistiko in amerikanistiko

DIPLOMSKO DELO

Nina Rošer

MARIBOR, 2013

UNIVERZA V MARIBORU

FILOZOFSKA FAKULTETA

Oddelek za anglistiko in amerikanistiko

Diplomsko delo

POSTMODERNA SUŽENJSKA PRIPOVED

Graduation thesis

POSTMODERN SLAVE NARRATIVE

Mentor: red. prof. Victor Kennedy Kandidatka: Nina Rošer

Maribor, 2013

Lektorica za slovenski jezik: Tadeja Pucko, prof. slovenščine

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my mentor, Dr. Victor Kennedy for his help and advice during the process of writing my diploma.

I would also like to thank my parents for their love and all the support that they have provided me over the years.

FILOZOFSKA FAKULTETA Koroška cesta 160 2000 Maribor, Slovenija www.ff.um.si

IZJAVA

Podpisana Nina Rošer rojena 10. 6. 1988 študentka Filozofske fakultete

Univerze v Mariboru, smer angleški jezik s književnostjo in sociologija, izjavljam, da je diplomsko delo z naslovom Postmodern Slave Narrative pri mentorju red. prof. Victorju Kennedyu, avtorsko delo.

V diplomskem delu so uporabljeni viri in literatura korektno navedeni; teksti niso prepisani brez navedbe avtorjev.

Kraj, Maribor

Datum, 7. 6. 2013

______

(podpis študenta-ke)

ABSTARCT

The aim of this diploma is to show the development and characteristics of slave narratives by analysing the novel Beloved by Toni Morrison and Quentin Tarantino’s film Django Unchained. The aim is also to show the impact that African-American history (particularly slavery) has had on African American literature. Slavery is one of the main themes of African American writers, particularly in the 18th century; however, it is also an important subject of modern literature and writers. One of those is Toni Morrison, who is a literary voice of slave literature and whose work seeks to shed a light on the problems of African American people. For this purpose the novel Beloved is discussed. The book is a narration of the traumatic experience of slavery. In the same way, directors try to keep the memory of slavery alive in their films. One of those is Quentin Tarantino, who directed the latest film about slavery Django Unchained.

KEY WORDS: Slavery, African American Literature, Slave Narrative, Neo-slave Narrative, Toni Morrison, Beloved, Django Unchained

POVZETEK

Cilj diplomske naloge je pokazati razvoj in značilnosti suženjskih pripovedi in le- te prikazati na primeru analize knjige avtorice Toni Morrison Ljubljena ter Quentin Tarantinovega filma Django brez okovov. Prav tako je namen prikazati vpliv afroameriške zgodovine (predvsem suženjstva) na afroameriško literaturo. Suženjstvo je ena izmed glavnih tem afroameriških pisateljev predvsem v 18. stoletju, k tej temi pa se vračajo tudi pisatelji moderne književnosti. Ena izmed teh je Toni Morrison, ki velja za literarni glas suženjske literature in skuša v svojih delih osvetliti probleme afroameriškega ljudstva. V ta namen je predstavljen roman pisateljice Morrison Ljubljena, ki je pripoved o travmatičnih izkušnjah suženjstva. Prav tako skušajo spomin na suženjstvo ohraniti režiserji v svojih delih. Eden izmet takih je Quentin Tarantino, ki je režiral najnovejši film o suženjstvu Django brez okovov.

KLJUČNE BESEDE: suženjstvo, afroameriška literatura, suženjske pripovedi, neo-suženjske pripovedi, Toni Morrison, Ljubljena, Django brez okovov.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1 2 AFRICAN AMERICANS AND SLAVERY...... 2 2.1 American Revolution ...... 4 2.2 Plantation Life ...... 5 2.3 Civil War ...... 7 2.4 Reconstruction ...... 8 3 AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE ...... 11 3.1 Slave Narratives ...... 15 3.2 Neo-slave Narratives ...... 20 4 TONI MORRISON AND AFRICAN AMERICAN IDENTITY ...... 21 5 BELOVED ...... 23 5.1 Characters ...... 27 5.1.1 Beloved ...... 27 5.1.2 Sethe Suggs ...... 28 5.1.3 Paul D ...... 29 5.1.4 Denver Suggs ...... 30 5.1.5 Baby Suggs ...... 31 5.1.6 Schoolteacher ...... 32 5.2 Themes ...... 34 5.2.1 Slavery...... 34 5.2.2 Memory ...... 37 5.2.3 Identity, Motherhood and Manhood ...... 38 5.2.4 Community ...... 42 5.2.5 Sexual Exploitation ...... 43 5.2.6 Love and Relationships ...... 46 5.2.7 Supernatural ...... 47 5.3 Motifs and imagery ...... 49 5.3.1 124 Bluestone Road ...... 49

5.3.2 Water ...... 50 5.3.3 Milk ...... 51 5.3.4 Allusions to Christianity ...... 52 5.3.5 Colours ...... 54 5.3.6 Iron ...... 55 5.3.7 Trees ...... 56 5.3.8 Animals and Bestiality ...... 57 5.4 Beloved Film ...... 59 6 HOLLYWOOD’S DEPICTION OF SLAVERY ...... 61 7 DJANGO UNCHAINED ...... 66 7.1 Plot and Analysis ...... 68 7.2 Characters ...... 75 7.2.1 Django ...... 75 7.2.2 King Schultz ...... 77 7.2.3 Calvin Candie ...... 79 7.2.4 Stephen ...... 81 7.2.5 Broomhilda ...... 82 7.3 Music ...... 83 8 DEPICTION OF SLAVERY IN DJANGO UNCHAINED ...... 85 9 COMPARISON BETWEEN BELOVED AND DJANGO UNCHAINED 88 10 CONCLUSION ...... 91 11 WORKS CITED AND CONSULTED ...... 93

1 INTRODUCTION

In the USA slavery was abolished in 1865. Despite that, the memories of slavery are still alive in autobiographies, the so called slave narratives written by slaves such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. Slavery is one of the main themes of African American writers, particularly in the 18th century; however, it is also an important subject of modern literature and writers. One of those is Toni Morrison, who is a literary voice of slave literature and whose work seeks to shed a light on the problems of African American people.

However, not just writers but directors too, try to keep the memory of slavery alive in their films. When Quentin Tarantino’s film Django Unchained was realised in 2012 it stirred controversy for many things in the film. One of those things is Tarantino’s depiction of slavery which is bloody and violent. However, according to Professor Lawrence D. Bobo, a scholar at Harvard University:”for too long American cinema has presented -- and American audiences have accepted, digested and largely tacitly embraced -- a hopelessly sanitized version of slavery in the South” (Lawrence D. Bobo, 2013). Tarantino made an end to that.

In this diploma African American history and the affects the history had on African American literature is presented. Moreover, the development and characteristics of slave narratives by analysing the book Beloved by Toni Morrison and Quentin Tarantino’s film Django Unchained is shown.

2 AFRICAN AMERICANS AND SLAVERY

In his book From Slavery To Freedom; A History Of Negro Americans, Franklin (1967) writes that the beginnings of slavery in America date back to the year 1619 when first ships with African slaves were brought to Jamestown, Virginia. First black slaves had a similar status to the status of white servants. They were listed as servants and when their period of service had expired they were eligible for freedom. However, in succeeding years laws were designed to secure for the whites the title to blacks so that they could be held in perpetual servitude. This seemed to be the only solution to the problem of labour. At first the black population of Virginia grew slowly, but that changed in the last quarter of the 17th century. In many counties, blacks outnumbered whites. Before the end of the 17th century the slave code of Virginia was well established. Slaves were not allowed to leave the plantation without the written permission of their masters. Slaves who were being found of robbery or rape were to be hanged. For smaller misdemeanours slaves were whipped, maimed, or branded.

Franklin (1967) continues that in Maryland, statutory recognition dates back to 1663. In Carolina slavery was established before the colony was settled. John Locke’s “Fundamental Constitution” stated that ”every freeman of Carolina shall have absolute power and authority over his Negro slaves, of what opinion or religion whatsoever.” In 1686 the colonial legislator passed laws to insure the domination of white masters over their slaves that Locke’s constitution had promised. In Georgia the slave code was adopted as a whole in 1755.

In the slave codes slaves were not considered fully human.

They had no right of petition. They could own nothing; they could make no contracts; they could hold no property, nor traffic in property; they could not hire out; they could legally not marry nor constitute families; they could not control their children; they could not appeal from their master, they could be punished at will. They could not testify in court; they could be imprisoned by their owners, and the criminal offense of

assault and battery could not be committed on the person of a slave. The “wilful, malicious and deliberate murder” of a slave was punishable by death, but such a crime was practically impossible of proof. The slave owed to his master and all his family a respect “without bounds, and an absolute obedience.” This authority could be transmitted to others. A slave could not sue his master; had no right of redemption; no right to education or religion; a promise made to a slave by his master had no force nor validity. Children followed the condition of the slave mother. The slave could have no access to judiciary. A slave might be condemned to death for striking any white person (Du Bois, 1992, p. 10).

In all southern colonies slavery grew slowly in the 17th century. “It was an economic institution inaugurated for the purpose for solving an aggravating economic problem. With Indian and white labour, both unsatisfactory and insufficient, the only solution was made by Virginia and subscribed by the others” (Franklin, 1967, p. 86).

Before the American Revolution slavery was also legally recognized in the middle colonies (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware) and New England.

The first official legal recognition of chattel slavery as a legal institution in British North America was in Massachusetts, in 1641, with the ‘Body of Liberties.’ Slavery was legalized in New Plymouth and Connecticut when it was incorporated into the Articles of the New England Confederation (1643). Rhode Island enacted a similar law in 1652. That means New England had formal, legal slavery a full generation before it was established in the South (Harper, 2003).

As Franklin (1967) claims that the industrial nature of the region did not encourage employment of slave labour. The same in New England the position of black slaves was unique in colonial America. Even though, the masters were deaf

to the proponents of freedom, the slaves were not subjected to the severe treatment which befell upon the slaves of the South (Franklin, 1967, p. 99, 125).

The justification of slavery had its roots in religion. According to Christianity, slavery was good and led the heathens to the salvation of their souls. There was also a racial basis. “The idea that it was the Negro that was the barbarian and the race needed the humanizing influences that contact with Western civilization would give it /..../ By nature, temperament, pigmentation, and civilization – or the lack of it – the Negro’s natural lot was slavery, the colonists reasoned” (Franklin, 1967, p. 87).

2.1 American Revolution

According to Rickard (2003) the conflict between Britain and its 13 colonies started because of their different vision of purpose of the colonies. For Britain, the colonies were important for production of raw materials and for consuming British goods. The British restricted the American trade and industry, restricted colonial expansion and imposed taxes with a number of acts (sugar act, stamp act etc.) all aimed to raise money for Britain. Colonies weren’t represented in parliament. All that, caused protests and latter on a boycott of British goods. In 1770 the British troops killed four white Bostonians and a former slave named Crispus Attucks in the so called Boston massacre. “Here was a fugitive slave who, with his bare hands, was willing to resist England to the point of giving his life” (Franklin, 1967, p. 128).

The result of the War of Independence (1775-1782) was America’s separation from Britain. In the Declaration of Independence, which was adopted by the Congress July 4th, is stated “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness /..../” (Declaration of Independence). However, the status of slaves was excluded.

Franklin (1967) claims that from the beginning of the war a question of arming blacks was raised. In May the Committee on Safety came to the conclusion that 4

only free man should be used. Also, in the formulation of an over-all policy for military service was decided that the service of the blacks was not needed. The same in October 1775 a counsel of war agreed to reject all blacks from the army. However, on November 1777, the royal governor of Virginia issued a proclamation in which he promised freedom to all the slaves who would enlist the army. After that, Washington approved a permission of free blacks to join the army. Later on, most of the states began to enlist slaves and free blacks. Georgia and South Carolina were an exception. Wherever the British army went, the blacks would fallow. Many slaves ran away during the war. Antislavery movements became widespread after the war. Some wanted to prevent the slave trade and some wanted the abolition of slavery all together. After the war the Northern states started abolishing slavery. Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1780. In 1784 Connecticut and Rhode Island passed acts which abolished slavery gradually. In New York and New Jersey effective legislation was achieved until 1804. The South, however, was resisting the idea of slave abolition because so much capital was invested in the slaves.

2.2 Plantation Life

According to Franklin (1967) after the war, the areas where slaves were concentrated experienced a depression. Tobacco plantations were exhausted, the prices of slaves were dropping. But that change quickly with the industrial revolution undergoing in England. There were new machine inventions, manufacturing processes were cheapened and the demand for cotton goods was stimulated. Cotton was known as one of the most satisfying textile materials, but there was a problem. A machine that could easily separate the seed from fibre was needed. With the invention of the cotton gin the problem was solved. In the South huge cotton crops were planted and slaves became the main working force. The slave trade started to flourish. In 1808 the law prohibiting the importation of African slaves was passed and the domestic slave trade took place. Slaves were sold at taverns, county fairs and the plantations. Because of the fear that the slave supply would ran out, the slaveholders began the systematic breeding of slaves. The breeding was profitable and because it was economic there was a persisting 5

practice of dividing families. The slaveholders were justifying their actions by stating that family ties among slaves did not exist, therefore the slaves were indifferent to separation. On the large plantations there was a division between slaves; there were the house servants and the field workers. The former cared for the house, the gardens, cooked meals and performed services expected of personal servants. The latter were responsible for planting, cultivation, and picking cotton. In order to get work by the slaves done the lash was frequently used. According to Brown and Webb (2007) the gang system was a norm on plantations. The overseer would follow the slaves on horseback with a whip. If someone fell, he was whipped. Moreover, the amount of cotton that was picked by each slave was weighed every night. Slaves who did not reach the standard were whipped. Franklin (1967), states that many slaves escaped because of bad treatment. In some plantations the planter was absent and he hired an overseer. In the plantations where there were overseers, the greatest brutality existed. Mostly they blamed the blacks for their unfortunate economic plight. The laws which were supposed to protect slaves were seldom enforced. It was almost impossible to punish a slaveholder for mistreating his slave.

Franklin (1967) continues that the slaves sometimes resisted. They poisoned their masters and numerous slaves were convicted for murdering them. Self- mutilation among slaves was common. They would cut off their toes, hands, and mutilated themselves in different ways in order to render themselves ineffective for work. Some would kill themselves; mothers killed their own children to prevent them from growing up in slavery. Many of the slaves tried to escape. They hid in swamps, mountains and forests. Even though there was federal and state legislation to aid in their recovery, many of them disappeared forever. Until slavery was officially over, revolts were quite common. The slaves would gather clubs, swords and attack the whites. It always ended badly for the slaves.

2.3 Civil War

In the 19th century there was a fundamental economic difference between the North and the South of the USA. Industry was flourishing in the North; in the South, however, the economy was based on big plantations of tobacco and cotton with a cheap working force – the slaves.

The Civil War of 1861-1865 determined what kind of nation it would be. The war resolved two fundamental questions left unresolved by the revolution: whether the United States was to be a dissolvable confederation of sovereign states or an indivisible nation with a sovereign national government; and whether this nation, born of a declaration that all men were created with an equal right to liberty, would continue to exist as the largest slaveholding country in the world (McPherson, 2013).

Franklin (1967) claims that by the arrival of Abraham Lincoln, the new president of USA, to Washington in 1861, already seven states had seceded from the Union. When the time to defend Fort Sumter came, Lincoln acted promptly, but that cost him four more slave states and the Civil war began.

According to Franklin (1967) one of the most important questions raised from the beginning of the war was whether or when the slaves would be emancipated. Lincoln’s views on the matter were well known. He issued a preliminary Proclamation on January 1, 1863 stating, ”all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of the State, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free” (Franklin, 1967, p. 282). According to Du Bois (1992), another question that Lincoln was concerned about was: ”But what shall we do with the Negros after they are free? I can hardly believe that the South and North can live in peace unless we get rid of all the Negroes /..../ I believe it would be better to export them all to some fertile country with a good climate, which they could have for themselves” (Du Bois, 1992, p. 149). Franklin (1967) states that, in 1863 The

Secretary of the interior reported that the blacks were needed in the army and therefore all laws relating to their colonization were repealed. In the North the enlistment of African Americans officially began after the Emancipation Proclamation where it is stated that, ”such persons [African Americans] of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United States.” More than 186, 000 African Americans had enrolled in the Union Army by the end of the war. On the other hand, some Confederate white soldiers took their slaves to war with them. They washed clothes, polished swords, cut hair etc. But allowing African Americans to perform different types of work was one thing, arming them was another. Even though public opinion was against arming the African Americans because of the fear they would turn against their masters, the Tennessee legislature allowed enlistment of free African Americans.

According to Franklin (1967) the greatest fear of the Southerners was the conduct of slaves. The slaves knew that in this war their freedom was at stake. Many of them walked off plantations and when the Union army came close, they went to their lines to get some food and clothes. Many of the slaves refused to work and some of them demanded to be paid for their work.

Du Bois (1992) writes that a proposed Thirteenth amendment passed the Senate April 8, 1863, on December 18, 1865, it was declared adopted by the Secretary of State. The amendment states: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction” (Thirteenth Amendment). The slavery in the USA was officially abolished. In 1865 Confederate army surrendered and the war was over. The end of the war was the beginning of a new chapter in America’s history.

2.4 Reconstruction

Franklin (1967) notes that when the war ended, the practical problems presented themselves. There was a problem of rebuilding the South where the economic life had stopped. Many farmers abandoned their framers because the land was

devastated by the Union army. People lost their homes, there was starvation and disease. And then there was the question of the status of African Americans. As Du Bois (1992) points out, they were free, however, how were they different from white people. Even though, the slavery was now over, there were four million free men, doing the same work as they did before the war. The so called Black Codes were adopted by many Southern States. Even though, they were designed to give the African Americans some civil rights like the right to hold property, to sue and be sued, the real intention of Southerners was to make African Americans slaves in everything but name. The black codes dealt with labour contracts, migration, civil and legal rights. African Americans were especially restricted in the matter of work. For example, if they were caught wandering in search of work, being homeless and jobless, this was vagrancy, they could be whipped and forced into unpaid labour.

Franklin (1967) states that because the life of African Americans right after the war was not getting any better, they held several conventions in the year 1965 where they demanded that the Congress recognises African American citizenship, and demanding the education for their children. For that reason Freedman’s Bureau was established. The Bureau helped the refugees with food supplies, medical assistance, school establishments and supervising contracts between freedmen and their employers. Bureau relieved much suffering among African Americans and whites. However, Southerners opposed it because they believed that it had a political program for establishing a strong Republican party in the South. The Bureau also distributed some land to the freedmen. The greatest success of the Bureau was education. It set up all kinds of schools, but that stopped by 1870 because of the ignorance of the needs of African Americans.

Franklin (1967) continues that despite of the fact that African Americans were now free, many of them moved back to the plantations because they had nowhere else to go. They were now paid, but the circumstances were not much better than before the war. The cost of the maintenance in the sharecropping system was so great that at the end of the year freedman earned less than what he owed to the employer. By the year 1880 the South produced more cotton than ever before. A 9

lot of African Americans migrated to industrial cities where they faced a white worker. Manufacturers did not hesitate to employ African Americans to undermine the white labour unions.

According to Brown and Webb (2007) in 1868 the Congress approved the Fourteenth Amendment which defined American citizenship, and in 1870 Fifteenth Amendment which gave African Americans the right to vote. All that encouraged African American political activism. For the first time in their lives they were a part of American political life. Despite the fact that “during Reconstruction, more than 600 African Americans served in southern legislatures” (Brown and Webb, 2007, p. 174) there was still a great limitation to political influence of African Americans. “White southern opposition to Reconstruction assumed its most potent form in the Ku Klux Klan. Founded in Pulaski, Tennessee, in December 1865, the secret order was sworn to the restoration of white supremacist rule. Klansmen waged a campaign of violence against blacks and their white allies” (Brown and Webb, 2007, p. 175).

Historians are divided in their assessment of the successes and failures of Reconstruction. Some regard it as an abject failure, others that there was little more that the Republicans could have done /..../ No matter how bad things became for black southerners, however, they never doubted the importance of slavery’s abolition, even though Reconstruction was an unﬁnished revolution (Brown and Webb, 2007, p. 176).

3 AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE

African American literature is a body written and oral works, created by writers who share both a black African heritage and a unique American experience, that defines and celebrates black history and culture /..../ Possessing an extraordinary range of tones, topics and styles, African American literature, wheatear it speaks gently or screams passionately, challenges and provokes response and action (Ervin, 2004, p. ix).

African American Literature is the celebration of black culture and history, thereby, helping to create a sense of racial cohesiveness and solidarity /.../ Together, the various literary forms of African American literature give us a fuller appreciation of a body of work that honours the social, political, intellectual, and cultural history of African Americans (Ervin, 2004,p. ix, x).

African American literature focuses on themes that are of interest to African Americans. They refer to the social position of African Americans in the American society. African American literature explores issues of slavery, freedom, equality, and racism. As the social position of African Americans has changed through the years, so too, have the topics addressed by African-American authors. The division of African American literary history vary. The Oxford Companion to African American Literature deals with five time periods (Andrews, Foster and Harris, 2001, p. 457):

1 Colonial and Early National Eras (1745-1831)

According to Ervin (2004) African American wanted to prove to the whites that they were human beings whit the same abilities as whites and can also produce literature. Moreover, Andrews, Foster and Harris (2001) state that African Americans were also protesting the injustice of slavery and calling for equal rights, regardless of the colour. The literary types produced by African American authors were poetry, slave narratives and journalistic essays. The 11

poets composed hymns, lyrics, pastorals, elegies and pastoral elegies. They were using classical devices such as couplet, iambic pentameter and heroic couplet. Lucy Terry’s “Bars Fight” presents the first known writing in English by an African American. Other important writers were Phyllis Wheatley and Jupiter Hammon who both excelled in the subgenre of the hymn. Georg Moses Horton’s poetry presents protest against.

2. Antislavery Era (1832-1865)

According to Andrews, Foster and Harris (2001), during this period Southern African Americans were slaves. Even though free slaves had access to education, they were subjected to racism and violence. During this period first African American papers appeared. They were publishing news, poetry, debates, speeches etc. They believed that the word would make one free and strong. First autobiographies appeared called slave narratives, and they were models for all later African American narratives. It was the initial age for the travel book, the drama, novels and short stories. In the North many abolitionist groups were at work. They were united against slavery and offered strategist to combat it. Some promoted rebellion, others escape. The tales of flight emerged. “Besides being exciting tales of adventure, the narratives were vivid description of the mechanism of the peculiar institution from across the South, told from within, a point of view unfamiliar to most northern readers” (Andrews, Foster and Harris, 2001, p. 462). Ervin (2004) points out that “advocates against slavery” include Marie Stewart who engaged in public political debate against slavery and was the first African American to do so. Also important was Frederic Douglass who was a well known public spokesman against slavery. The narrative also moved white authors. The single most influential abolition work was Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

3. Reconstruction Era (1866-1899)

According to Andrews, Foster and Harris (2001), slavery was now over and new forces of African American literature appeared. Education was

progressing among African Americans and an intellectual middle class with literary interests was formed. The number of African American newspapers was growing. Literature was being used to show the similarities to educated white Americans. Authors still protested against prejudice and discrimination. They also drew on Victorian themes. However, this did not mean that they rejected their African American identity. They were putting their characters into setting of slavery and oppression, condemning the injustice of racist world. African American authors took a special interest in their history. George Washington Williams was the first who published scholarly histories of African Americans. In his histories racial pride is in forefront. At the beginning of the Reconstruction, the African American Writers were full of optimism. Slavery was abolished; they gained the voting rights and therefore participate in political life. However, the optimism ended in the last decades of the century. With the rise of white supremacy especially the South became plagued by racial violence, lynching and segregation. The dilemma now appearing was the dilemma of formulating an identity.

Ervin (2004) notes that outside of the middle class, oral traditions had retained their vigour. The spiritual remained current. These traditions helped to centre identity and community ties. The so called plantation literature emerged. The authors were white Americans who tried to sentimentalize the plantation life. They created stereotypical image of African Americans such as “comic Negro, the wreched freedman, the contented slave” (Ervin, 2004, p. 99) etc. They were justifying slavery. Even ex-slaves, who were unable to handle freedom, praised slavery and their old masters. Andrews, Foster and Harris (2001) claim that African American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar was one of the most popular poets in the United States. He wrote in “dialect poetry”.

4. Early Twentieth Century (1900-1950)

Ervin (2004) describes that The Great Migration from South to industrially developed North caused new cultural activity in cities such as Washington, Chicago and Harlem. The most important work of the period is W.E.B. Du 13

Boise’s The Souls of Black Folk where he presents the phenomenon of “double consciousness” which is a psychic duality in African American identity. And the term “the colour line” is an “acknowledgment that concepts of racial origin and skin pigmentation tend to segregate and divide African Americans form Euro Americans within the dominant community and also divide African Americans within the African American community” (Ervin, 2004, p. 46). Andrews, Foster and Harris (2001) claim that on some occasions African American authors were trying to mask subversive ideas for black audiences, drawing from folk traditions in order to provide white audiences with seemingly surface meanings. The African American writers were in a dilemma whether to express their ideas freely or masking them. The important movement that appeared during the mid-1910 and mid-1930 was Harlem Renaissance, also called the “New Negro Movement”. The movement attracted dramatists, poets, painters, musicians and intellectuals. It introduced issues that dominated the African American literature through history. The most influential writers during the movement were Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. They both explored the literally possibility of jazz, blues and folk tales”. Ervin (2004) points out that The Chicago Renaissance (1935- 1953/54) another important movement. The major writers such as Richard Wright, Margaret Walker and Chester Himes focus on working class of African Americans. The literature of the movement involves the struggle of African Americans in American society due to racism and sexism.

5. Late Twentieth Century (1951- )

Ervin (2004) claims that the dominant authors of the 1950s through the mid- 1960s were James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison. Baldwin frequently inspired controversy for his homosexuality and his unwillingness to easy political positions. There were also other important writers such as Ann Petry and Chester Himes, who was one of the first black writers who was successful in the genre of detective novels. Gwendolyn Brooks, who was the first African American who won the Pulitzer prize, and Lorraine Hansberry, who won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, was the first black and only the fifth 14

woman to receive it. In the 50s and 60s antiracial struggle was in the forefront in the American society. Organizations such as Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference were established. Nationalists demanded cultural and political unity among people of African American descent. Under the conditions the Black Arts Movement arose. It was a literally movement of young intellectuals which suggested mobilization and politization of all African Americans using literature, especially poetry and drama.

According to Andrews, Foster and Harris (2001), the main characteristics of the 70s literature are: a rise of woman’s writing, the reclamation of history, the rise of gay and lesbian literature, postmodernist experimentations and the rise of black feminist literature. Writers such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Rita Dove, Paule Marshall and others “have achieved widespread attention for their powerful achievements in illustrating the interconnections of constructions of race, gender, and class in a range of literary forms” (Andrews, Foster and Harris, 2001, p. 471, 472). They were not afraid to address issues that were not addressed by African American writers before such as domestic abuse and sexism. Many of the major African American authors in the past twenty years have dealt with the issue of slavery in their novels. “They are free to address areas of experience to which the slave narrators could allude at best. They are freer, for example, to raise issues of sexual abuse and expressions; to interrogate the limits of truth telling, indeed to explore the full range of emotions available to slaves” (Andrews, Foster and Harris, 2001, p. 472). There is also important to mention the rise of gay and lesbian literature. One of the most important figure to “theorize the connections among race, gender and sexuality” (Andrews, Foster and Harris, 2001, p. 472) is, besides Baldwin, Audre Lord.

3.1 Slave Narratives

A slave narrative is “a subgenre of the African American autobiography, written by former slaves, starting as early as 1760. Major themes are the inhumanity of 15

the slave system-as experienced by the authors of the narratives and antislavery system. Women authors add a theme the trials of black womanhood in slavery” (Ervin, 2004, p. 124).

Andrews, Foster and Harris (2001) claim that the first person to write a slave narrative was Olaudah Equiano, also known as Gustavus Vassa. Although he spent most of his life in England, he made a great contribution to American Literature. In his narrative The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African he narrates the story of his slave experience. He was kidnapped from his African country and sold to slavery, first they send him to Barbados, and later to Virginia. Later on he bought his way out of slavery. Samuels (2007) states that his narrative is a narrative of life in Africa and a firsthand description of the horrors of the slave trade. He became an active participant in the abolition movement in Britain. His autobiography served as a model for later African American narratives.

Gould (2007) claims that the early slave narratives were primarily a religious genre. Often the religious groups assumed the role of publishers. Especially Evangelical Christian groups sponsored the publications. They were interested in the narratives because of their spiritual value. For example, Equiano also emphasizes the importance of the spiritual life. “By the end of the 18th century, then, the documentation of one’s religious conversions and Christian feeling was an important convection of the slave narrative” (Gould, 2007, p. 15, 16). However, there is also a rise of political genre which deals with the issues of slavery and race. The abolition organizations also became supporters of the narratives. They generated a great deal of antislavery literature. Furthermore, the early narratives managed to combine several genres – travel narrative, autobiography, political commentary etc.

Gould (2007) continues that Ukasaw Gronniosaw and his A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukasaw an African Prince (1772) was a fist narrative that addressed slavery directly. Andrews, Foster and Harris (2001) claim that Briton Hammon is another important author of slave 16

narratives. He is the author of The Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings and Surprising Deliverance of Briton Hammon, a Negro Man (1760). The latter is known as the first African American autobiography and recognized as the first African American Narrative. The narrative recounts his adventures at sea.

Gould (2007) points out that the thematic and formal characteristics of the slave narratives drastically changed in the 1830s and 1840s which were affected by changes in abolition. There was a change in political direction in antislavery politics. The antislavery movement created an antislavery print culture. Many newspapers, yearbooks and abolition periodicals were circulating. They published many ex-slave speeches as written narratives.

According to Samuels (2007), another author who rose through the antislavery movement was Frederick Douglass. He transformed himself from an illiterate slave into a well-known public speaker and a journalist. He became a leading African American author. He was known as a leader and a spokesman for his people. After he escaped from slavery he put his experience as a slave on paper in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845). The work presents a brutal picture of slavery. It also deploys sophisticated sentence structure and eloquent figurative language. Andrews, Foster and Harris (2001) claim that the narrative opened the minds of the whites in the North about the injustice of slavery, and it was also an inspiration for other African American authors. According to Samuels (2007), the work was published in America, England, France and Holland. He was also the publisher of his own newspaper North Star, later known as Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Through the 1850s he was at the centre of antislavery movements also working with Harriet Beecher Stove. In 1855 he republished his autobiography under the title My Bondage, My Freedom.

Gould (2007) points out that the priority of the so called antebellum slave narrative became the exposition of the evils of the Southern plantations. Narratives now concentrated on everyday life of a slave. New themes involved the hypocrisy of southern plantations, torture, rebellious slaves who were murdered, etc. Even though, slavery was the central topic of antebellum slave narratives, 17

they continued to express religious ideas because the antebellum culture was still highly religious. Dickinson (2007) claims that slave narratives had three important roles. Firstly, they contradicted proslavery arguments by undermining the ideas and images on which the arguments were based. Secondly, they participated in the democratization of antebellum America. Thirdly, “the narratives brought together abolitionist ideology with idea of freedom that had evolved out of the distinctive experiences of African Americans, especially people who had lived in bondage, in a way that had particular political resonance for antebellum American readers” (Dickson, 2007, p. 29).

Dickinson continues that slavery debates often focused on race. Slavery defendants believed that Europeans were morally and intellectually superior to Africans. The slave narratives had an important role in the abolitionist’s case. In their narratives African Americans proved that an ex slave can be intelligent. However, slavery defendant arguments went beyond race. They believed that slavery created an environment in which the slaves could not be thought Christian religion. The narratives are evidence that that was not the case. The narratives show that to slaves, religion was very important. And that the slaveholders are denying them the opportunities to worship and pray. The authors of narratives argument that slaveholder are hostile to slave education. In antebellum America family was the centre of the social life. The narrators in their works described sufferings of family members being separated-children being separated from their mothers.

Samuels (2007) claims that the portrayal of male slaveholder as sexual predators was common. Harriet Jacob’s Incidents of the Life of the Slave Girl was the first published narrative of a former female slave. She focuses on the forbidden topic of woman’s sexual history in slavery, her quest for freedom and determination to protect her children. “The emphasis on black women’s sexuality and its commodification by American culture, the special problems of African-American mothers, and the antagonism between white and black women all themes and topics addressed in Jacobs’s narrative continue to be relevant in African-American

women’s novels today” (Samuels, 2007, p. 267). Her story is a reminder how slavery can destroy families.

Samuels (2007) points out that another important work is Confessions of Nat Turner (1831) an antebellum slave narrative with a major impact. It was published by a Virginian author, a white lawyer named Thomas R. Gray. The story is the dictation of Nat Turner, who was responsible for the bloodiest slave revolt in American history. Turner and his fellow slaves succeeded in killing between 55 and 65 whites within 48 hours. Andrews, Foster and Harris (2001) acknowledge the he helped provoke a historic debate on the abolition of slavery and the strengthening of Black Codes. According to Samuels (2007), despite the fact that he and his followers were caught and later hanged, they became and remain heroes for African Americans.

Much of the abolitionist literature arose from slave narratives, inspired by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). “By amplifying the pathos of the slave’s narrative, Stowe effectively invites the reader to imagine the plight of slaves in a way that aligns the abolitionist narrator with the reader” (Dickson, 2007, p. 33; Sinanan, 2007, p. 74). Andrews, Foster and Harris (2001) point out that years after the publication, many African American authors published narratives, novels and poems inspired by Stowe’s work. Interestingly, with a new century came a critical view of her work. The novel was criticized by Richard Wright and James Baldwin. Sinanan (2007) points out that like the slave narratives, Stowe’s work was open to the accusations of exaggeration and invention, and now only slaves could affirm that what she described was not made up. The legend has it that the model for the character of Uncle Tom was Josiah Henson and his narrative The Life of Josiah Henson (1849). “Stowe's moral and theological views and domestic discourse were accepted as progressive, indeed radical, in the nineteenth century. It is ironic that in the twentieth century, she has come to exemplify both impotent white liberalism and the source of racist preconceptions about African Americans” (Andrews, Foster and Harris, 2001, p. 381).

As historical documents, slave narratives chronicle the evolution of white supremacy in the South from eighteenth-century slavery through early twentieth-century segregation and disfranchisement. As autobiography these narratives give voice to generations of black people who, despite being written off by white southern literature, still found a way to bequeath a literary legacy of enormous collective significance to the South and the United States (Andrews, 2004).

3.2 Neo-slave Narratives

In the 1960 and 1970s in the wake of The Civil Rights movement and the Black Power, African American authors started being interested, and thematically going back to the autobiographical slave narratives written in 18th and 19th century. The term for these new novels is neo-slave narratives (Beaulieu, 2003, p. 245).

Neo-slave narrative is “a modern or contemporary fiction with slave characters as narrators or subjects. Central to these narratives are motifs of power, faith, messianic hope, self-reliance, and direct action” (Ervin, 2004, p. 91). Ashraf Rushdy defines neo-slave narratives as “contemporary novels that assume the form, adopt the conventions, and take on the first-person voice of the antebellum slave narrative” (Rushdy, 1999, p. 1).

Bernard Bell in his study The Afro- American Novel and its Tradition (1987) describes neo-slave narratives as “residually oral, modern narratives of escape from bondage to freedom” (Smith, 2007, p. 177). Smith (2007) continues that this genre includes texts set during the time of slavery and also the time afterwards, from the era of Reconstruction to the present. They approach the institution of slavery from numerous perspectives and involve different style of writings: satire, postmodern experiments, etc. The neo-slave narrative authors are informed and enriched by the study of slave narratives, and therefore free to involve imagination to explore the effects of slavery on slaves and their descendants.

Further, they provide a perspective on a host of issues that resonate in contemporary cultural, historical, critical, and literary discourses, among 20

them: the challenges of representing trauma and traumatic memories; the legacy of slavery (and other atrocities) Neo-slave narratives for subsequent generations; the interconnectedness of constructions of race and gender; the relationship of the body to memory; the agency of then slaved; the power of orality and of literacy; the ambiguous role of religion; the commodiﬁcation of black bodies and experiences; and the elusive nature of freedom (Smith, 2007, p. 168, 169).

This new genre was inaugurated by the publication of Margaret’s Walker Jubilee (1966) which is a story of struggle from slavery to freedom. It is based on the oral stories of her grandparents (Samuels, 2007, p. 291, 292). After that, dozens of novels about slavery appeared. One of these important neo-slave narratives is Toni Morrison’s Beloved which is analyzed in the following chapter.

4 TONI MORRISON AND AFRICAN AMERICAN IDENTITY

According to Gillespie (2008) Toni Morrison was born in 1931 in Loraine, Ohio as Chloe Anthony Wofford. She said that her nickname was Toni and later regretted it that she used the nickname when she published her first novel Bluest Eyes in 1970. Her family had a great influence on her as a writer. She learned a lot of lesson s from her parents. Both of them moved from south to Ohio searching for a better life and a greater freedom from the southern racism. She pointed that the inspiration for her work are stories and experiences of her ancestors.

Beaulieu (2003) points out that in her works, Toni Morrison deals with the lives of African American women and how they face rape, poverty, incest, and different kinds of oppression. She questions how African American woman struggle to find themselves. Her female characters find themselves divided between suppression of their identities and the ability to fight back, therefore have self respect. Through the lives of African Americans her novels explore self and cultural identity.

Suranyi (2007) notes that Morrison’s first novel was The Bluest Eyes (1970) which is concerned racial with “self-loathing, the loss of identity and shame” (Suranyi, 2007, p. 11). Andrews, Foster and Harris (2001) note that The Bluest Eyes is a tragic story of an African American girl named Pecola whose loneliness and desire for love and attention is manifested in her desire to have blue eyes. As Beaulieu (2003) points out, Pecola at a very young age deals with prejudice that shapes her insecurities about her identity. The novels is “marked the beginning of what would be the most significant period of literary production of books by African American women about African American female identity” (Andrews, Foster and Harris, 2001, p. 39).

According to Gillespie (2008) Morrison’s second novel Sula (1974) is about a friendship of two girls, coming from different family environments, when they reach maturity they separate due to the pressure to conform to the norms of their environment. “The reader journeys with both women as Morrison asks her readers to decide for themselves which woman has successfully found her self” (Beaulieu, 2003, p. 171).

In 1977 she published her 3rd novel Song of Solomon which, as Gillespie (2008) point out, is based on the stories that her grandfather told her. It is her first novel where the protagonist of the story is male. According to Samuels (2007), in the first part of the novel the main character is trying to keep his own identity amidst social and familial tensions. Morrison focuses on “how Africans lost their names through the institution of slavery, which in turn created a loss of connection with their ancestry” (Beaulieu, 2007, p. 171). Beaulieu (2007) notes that in the end the protagonist understands that his identity does not derive from material wealth but from his personal and “communal history” and from his relationship with others.

Her 4th novel Tar Baby (1981) did not get as much praise as her other ones. According to Andrews, Foster and Harris (2001) the story is set in Caribbean and revolves around two characters, Jadine Childs and William Son and their ill fated love. The central point of the novel is Jadin’s conflict with her identity, culture

and history. Beaulieu (2007) points out that the ending of the novel implies that the struggle is not over and will continue in the future.

Samuels (2007) notes that Beloved was followed by Jazz in 1992. It is a story of a couple Joe and Violet who migrated from Virginia to New York. Thrilled by the excitement and relative prosperity of their life there, they, nevertheless, endure debilitating identity problems, cantered on Violet’s lack of a child and on Joe’s ignorance about his mother.

“Toni Morrison’s novels, in some shape or form, handle how identities, both individual and communal, form, sustain, and/or destroy themselves” (Beaulieu, 2007, p. 175). In her novels she “addresses issues that are close to the heart, not only of African Americans’ experience or all Americans’ experience but also, more broadly, of human experience. They deeply satisfy readers in their bold examinations of the difficulties and the possibilities of finding viable identities and meaningful living spaces” (Samuels, 2007, p. 367, 368).

5 BELOVED

Beloved (1987) is Toni Morrison’s fifth and most well-known novel, which won the Pulitzer prize. It fits into the subgenre of neo-slave narrative because it is a portrayal of women’s life in slavery. “The attempt of this novel is to enter the consciousness of individuals who use to be enslaved” (Gillespie, 2008, p. 19). The story is based on a real-life story of Margaret Garner, a slave woman who ran away from the farm where she was enslaved, but was letter caught. She tried to kill her children rather than have them becoming slaves again; she managed to kill only one.

The novel is divided into three parts, without numbered chapters. It does not have a chronological plot, it circles from past to the present, including many flashbacks which tell the stories of individual characters. The narrative voice changes

through the story. There is a third person narrative and a voice of individual characters.

For example, the story begins with omniscient third person ”124 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of a baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims” (Morrison, 1998, p. 3). However, in the second part of the novel the reader gets to know personal thoughts of the female characters. Firstly, it is Seth’s voice ”BELOVED, she my daughter. She mine” (Morrison, 1998, p. 201). Seth recalls the past. How she killed her daughter in order to save her from slavery; how badly she wanted to get the milk for her children; she remembers Amy and Mr. Garner. Secondly, in twenty-first chapter it is Denver’s voice ”BELOVED is my sister. I swallowed her blood right along with my mother's milk” (Morrison, 1998, p. 205). She explains that Beloved was her only company and that she fears Seth because she killed her child. In the next chapter Beloved explains her story:”I AM BELOVED and she is mine” (Morrison, 1998, p. 201). “This chapter, told from Beloved’s point of view, is constructed in choppy sentences, without use of punctuation, and provides ambiguous images relating to her background” (Bloom, 2004, p. 38).

Morrison on Beloved

In some ways, Beloved is a ghost story - a young woman suddenly appears 18 years after the child's death, and the characters believe she is the slain infant returned to earth. ''I wanted it to be our past,'' she said, ''which is haunting, and her past, which is haunting -the way memory never really leaves you unless you have gone through it and confronted it head on. But I wanted that haunting not to be really a suggestion of being bedevilled by the past, but to have it be incarnate, to have it actually happen that a person enters your world who is in fact -you believe, at any rate - the dead returned, and you get a second chance, a chance to do it right. Of course, you do it wrong again (Rothstein, 1987).

However, Beaulieu (2003) points out that the narrative’s structure is different from that of typical ghost stories. In ghost stories, we find any kind of a monster who is being investigated by a detective figure and who finds out what the monster is and initiates the procedure to destroy the monster (Beaulieu, 2003, p. 141).

Beloved also contains the characteristics of magical realism which “refers to the amalgamation of realism and fantasy in art, ﬁlm, and literature. In the magical realist text, characters encounter elements of magic and fantasy with the same acceptance that they meet those settings and ﬁgures commonly associated with reality and fact” (Beaulieu, 2003, p. 197).

While traditional slave narratives typically document the slave’s physical escape and their journey to freedom, Morrison enriches this structure by depicting how the slaves survive the psychological trauma (Bloom, 2004, p. 16).

The story begins at the house 124 Bluestone Road, Cincinnati Ohio, the home of Sethe and her daughter Denver. The year is 1873. They both live isolated from the rest of the world, because the community criticises Sethe for what she did in the past. Through the story we find out that Sethe use to live in a farm called Sweet home owned by Mr. and Mrs. Garner who treated their slaves humanly. Sethe married a man named Halle Suggs who, before Sethe’s arrival, had bought his mother Baby Suggs her freedom. There are other slaves living on the Farm, one of them being Sixo, Paul A and Paul D. After Mr. Garner’s death a slave master called Schoolteacher rune the plantation. He was brutal and “subjected them to the full degradation and inhumanity of the system” (Andrews, Foster and Harris, 2001 p. 362). They all conspired an escape. Sethe sent her children, Beloved, Howard and Buglar to their grandmother Baby Suggs. The Schoolteacher found out what she had done and instructed his nephews to suck the milk out of Sethe’s breasts, and after she told what had happened to Mrs. Garner, the nephews whipped her, leaving opened wounds. When the time to escape came, the only one who managed to escape was a pregnant Sethe who gave birth in the woods with the 25

help of a white woman called Amy Denver. Paul A was captured and hanged, Paul D was also captured and sold, and Sixo was shot. Sethe escaped to Baby Suggs house at 124 Bluestone Road but her life in freedom did not last long. After twenty-eight days she was found by the Schoolteacher. She did not want for her children to become slaves again, so she decided to kill them. However, she managed to kill only one, her daughter. She went to jail for a short while and after finishing her sentence, she returned to Bluestone Road. During the time of her arrival to the present both of her sons have escape and Baby Sugges has died. Only Sethe, her daughter Denver, and a ghost who is a spirit of Sethe’s dead daughter are now leaving in the house. When Paul D arrives at the Bluestone Road he and Sethe try to establish a normal family life that none of them has had. Paul D drives the ghost out of the house, but not for long. On the other hand, Denver is not thrilled by Paul D’s presence. She also misses the ghost that Paul D drove out, because the spirit was the only one who was keeping her company. One day a twenty-one years old girl named Beloved appears. Sethe is right away ready to give her shelter; however, Paul D is very suspicious of Beloved. Beloved soon becomes a dominant force in Sethe’s life. She drives away and seduces Paul D. The first one to realize that the girl is Sethe’s daughter is Denver. When Sethe also finds that out, her whole life starts to revolve around Beloved. She becomes obsessed with her. “Because of Sethe's guilt and the "rememory" of tortured slavery, Beloved is able to take over Sethe's mind, body, and heart, following her everywhere, questioning her endlessly, and causing Sethe's mental and physical deterioration” (Andrews, Foster and Harris, 2001, p. 31). Denver realizes what is happening, that Beloved is physically and psychologically destroying her mother, and she knows they all need help. She, after many years, leaves her yard and asks neighbours for help. Soon, they all gather in front of Sethe’s house and perform some sort of exorcism and Beloved disappears. Unfortunately, Beloved’s disappearance does not bring the health to Sethe.

5.1 Characters

5.1.1 Beloved

When a girl comes to Bluestone Rose 124 she introduces herself as Beloved. The same name is written on the tombstone of Sethe’s desist daughter and she is the same age as Sethe’s daughter would be if she were still alive. She wants to hear Sethe’s stories of her past and knows facts from her life that no one but Sethe knows. Beloved knows the songs Seth sang to her children. On one hand, Beloved is in awe of Sethe and cannot leave her side, but on the other she starts feeding of her love. “Beloved asserts her claim on Sethe in different ways, through manifestations of love and anger” (Lister, 2009, p. 49). One day Seth feels invisible hand on her neck, caressing her, but later start chocking her. Denver later on, accuses Beloved of chocking her mother, but Beloved denies saying “I kissed her neck. I didn’t choke it” (Morrison, 1998, p. 101). For Denver it becomes clear that Beloved is her dead sister, and later on it becomes clear to Seth as well. But Beloved starts consuming Seth ”She took the best of everything” (Morrison, 1998, p. 241). Moreover, Beloved starts growing, becoming bigger and bigger, and Seth smaller, like Beloved is feeding of Sethe’s guilt.

Bloom (2004) claims that Beloved is not really a person but a spirit of multiple people. Beloved represents different person to different people. She presents an infant, a daughter, a mother, a sister and a lover. For Sethe, Beloved is a chance to redeem her sins from the past, for Paul D she is a lover and for Denver she is a friend who keeps her company. On one hand she is a destroyer, on the other, a healer. After his consummation with Beloved he remembers his past vividly and must face it. Authors of Sparknotes (2013) point out Beloved’s tyranny over Sethe forces Denver to leave the home yard and face the world she had feared for a long time.

Beloved is a ghost of Sethe’s dead daughter, Seth’s mother and she is also a ghost of slavery. She represents a collective memory of African Americans who were enslaved, tortured and killed. “While often representing what the characters desire

her to be, she also symbolizes the past—individual pasts, as well as the collective history of slavery. While forcing characters to remember the horror of slavery by bringing forth suppressed memories and emotions” (Bloom, 2004, p. 40). That Beloved represents slavery experience is evident in twenty-second and twenty- third chapter which both start ”I am Beloved and she is mine” (Morrison, 1998, p.210). Horvitz claims that ”The two voices, Sethe's ma'am's and her daughter's, both of them Beloveds, merge” (Horvitz, 1989). The first person narrator is describing people crouching on the ship infested with rats, people not having enough to eat or drink. There are dead people lying on top of each other. “Beloved is the crucial link that connects Africa and America for the enslaved women. She is Sethe's mother; she is Sethe herself; she is her daughter” (Horvitz, 1989).

Beloved at the end disappears, however “she gives the people of 124, and eventually the entire community, a chance to engage with the memories they have suppressed. Through confrontation, the community can reclaim and learn from its forgotten and ignored memories” (SparkNotes, 2013).

5.1.2 Sethe Suggs

Sethe Suggs is the epitome of the slave mother, even more tragic because she loved her children in a system that negated her humanity as well as her maternal instinct (Andrews, Foster and Harris, 2001, p. 362).

Sethe was born on a slave plantation. She has a problem of remembering her mother. She did not breast feed her and care for her because she had to work on the plantation the entire day. Seth was sold to slavery at the age of thirteen. She was a slave on a farm called Sweet Home owned by Mr. Garner. She married Halle Suggs who was also the father of her four children. When Mr. Garner died, the Schoolteacher took over the farm. Because he was treating his slaves inhumanly she decided to run away. She managed to escape, however the Schoolteacher fund her. Seethe did not want to subject her children to slavery, so she decided to kill them. She managed to kill her baby daughter who comes back to haunt her.

Sethe’s inner struggle has a lot to do with the relationship she had with her mother. Her mother could not care for Sethe because of the characteristics of slavery. When women slaves had children, they were considered a property of the slaveholder. Therefore, they were not allowed to love or claim their children. Sethe wanted a different relationship with her children. Because she cared for them, she did not want them to be subjected to slavery. “Since she believed that the next world would be a safer place than this one, she tried to kill all her children rather than seeing them grow up in slavery” (The Best Notes, 2008). She made a sacrifice for which she felt guilty and would haunt her through the whole novel.

Even though, many years have passed, and depleted of all the repressed memories, Sethe is deeply traumatized. She has tried to forget of what happened n the past, because the memory is too painful. However, with the arrival of Paul D’s and a girl named Beloved, Seth is faced with her past and trauma.

Paul D used to live with Sethe on the Farm and they share a traumatic experience. His arrival triggers Sethe’s memory. She confides in him and tells him what the Schoolteacher and his nephews did to her. The same when Beloved arrives, she wants to listen to Sethe’s stories from her past and Sethe is again faced with her past. But Beloved did not come to forgive. She started to suck the life out of Sethe. “Figuratively the past is now swallowing Sethe. She recounts, over and over, the painful stories Beloved craves” (Bloom, 2004, p. 42). However, Sethe, because of her guilt, is not realizing what Beloved is doing to her.

When Beloved is gone Sethe is physically and mentally weak: “She was my best thing. But Paul D replies, You your best thing, Sethe” (Morrison, 1998, p. 272).

5.1.3 Paul D

“Paul D is one of the most touching men to be depicted in literature. He longs to love big, but is constrained by slavery and its emasculating effects. Although he is filled with passion and emotion, he has difficulty expressing his true feelings”

(The Best Notes, 2008). 29

The same as we find out Sethe’s slavery experience in flashbacks, we find out Paul D’s story. They are both victims of slavery and have been suppressing their memories for a long time. After he tried to escape from Sweet Home, the Schoolteacher had his feet shackled and his neck collard, he was sold to another slaveholder, from whom he, latter on, managed to escape. When he arrives at Bluestone Road 124, he sees Seth after eighteen years. He too, has suppressed all his memories. He right away has a sense of the ghost’s presence and he exorcises the ghost. He and Sethe become lovers. The same as he triggers Sethe’s memories, she triggers his. Because of their shared past, they are drawn to each other, and both believe they have a future together. All that is gone when Beloved comes into their lives. He feels drawn to her on one hand, but on the other, he believes there is “Something funny `bout that gal” (Morrison, 1998, p. 56). Beloved wants Seth to herself and attempts to drive him away and seduces him sexually. However, that does not make him to back down. But when he sees a paper article on Sethe killing her daughter, he is unforgiving. He accuses Sethe of being an animal “You got two feet, Sethe, not four” (Morrison, 1998, p. 165). He leaves Sethe and finds his shelter in a church. “Paul D’s consummation with Beloved has made him recall the past so vividly that he must now face the truth all alone, he must try to face his own past” (Bloom, 2004, p. 40). When he comes to turn with his past and Sethe’s, he returns to her. Sethe is now willing to give up, but Paul D believes in the brighter future “we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow” (Morrison, 1998, p. 273).

5.1.4 Denver Suggs

Denver is Sethe’s eighteen year old daughter. She was born during Sethe’s escape from Sweet Home, and was a baby when her mother killed her sister. When Sethe returned from jail the whole community excluded them. That is why Denver has never had any friends, except for the ghost of her sister, who was the only one who was keeping her company. Denver day dreams of her father’s return. She has not seen or talked to any other people except her mother, and has not left her home since she was a child. She stopped her communication with the outside world at the age of seven, when one of the kids pointed out that her mother was a 30

killer. Denver is shy and lonely. Even though, she did not live in slavery, she is still affected by it “by the isolation of the house and her mother’s haunted memories” (Bloom, 2004, p. 21). The only story of her mother's past she likes to hear is the story of her birth. “She has been told the story of her own birth so many times that she experiences it as a memory” (Gallespie, 2008, p. 20). She is also afraid of her mother killing her, the way she killed her sister. When Paul D arrives, Denver feels even more isolated, because her mother is now sharing memories with an old friend. When Beloved appears, she finally has someone to talk to. Soon she is convinced that Beloved is her sister, and wants to protect her from Sethe, because Sethe has killed before. However, Denver soon realizes that she has to protect Seth from Beloved. Denver realizes that she cannot help her mother herself that is why she steps into the world and seeks help. Firstly, she goes to her old teacher Lady Jones, because the women at the Bluestone Road have nothing to eat. But as “Denver’s outside life improved, her home life deteriorated” (Morrison, 1998, p. 250). “Over the course of the novel, Denver transforms from an isolated and sheltered girl into the outgoing heroine of the novel. She takes responsibility for herself and her family” (Bloom, 2004, p. 43). After Sethe’s attack on Mr. Bodwin, Denver takes care of her mother and is working for the Bodwins. “Denver represents both the future and the past: Denver will be the new African-American woman teacher, and she is Morrison’s precursor, the woman who has taken on the task of carrying the story though generations to our storyteller” (Krumholz, 1999, p. 119).

5.1.5 Baby Suggs

Baby Suggs is a mother of Sethe’s husband Hall. He bought her way to freedom. Baby Suggs had eight children. All of them were taken away from her, the only one who stayed at the same plantation as her was Hall. After she became free, she moved to Bluestone Road 124 and became and self-proclaimed preacher. She was preaching to her followers in the Clearing. “Baby Suggs’s language focuses on the physical: she instructs her congregation to sing, dance, and cry. She wants them to love their hands, their flesh, and their hearts, stressing that only by fully loving themselves will they find freedom” (Bloom, 2004, p. 26). She was important 31

spiritual guide for the community as well as her family. However, that same community let her down. When Seth ran away from Sweet Home, Baby Suggs was the one who took care of her. When the Schoolteacher and his horsemen came, nobody warned Baby Suggs, and because of that she lost her family. After Seth murdered her daughter, Baby Suggs lost her will to live. She died a month after Sethe killed her baby.

Even though, Baby Suggs died the memory of her was is alive. She became “a mother figure and a stabilizing force” for Sethe and Denver (Robinson and Fulkerson, 2001, p. 91). When Denver realizes that she cannot save her mother from Beloved by herself and that she has to face her community, it is the memory of Baby Suggs and her voice in Denver’s head that encourages her ”Know it, and go on out the yard. Go on” (Morrison, 1998, p. 244). “She is the ancestor who provides the spiritual impetus” (Beaulieu, 2003, p.333).

Baby Suggs lost her children and was sexually exploited while being a slave. “In rendering the story of the life and death of Baby Suggs, Morrison reminds the reader that Baby Suggs's life has been destroyed by slavery even though she attained physical freedom” (Andrews, Foster and Harris, 2001, p. 19).

5.1.6 Schoolteacher

The Schoolteacher is a personification of the evils of slavery. “The Schoolteacher is a representation of the evil in human beings that justiﬁes the degradation of other people and supports murder as a solution to social problems” (Robinson and Fulkerson, 2001, p. 92).

The Schoolteacher took over Sweet Home after Mr. Garner’s death. When he first arrived he was “ was a little man. Short. Always wore a collar, even in the fields /..../ Talked soft and spit in handkerchiefs. Gentle in a lot of ways /..../ He liked the ink I made /..../ at night he sat down to write in his book. It was a book about us but we didn't know that right away. We just thought it was his manner to ask us questions. He commenced to carry round a notebook and write down what we said” (Morrison, 1998, p. 37). Furthermore, Seth remembers:”Schoolteacher'd 32

wrap that string all over my head, 'cross my nose, around my behind. Number my teeth. I thought he was a fool. And the questions he asked was the biggest foolishness of all” (Morrison, 1998, p. 191). She and other slaves at the Sweet Home at the time did not understand what the Schoolteacher was doing. Schoolteacher represents scientiﬁc racism. “The white slave-master, who divides up Sethe’s animal and human characteristics, stands for the normative white male system, the creation of “knowledge” from a priori and racist hypotheses and its link to power. Schoolteacher writes books in which this knowledge becomes the “truth” that is then passed down to later generations” (Raynaud, 2007, p. 46).

He and turned the Farm into a torture house. “The Schoolteacher arrived to put things in order. But what he did broke three more Sweet Home men and punched the glittering iron out of Sethe's eyes, leaving two open wells that did not reflect firelight” (Morrison, 1998, p. 9). The Schoolteacher did not believe for his slaves to be human but animals. One day Seth hers him say to one of his pupils:“No, no. That's not the way. I told you to put her human characteristics on the left; her animal ones on the right. And don't forget to line them up” (Morrison, 1998, p. 193).

After he found out that Seth had sent his children to Baby Suggs, he ordered his nephews to milk her like a cow, while he was making notes which implies that he is “a practitioner of the nineteenth-century “science” of race, writing a book that attempts to “prove” his racist theories of white supremacy” (Bloom, 2004, p.36). Later on, they whipped her, leaving the scars on her back. When she escaped and he found her, the reader gets to know his point of view “Inside, two boys bled in the sawdust and dirt at the feet of a nigger woman holding a blood-soaked child to her chest with o hand and an infant by the heels in the other /..../ Right off it was clear, to Schoolteacher especially, that there was nothing there to claim” (Morrison, 1998, p. 149). To the Schoolteacher Seth was just a property, now damaged and useless.

Paul D also recollects the Schoolteacher as a man “who changed him” and “I was something else and that something was less than a chicken sitting in the sun on a tub” (Morrison, 1998, p. 72).

“As both slaveholder and scholar, Schoolteacher is involved with the dismembering of slaves from their families, their labour, their selves” (Henderson, 1999, p. 89).

5.2 Themes 5.2.1 Slavery

One of the main themes in Beloved is slavery, the memory of slavery and its consequences. The novel is about “its effects on the individual psyche of black and white people, but also the repressed memory of slavery in the make-up of the American nation” (Raynaud, 2007, p. 43). Even though the story is set in the Reconstruction period, and the slavery is officially abolished, it is still present in the minds of the main characters. Moreover, Morrison dedicated the novel to “sixty million and more”.

Slavery defines the life on the characters in the novel, especially Sethe’s and Paul D’s life. The reader also finds out Baby Suggs fate as a slave, even though she is no longer alive. Sethe and Paul D are scared emotionally and physically. All the atrocities of slavery are shown through memories of individual characters. “The characters have been so profoundly affected by the experience of slavery that time cannot separate them from its horrors or undo its effects” (Smith, 2007, p. 175).

Slaves were not considered human and were slaveholder’s property. Their children were considered as slaveholder’s property. However, The Garners treated their slaves as human, or so the slaves believed, and Sethe was allowed to choose a husband for herself and create a family. She loved her children as any mother does. And that was the problem, because the institution of slavery controlled everything; one’s identity, motherhood, manhood, families and sexuality. With the arrival of the Schoolteacher everything changed for the worse. At that moment, physical and psychological abuse started. Sethe was abused by the 34

Schoolteacher’s nephews and beaten by them. That moment left scars that would last a life time. She is marked physically, because the whip lives scars on her back and the image of her scared back is shown many times throughout the story. The white girl Amy who helped her deliver Denver described the scar as “a chokecherry tree” (Morrison, 1998, p. 16 ), Baby Suggs believed the scar reminds of “roses of blood” (Morrison, 1998, p. 98) and for Paul D the scars are “the decorative work of an ironsmith too passionate for display” (Morrison, 1998, 17). “The scar symbolizes the violence and horror of slavery” (Bloom, 2004, p. 20). However, Seth is not the only one with physical scar. Her mother, had a burned mark of a cross on her skin and Nan, the woman who breastfed Seth, was missing a half of one arm.

She is also marked mentally. After the incident she managed to escape and tasted the freedom for the first time in her life. But that did not last for long. When the Schoolteacher found her, she was in no way willing to return herself or her children to slavery.

Weighing the balance between watching her children grow up as slaves (as Baby Suggs watched her own children grow up as slaves until all but one were sold away from her) and, even worse, slaves under schoolteacher’s rule at Sweet Home, and suffering quick deaths at the hands of their mother, Sethe opts for the latter. She succeeds in murdering only her elder daughter (Beaulieu, 2001, p. 311).

She saved her children from slavery, but for that she paid the price. Because of her murder Baby Suggs lost the will to live and a month later died. From that moment on, Bluestone Road was haunted by a ghost and both of her boys ran away from home, because they could not deal with their mother being a killer and the ghost haunting the house.

“In all of Baby's life, as well as Sethe's own, men and women were moved around like checkers. Anybody Baby Suggs knew, let alone loved, who hadn't run off or been hanged, got rented out, loaned out, bought up, brought back, stored up,

mortgaged, won, stolen or seized” (Morrison, 1998, p. 23). Baby Suggs spent most of her life in slavery and became a free woman after her son bought her freedom. “Baby Suggs’s freedom, coming at so high a cost, means little to her when she looks back upon how she has already suffered as a slave” (Beaulieu, 2001, p. 310). She was sexually abused several times; she had eight children, by six different men. She barely remembers them, ”My first-born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that's all I remember” (Morrison, 1998, p. 5) and they were all taken away from her except for Hall. Moreover last day of her life she spends depressed resenting what white people did to her;”Those white things have taken all I had or dreamed /.../ and broke my heartstrings too. There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks” (Morrison, 1998, p. 89).

Paul D is also affected by slavery. He too was physically abused, humiliated and has a mark of the iron collar on his neck ”his neck jewellery--its three wands, like attentive baby rattlers, curving two feet into the air” (Morrison, 1998, p. 273). He vividly remembers the incident when the attempt to escape failed and the Schoolteacher found him and he was tied and gagged ”Mister [the rooster], he looked so... free. Better than me. Stronger, tougher. Son a bitch couldn't even get out the shell by himself but he was still king and I was /..../ Mister was allowed to be and stay what he was. But I wasn't allowed to be and stay what I was. Even if you cooked him you'd be cooking a rooster named Mister” (Morrison, 1998, p. 72). Additionally, he is traumatized by what happened after the Schoolteacher sold him. He was sent to Georgia where he spent few months on a chain gang and was beaten and sexually abused by white guards.

“Beloved manages to focus on both the individual characters as well as the historical impact of slavery” (Bloom, 2004, p. 16) exposing “slavery as a national trauma, and as an intensely personal trauma as well” (Krumholz, 1999, p. 108).

Even though Denver never experienced slavery per se, she has been affected by it. Her mother’s action was the reason for her isolation.

5.2.2 Memory

Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place--the picture of it--stays, and not just in my remory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't think if, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened (Morrison, 1998, p. 36).

Memory is one of the central themes in Beloved. The story consists of individual memories in flashbacks that are forming the whole and through these memories the reader gets to know the tragic fate of enslaved individuals.

According to Beaulieu “Morrison uses memory to show the reader the hidden side of slavery. The novel illustrates the relationship between history and memory. History provides the exterior view of slavery, and memory is the personal, interior view” (Beaulieu, 2001, p. 208).

Despite the fact that Seth and Paul D, are physically free, because the slavery has been abolished, they are, however, trapped in their memories. No matter how much they are trying to repress them, they always come back to haunt them and anything can trig the memory of Sweet Home. “She [Sethe] might be hurrying across a field, running practically, to get to the pump quickly and rinse the chamomile sap from her legs. Nothing else would be in her mind. The picture of the men coming to nurse her was as lifeless as the nerves in her back where the skin buckled like a washboard” (Morrison, 1998, p. 6). Nevertheless, when Paul D arrives at Bluestone Road the suppression of memories is even more difficult. Paul D reminds Sethe of the Sweet Home, and Seth reminds him of Sweet Home too. They start telling each other things they had not told anybody, making memories more alive. Moreover, when Beloved appears the suppression of the past is now impossible to avoid. She is an embodiment of Sethe’s past, and also

Paul D’s past. She manages to open his “tobacco tin” where all the memories where closed.

Morrison uses the term rememory and not memory. “This term underscores that to “re-member” is to put together, or creatively reconstruct, the pieces of something” (Beaulieu, 2001, p. 208). Beaulieu (2001) claims that rememory does depend on the community and not on the individual. Moreover, it also depends on place and time.

Even though the memories of the past are painful, dealing with them is the only way for the healing process to begin. “Opening old wounds creates, though, the condition of the possibility of healing” (Daniels, 2009, p.17).

Morrison concludes that “this is not a story to pass on” (Morrison, 1998, p. 275), the story should not be repeated but also should not be forgotten. “Memory, we are repeatedly reminded, is also a matter of choice in the novel, but that choice is present in how we remember, not in whether we do. Like Sweet Home (like Beloved), it ‘Comes back,’ as Sethe tells Denver, ‘whether we want it to or not’ “(Daniels, 2009, p. 19).

5.2.3 Identity, Motherhood and Manhood

“The most dangerous of slavery’s effects is its negative impact on the former slaves’ senses of self, and the novel contains multiple examples of self-alienation” (SparkNotes, 2013).

The Schoolteacher pointed out to Paul D and Sixo that “definitions belonged to the definers--not the defined” (Morrison, 1998, p. 190), meaning that the definitions, including the definition of self belonged to the slaveholders.

In Beloved Morrison explores the effects of slavery on an identity of African Americans. Sethe is struggling to find her own identity throughout the novel. Because Seth is defining her through motherhood, and her children are her “best thing”, she has a sense of failure. She was a mother but also a slave and slavery

did not permit mothers to act like mothers. The first motif of motherhood is shown when the Schoolteacher’s nephews stole milk from her breasts. “The harrowing memory evokes the novel’s motifs of motherhood, as Sethe is treated like a sexually aggressive wet nurse and mammy” (Bloom, 2004, p. 14).

When the Schoolteacher found her after she escaped from Sweet Homer, as Beaulieu (2001) points out, Seth’s identities as a slave and a mother clashed and blurred the “lines of self-hood” (Beaulieu, 2001, p. 177). In attempt of killing her children, she managed to kill only her daughter. Consequently her two boys later escaped from Bluestone Road, because of their mother’s past, only Denver remained. When Baby Suggs died, Sethe is alone with her teenage daughter Denver, her ghost daughter and her painful memories. With the arrival of Beloved Sethe, filled with guilt, completely surrenders and devotes herself to Beloved’s demands. Beloved drains her physically and mentally. As a result, she loses her identity. “Sethe’s entire identity is a part of, and a reaction to, her mothering, and the reality of motherhood in the face of life’s injustices threatens to annihilate her” (Beaulieu, 2001, p. 221). It is only when Beloved disappears and Seth is aware that she is her best thing and not her children, can Seth fins her true self.

On the other hand, Denver has spent most of her life isolated and has a problem of self-identity. Because of her isolation she defines herself through people around her through her mother and Beloved, because without the Beloved “she has no self” (Morrison, 1998, p. 123). She craves for attention, firstly her mother’s attention and secondly beloved’ attention. However, when she notices that Beloved is taking over her mother, she knows she is the only one who can save her from self-destruction. By asking for help in the community “she replaces the solitary maternal bond with a larger community of adults and opens herself to an empathetic network of fellows” (Beaulieu, 2001, p.173). Denver finds her identity and by bringing the community back into Seth’s life, Denver helps her mother to get the chance to claim herself.

Moreover, Paul D is also struggling with his identity, manhood to be more specific. “He grew up thinking that, of all the Blacks in Kentucky, only the five of 39

them were men” (Morrison, 1998, p. 125). Mr. Garner considered his male slaves as real man, or so they thought. He let them handle guns, their opinions counted. However, “they were only Sweet Home men at Sweet Home. One step off that ground and they were trespassers among the human race” (Morrison, 1998, p. 125). Their manhood was artificial because as soon as they left Sweet Home, they were not men anymore.

Paul D also fears that Beloved weakened his manhood “What? A grown man fixed by a girl?” (Morrison, 1998, p. 127). “The mysterious girl may function in the novel as a type of succubus, a demon figure, extracting semen and vitality from Paul D and, ultimately, becoming pregnant with his child” (Gillespie, 2008, p. 35). It is Beloved’s seduction and the experience on the chain gang that made him questioning his masculinity. “He is the only principal character who must deal with two forced sexual encounters, and these counters are central to his constant meditation on the meaning of his manhood” (Barnett, 1997, p. 423). Thinking he will regain his manhood, he asks Seth to bare his child. ”And suddenly it was a solution: a way to hold on to her, document his manhood and break out of the girl's spell--all in one” (Morrison, 1998, p.128).

He “struggles to define his masculinity through white norms, but comes to realize that he must ﬁnd alternative deﬁnitions with Sethe” (Beaulieu, 2001, p. 204). “It troubled him that, concerning his own manhood, he could not satisfy himself on that point. Oh, he did manly things, but was that Garner's gift or his own will? What would he have been anyway--before Sweet Home--without Garner?” (Morrison, 1998, p. 220). But at the end he realizes that Seth is the only one who can leave him his manhood.

Additionally, Beloved has no identity because “she has ‘merged with the Sixty Million and more’ who suffered the outrage of enslavement” (Watson, 2009, p. 101). However, according to Durkin (2009), Beloved assumes many identities. Throughout the story she embodies other characters. For example, when she arrives at 124 she was taken by the colours the same way as Baby Suggs use to be. “She seemed totally taken with those faded scraps of orange, even made the effort 40

to lean on her elbow and stroke them” (Morrison, 1998, p. 54). Furthermore, she assumes Seth’s identity “her face is my own and I want to be there in the place where her face is and to be looking at it too a hot thing” (Morrison, 1998, p. 210). Beloved does succeed in changing identity with Seth. As Denver notices ”the thing was done: Beloved bending over Sethe looked the mother, Sethe the teething child” (Morrison, 1998, p. 251). Moreover, ”Beloved ate up her life, took it, swelled up with it, grew taller on it” (Morrison, 1998, p. 251). As Durkin (2009) claims, Beloved also takes the identity of Sethe’s. ”The woman is there with the face I want the face that is mine they fall into the sea which is the colour of the bread she has nothing in her ears if I had the teeth of the man who died on my face I would bite the circle around her neck bite it away” (Morrison, 1998, p. 211). Finally, Beloved takes the identity of millions African Americans who lost their lives in the middle passage. “Each of these embodiments thus amplifies the permeability of Beloved’s selfhood and the lack of individuation characteristic of the pre- Oedipal stage that allows these embodiments to take place” (Durkin, 2009, p. 183).

According to Lyles Scott (2009) Baby Suggs is the most self-identified. She denied the name that was given to her by her white master. Mr. Garner always identified her by the name Jenny, and when she asked him way he called her that she answered it is because her husband called her that. She never suffers the lack of identity because of slavery. However, Durkin (2009) claims that Baby Suggs, because of slavery, also lacks of selfhood. Baby Suggs “knew more about them [her children] than she knew about herself, having never had the map to discover what she was like” (Morrison, 1998, p. 141).

But they both agree that after Baby Suggs escape from slavery begins to seek her identity and she becomes aware of her body and soul “But suddenly she saw her hands and thought with a clarity as simple as it was dazzling, "These hands belong to me. These my hands." Next she felt a knocking in her chest and discovered something else new: her own heartbeat. Had it been there all along?” (Morrison, 1998, p. 141). Furthermore, Lyles Scott (2009) points out that it was Baby Suggs who helped other free slaves to reclaim their own identities by preaching that 41

now, as free people they have to fulfil their own desires, not someone else’s. “As many critics note, Baby Suggs’s sermon attempts to redefine African American identity through the flesh, to transform the inscriptions inflicted by whites into a radical self-love of the African American body” (Durkin, 2009, p.185).

5.2.4 Community

“Beloved demonstrates the extent to which individuals need the support of their communities in order to survive” (SparkNotes, 2013).

When Sethe escaped from Sweet Home and arrived to Bluestone Road 124 she became a part of black community for the first time. Baby Suggs’ house at that time was the centre of the community

124 had been a cheerful, buzzing house where Baby Suggs, holy, loved, cautioned, fed, chastised and soothed. Where not one but two pots simmered on the stove; where the lamp burned all night long. Strangers rested there while children tried on their shoes. Messages were left there, for whoever needed them was sure to stop in one day soon (Morrison, 1998, p. 86, 87).

Moreover, Baby Suggs was the spiritual guide for the black community, she was preaching in the Clearing in the forest. The Clearing became “a space for the black community to claim their own space for spiritual healing and community building” (Bloom, 2004, p. 26). However, it is her generosity that isolated her form the community. When Sethe arrived at Bluestone Road Baby Suggs arranged a feast. The pies were made by community contributions. However, this solidarity turned into uninspected reaction from the community. “Even though she turns her blessings into gifts for the community and provides a space for the necessary work of getting others out, the fact of these blessing secretes a separation between her and the community” (Jesser, 2004, p. 80). Or as According to Washington, ”The community, acting very much as a society of traditional African elders would, punishes Baby Suggs with silence after she celebrates her spiritual and material wealth with the magnificent feast” (Washington, 2009, p. 60). 42

The community did not warn Baby Suggs of the four white men on horses coming for Seth. Their actions lead into tragedy and the isolation of Seth and her daughter Denver.

On one hand, it was the community who was partly responsible for Seth’s downfall; on the other hand it was also the community who helped her to rise again. And it is Denver who joins the link between them and the community. By seeking help after seeing what Beloved has done to her mother, Denver reunites the bonds that were broken many years ago. Firstly, the community responds by leaving the food at the doorsteps of Bluestone Road. Secondly, when women of the community hear that Beloved possessed Seth, they gather and go to 124. They start praying until Beloved and Seth show at the doorsteps. “The power of the women’s voices joined together has a creative capacity that symbolizes and ritualizes Sethe’s cycle from spiritual death to rebirth” (Krumholz, 1999, p. 118). The communal voice of women drives Beloved away and by doing that they save Seth. It is also important to know that, even though, Beloved is Sethe’s personal ghost, her past coming to life, it is also a communal ghost that is haunting all once enslaves African Americans. By vanquishing Beloved they try to leave the past behind them.

5.2.5 Sexual Exploitation

“In this work, Morrison used images of nature, animalistic descriptions, and rape to exemplify how the black woman was exploited sexually during and after slavery” (Watson, 2009, p. 93).

In Beloved the black woman is considered a sexual object. To slave holders woman were seen as a womb for a potential new slave who brought profit for the slaveholder. In the novel, all black women were in some point in their lives sexually abused and were “reduced to sexual machines that exist only for the master’s benefit” (Watson, 2009, p. 96). Many women who were impregnated by white men aborted their children or killed them: “infanticide becomes the black woman’s tool against her oppressive rapists” (Watson, 2009, p. 103).

For example, Nan, the woman whom Seth knew best as a child, told her that she and Seth’s mother had been raped by white men and Seth’s mother was also impregnated by them. She aborted all the babies but kept Seth because she was the child of a black man.

Moreover, in her life Baby Suggs was often forced into sexual relationships. She had eight children by six different men. She even had sex with a straw boss because he promised her that he would not sell her third child, which he later did. She was also pregnant by that man. “That child she could not love and the rest she would not” (Morrison, 1998, p. 23). They were all taken away, except for Hall. Baby Suggs was aware that as a slave she was not suppose to feel love for a man:”Slaves not supposed to have pleasurable feelings on their own; their bodies not supposed to be like that, but they have to have as many children as they can to please whoever owned them. Still, they were not supposed to have pleasure deep down” (Morrison, 1998, p. 209).

Sethe was also a victim of white men. The Schoolteachers’ nephews stole her milk which was part of her identity as a mother. “The white boys have indeed soured much more than Sethe’s milk because they have also sucked away all hope for bonding between mother and child” (Watson, 2009, p. 104). In this scene the animalistic motif is evident; Sethe is milked like a cow. However it was not just Seth who was affected by this exploitation. Her husband Hall saw what happened and because he felt powerless, he lost his sanity. “Here Morrison is attuned to the enormous psychic cost borne by Black men who feel venerable to protect Black women from sexual violation” (Beaulieu, 2001, p. 301). As a result to the mistreatment, Sethe killed her daughter because she did not want her to be subjected to the same abuse. Additionally, Sethe could not afford the engraving on the tombstone, so she exchanged sex for the engraving. When Beloved arrives Sethe is convinced that she “had been locked up by some white man for his own purposes, and never let out the door” (Morrison, 1998, p. 119). Sethe also wants to protect Beloved from white man because she knows:

That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn't like yourself anymore. Dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn't think it up. And though she [Seth] and others lived through and got over it, she could never let it happen to her own (Morrison, 1998, p. 251).

Then there is a woman from the community named Ella who was abused by two white men, a father and a son “You couldn't think up what them two done to me” (Morrison, 1998, p. 119). She thought of the as “the lowest yet” (Morrison, 1998, p. 256). Ella understood Seth’s rage toward the white man but not Seth’s reaction.

“Sexuality is also pervasive in the novel as a symbol of the connection and disconnection, often violent disconnection, between human beings” (Gillespie, 2008, p. 34, 35). For instance, male slaves dreamt of raping Sethe. Morrison “reminiscents of how the white slave master set up an environment conducive to rape” (Watson, 2009, p. 96). Additionally, because of the lack of women on Sweet Home black males started having sex with calves. ”And so they were: Paul D Garner, Paul F Garner, Paul A Garner, Halle Suggs and Sixo, the wild man. All in their twenties, minus women, fucking cows, dreaming of rape, thrashing on pallets, rubbing their thighs and waiting for the new girl” (Morrison, 1998, p. 11).

Nevertheless, in the novel there are not just women who were sexually abused. When Beloved seduces Paul D, Barnett claims he is a victim of “supernatural rape” (Barnett, 1997, p. 424). Moreover, he was also abused working on the chain gang in Georgia. “Morrison’s depiction of the life of a slave who works on the chain gang perhaps one of the most fear-inspiring passages in all her oeuvre” (Beaulieu, 2001, p.311). It was Paul D working in a chain gang in Georgia where all prisoner were forced to sexually pleasure the guards.

All forty-six men woke to rifle shot. All forty-six. Three white men walked along the trench unlocking the doors one by one /..../ another rifle shot signalled the climb out and up to the ground above, where one

thousand feet of the best hand-forged chain in Georgia stretched /..../ Chain-up completed, they knelt down /..../ Kneeling in the mist they waited for the whim of a guard, or two, or three. Or maybe all of them wanted it (Morrison, 1998, p. 107).

“In Beloved, the rape and exploitation of both the black woman and man set the stage for the unnatural and animalistic behaviour that dominates the work” (Watson, 2009, p. 95).

5.2.6 Love and Relationships

“A foundational question Morrison engages in Beloved is, who is the beloved and what does it mean to be loved?” (Gillespie, 2008, p. 31). She deals with different kinds of love; love between a mother and a child and love between two adults and how love is complicated by slavery.

For Sethe children are her best thing, and that was her biggest crime because slavery did not allow mothers to love their children, to claim them. As Ella warned Seth when she arrived at Bluestone Road:”Don't love nothing” (Morrison, 1998, p. 92). It is primarily because of the well being of her children that she decided to escape from Sweet Home. Because her job as a mother was ”to keep them away from what I [Sethe] know is terrible” (Morrison, 1998, p. 165). Being free for the first time Seth was able to devote fully to her children. ”Look like I loved em more after I got here. Or maybe I couldn't love em proper in Kentucky because they wasn't mine to love. But when I got here, when I jumped down off that wagon--there wasn't nobody in the world I couldn't love if I wanted to. You know what I mean?” (Morrison, 1998, p. 162). And to her killing them meant protecting them. “I took and put my babies where they'd be safe” (Morrison, 1998, p. 164). Paul D asserts her love as “to thick” (Morrison, 1998, p. 164). It is Sethe’s love to her children, and attempt to prove her love to Beloved, which at the end almost destroys her. Paul D knows that “for a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love”(Morrison, 1998, p. 45). It is Denver who shows the love for her

mother by saving her. Denver is “buying her mother’s freedom, releasing her from slavery, in ways comparable to those in which Halle paid for Baby Suggs; Denver is offering up her labour, her ‘gift’ to misery, just as her father has done earlier” (Harris, 2004, p. 68).

There is also a love relationship between Seth and Paul D. They use to share their lives at Sweet Home and are both traumatized by what happened to them. When Paul D arrives at Bluestone Road, Seth lets him in her bed. “Paul D can only express himself through sex, not true love. Still, Sethe is willing to accept him in this way” (Watson, 2009, p. 97). However, after they have sex the appetite is gone, ”they lay side by side resentful of one another” (Morrison, 1998, p. 20). Moreover, Sethe has her doubts:”But maybe a man was nothing but a man, which is what Baby Suggs always said. They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely that was, they studied your scars and tribulations, after which they did what he had done: ran her children out and tore up the house” (Morrison, 1998, p. 23). Paul D leaves 124 after he finds out what Seth had done. To be able to love each other “both have to come to terms with the impact of the past and to integrate that trauma into their sense of self rather than sup-pressing or denying the reality of the horrific events they have both experienced” (Gillespie, 2008, p. 32). At the end Paul D returns to Seth coming in terms with his past and believes in the brighter future “me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow” (Morrison, 1998, p. 273).

5.2.7 Supernatural

Supernatural events are part of everyday life of the characters. “The ﬁrst chapter quickly and successfully blurs the lines between animate and inanimate, conscious and otherwise” (Beaulieu, 2001, p. 141). The supernatural presence is evident in the first lines of the story.

Another kettleful of chickpeas smoking in a heap on the floor; soda crackers crumbled and strewn in a line next to the door sill /..../ Together

they [Seth and Denver] waged a perfunctory battle against the outrageous behaviour of that place; against turned-over slop jars, smacks on the behind, and gusts of sour air. For they understood the source of the outrage as well as they knew the source of light (Morrison, 1998, p. 3, 4).

Moreover, when Paul D arrives at Bluestone Road he notices “a pool of pulsing red light” (Morrison, 1998., p. 9) and “a wave of grief soaked him so thoroughly he wanted to cry” (Morrison, 1998, p. 9). It becomes clear to him that Seth and Denver are not alone in the house:”What kind of evil you got in here?” (Morrison, 1998, p. 8). Sethe tells him that the house is haunted by a ghost of her dead daughter. Later on the house starts trembling and Paul D gets rid of the ghost. “The ghostly presence of Beloved in Sethe’s life is justified to the reader because Morrison creates the setting for projected supernaturalism as a result of the troubled psychic state of a person” (Pomoni, 2010). With the arrival of Beloved it is her who personifies the supernatural. She is a ghost of Sethe’s dead daughter and a ghost of “sixty million and more” who died in the Middle Passage. Additionally she evokes the memories of Seth and Paul D which they want to forget.

The end is also supernatural. The communal women exorcise Beloved: ”Disappeared, some say, exploded right before their eyes” (Morrison, 1998, p. 263) however, “first they saw it and then they didn't. When they got Sethe down on the ground and the ice pick out of her hands and looked back to the house, it was gone. Later, a little boy put it out how he had been looking for bait back of 124, down by the stream, and saw, cutting through the woods, a naked woman with fish for hair” (Morrison, 1998, p. 267). This paragraph could be interpreted as the fact that the supernatural elements are creations of the characters in order to deal with the loss and the pain caused by slavery.

5.3 Motifs and imagery

5.3.1 124 Bluestone Road

The novel is divided in three sections, each starting with the image of 124 Bluestone Road. The first section begins with ”124 was spiteful”, second with “124 was loud” and the third with ”124 was quiet” which, according to Washington (2009) emphasizes the humanity of 124 and the house can be in a way considered a character.

According to Robinson and Fulkerson (2001) the house number suggests many symbolic probabilities. Firstly, the sum of the three digits equals seven which is the number of letters in the name Beloved. Secondly, in Christianity number seven represents completion and perfection as well as the Holy Spirit. With the death of Beloved meant the end of all those elements in Seth’s life. And thirdly, in the house number, digit three is missing in the sequence, the same way as the third Seth’s child is missing in her life.

Morrison herself has said that she opens the novel with numbers for variety of reasons. Firstly, the attention of the reader is on the house and it also gives it an identity. Moreover it emphasizes the significance of owning a house to those who had been denied of the ownership in their lives. Secondly she says that ”there is something about numerals that makes them spoken, heard. Opening with numbers creates significant role of orality in the text. Thirdly and most significantly, this opening demands from the reader to be aware that he/she is entering a world populated by people who exist in an extended, if not permanent, state of disorder” (Smith, 2012, p. 66).

“While the present of the novel is located in 124, the house is haunted by the spectre of reliving the past. Incursions into the yard and house by the past, whether brought by Paul D or Schoolteacher, cause breakdowns” (Jesser, 2004, p. 77). When Baby Suggs was alive, in the so called pre-apocalyptic 124, that was before Seth cut her daughter’s throat, 124 “had been a cheerful, buzzing house where Baby Suggs, holy, loved, cautioned, fed, chastised and soothed. Not one 49

but two pots simmered on the stove; where the lamp burned all night long” (Morrison, 1998, p. 86, 87). However, the post-apocalyptic Bluestone Road 124, that is after Baby Suggs died and Seth returned from prison, “shut down and put up with the venom of its ghost. No more lamp all night long or neighbours dropping by. No low conversations after supper. No watched barefoot children playing in the shoes of strangers” (Morrison, 1998, p. 89). 124 never regains its former self, and Paul D believes that ”Something is missing from 124. Something larger than the people who lived there. Something more than Beloved or the red light” (Morrison, 1998, p. 270).

5.3.2 Water

Water represents life, cleansing, rebirth and death. The most important image of the water is Beloved’s emergence from the water. ”She had new skin, lineless and smooth, including the knuckles of her hands” (Morrison, 1998, p. 51). This scene symbolises Beloved’s coming to life. Moreover, as soon as Sethe notices her she feels an uncontrollable desire to relieve herself.

Right in front of its door she had to lift her skirts, and the water she voided was endless. Like a horse, she thought, but as it went on and on she thought, No, more like flooding the boat when Denver was born. So much water Amy said, "Hold on, Lu. You going to sink us you keep that up." But there was no stopping water breaking from a breaking womb and there was no stopping now (Morrison, 1998, p. 51).

It was as dough her water was breaking which symbolises rebirth of Beloved. Moreover, she is sleepy and thirsty, wetting the bed, needing constant supervision, she is like an infant.

Another important image of water is the Ohio River where she gave birth to Denver and that symbolizes life. ”As soon as Sethe got close to the river her own water broke loose to join it. The break, followed by the redundant announcement of labour, arched her back” (Morrison, 1998, p. 83). The river also symbolizes freedom. ”Sethe was looking at one mile of dark water, which would have to be 50

split with one or in a useless boat against a current dedicated to the Mississippi hundreds of miles away. It looked like home to her” (Morrison, 1998, p. 83). In order to be free and to be reunited with her children, like many slaves before her, Seth had to cross the river. Furthermore, the water represents Seth’s rebirth. When she arrived at 124, Baby Suggs washed Seth’s arms, hands, legs and feet and by doing that she brought exhausted Seth back to life. Paul D too, after Beloved is gone, wants to bathe her and revive her.

Moreover, the twenty-first chapter is full of water imagery which symbolises death of all the slaves dying in the Middle Passage. Water images such as “tears” “sweat” “morning water” “the sea” “rain” role in front of the reader’s eyes.

The author concludes with the image of water;”By and by all trace is gone, and what is forgotten is not only the footprints but the water too and what it is down there. The rest is weather” (Morrison, 1998, p. 275).

5.3.3 Milk

Milk is a symbol of motherhood to Seth and the stealing of the milk symbolises the taking of her identity as a mother: ”All I knew was I had to get my milk to my baby girl. Nobody was going to nurse her like me. Nobody was going to get it to her fast enough, or take it away when she had enough and didn't know it” (Morrison, 1998, p. 16). “Mother’s milk is the only means of nurturing and continuing stability and hope for the future” (Watson, 2009, p. 104). It is also linkage between a mother and a child and by the Schoolteacher’s nephews steeling her milk they broke that link. However, “rather than the tearing of her ﬂesh, Sethe recalls the deprivation of nourishment for her infant” (Robinson and Fulkerson, 2001, p. 102). Moreover, Seth was deprived of mother’s milk and her mother’s love and that is one of the reasons breastfeeding her children was very important to her;”There was no nursing milk to call my own. I know what it is to be without the milk that belongs to you; to have to fight and holler for it, and to have so little left” (Morrison, 1998, p. 200).

Another important image of milk is Denver swallowing mother’s milk and her sister’s blood on the day that Seth murdered her daughter. “Just as Denver swallows the blood that results from her mother’s crime, she embodies her mother’s trauma by carrying the guilt inside of her” (Bloom, 2004, p. 37).

5.3.4 Allusions to Christianity

“I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved” (Morrison, 1998, p. 1). This is the second epigraph in the novel with which the novel opens. The epigraph comes from the New Testament. It is the letter of Saint Paul to the Romans. In the letter he encourages the Romans “by promising them that they are God's people and will receive God's love through grace” (TheBest Notes, 2008). It is a promise of God’s love to the people who are not truly beloved. “The epigraph sets the tone for the opening chapter, in which a will full ghost destroys the peace of Sethe’ s home—a home that is free of slavery but still laden with servitude’ s emotional freight” (Robinson and Fulkerson, 2001, p. 23).

Another two Biblical allusions are evident when Baby Suggs arranges a feast when Seth arrives with her newborn baby. “Loaves and fishes were His powers-- they did not belong to an ex slave who had probably never carried one hundred pounds to the scale, or picked okra with a baby on her back” (Morrison, 1998, p. 137). Firstly, Loafs and fishes refer to the miracle of Jesus feeding thousands of people with two fish and five loafs. Robinson and Fulkerson (2001) point out that the feast refers to Christ’s last feast which preceded the betrayal of one of the apostles and his crucifixion. The same, Baby Suggs feast preceded community’s betrayal of Seth. “She has been betrayed not only by the evil of white people and the world they rule, but also by the pride of her own people, who turn their backs” (Jesser, 2004, p. 83).

“Four. Riding close together, bunched-up like, and righteous” (Morrison, 1998, p. 157). The image of four horsemen (Schoolteacher, his nephew, a slave catcher and the sheriff) is an allusion of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse in the Book of

Revelation who symbolize conquest, war, famine and death. The four horseman also present apocalypse-the end of the world. For Seth’s family four white horsemen present the end of peaceful and happy life. “The day of reckoning comes in the form of a tremendous violence, the flowing of blood, and a disruption of the maternal relationship that suggests the upheavals of judgment Day. The unleashing of Sethe’s wrath is like that of the God of righteousness” (Jesser, 2004, p. 83).

Moreover, when Beloved tries to seduce Paul D, Morrison uses the allusion of Lot’s wife which refers to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra. Lot’s wife turns into pillar of sand because she looks back, even though ordered not to.

As long as his eyes were locked on the silver of the lard can he was safe. If he trembled like Lot's wife and felt some womanish need to see the nature of the sin behind him; feel a sympathy, perhaps, for the cursing cursed, or want to hold it in his arms out of respect for the connection between them, he too would be lost (Morrison, 1998, p, 117).

Paul D is aware that if he takes his eyes of the lard he will be lost, the same way as Lot’s wife was. The allusion “indicates that Paul D realizes the immorality that he contemplates: coupling with a will full, unstable girl whom Sethe loves ‘as much as her own daughter’ and by giving into temptation he betrays his relationship with Seth” (Robinson and Fulkerson, 2001, p. 51).

Furthermore, Stamp Paid is remembering the time he last stepped in the house 124, and that was in time of Baby Suggs’s funeral. He remembers that Seth was not crying and was detached. “Her outrageous claims, her self-sufficiency seemed to demand it, and Stamp Paid, who had not felt a trickle of meanness his whole adult life, wondered if some of the "pride goeth before a fall" expectations of the townsfolk had rubbed off on him anyhow” (Morrison, 1998, p. 171). “Pride goeth before a fall” is a biblical proverb meaning that Seth’s refusal of help led to her downfall. Additionally, Stamp Paid is approaching the 124 wanting to enter, however, “the coldness of the gesture--its sign that he was indeed a stranger at the

gate--overwhelmed him. Retracing his steps in the snow, he sighed. Spirit willing; flesh weak” (Morrison, 1998, p. 173), he wanted to but he could not make himself to do so physically. The expression is found in Mathew 26.

5.3.5 Colours

The novel is full of colours, each symbolising something different. Firstly, the image of the colour red appears when Paul D arrives at 124. He steps into “a pool of pulsing red light” (Morrison, 1998, p. 9) and right away “a wave of grief soaked him so thoroughly” (Morrison, 1998, p. 9). The light presents baby’s ghost. Furthermore, the next image of the red colour is Amy Denver’s velvet “velvet is like the world was just born. Clean and new and so smooth” (Morrison, 1998, p. 33). Here, Amy’s search for the carmine (red) velvet symbolizes hope. “The story of Amy’s search for carmine velvet seems especially poignant because we sense the futility of her dream” (SparkNotes, 2013). Another important image of the red colour is Paul D’s “read heart” which stands for his emotions. ”He would keep the rest where it belonged: in that tobacco tin buried in his chest where a red heart used to be. Its lid rusted shut” (Morrison, 1998, p. 73). And, it was Beloved who made him feel again. “Red puddle” in which Baby Suggs stepped and fell is an image of Seth’s daughter’s blood. The most disturbing image of the red colour is that of the red ribbon Stamp Paid finds on the bottom of the river which shows evils of slavery. “He tugged and what came loose in his hand was a red ribbon knotted around a curl of wet woolly hair, clinging still to its bit of scalp” (Morrison, 1998, p. 180).

Now I know why Baby Suggs pondered colour her last years. She never had time to see, let alone enjoy it before. Took her a long time to finish with blue, then yellow, then green. She was well into pink when she died. I don't believe she wanted to get to red and I understand why because me and Beloved outdid ourselves with it” (Morrison, 1998, p. 201).

The last days of her life, Baby Suggs craved for colour, she had enough red in her life. The red symbolising blood and death. Even though, after Seth’s murder, Baby Suggs gives in and wants to die; “Those white things have taken all I had or dreamed /.../ and broke my heartstrings too” (Morrison, 1998, p. 89). She focuses on the colours because “the world is so imbued and shot through with white power that colour remains the only harmless thing” (Jesser, 2002, p. 83). “What I [Baby Suggs] have to do is get in my bed and lay down. I want to fix on something harmless in this world /..../ Blue. That don't hurt nobody. Yellow neither” (Morrison, 1998, p.179).

On the contrary, Seth forgets about the colours after her baby’s death, ”the last colour she remembered was the pink chips in the headstone of her baby girl. After that she became as colour conscious as a hen /..../ There was something wrong with that. It was as though one day she saw red baby blood, another day the pink gravestone chips, and that was the last of it” (Morrison, 1998, p. 38, 39).

5.3.6 Iron

Iron is mentioned many times through the novel. Young Sethe is described as “Halle's girl--the one with iron eyes and backbone to match” (Morrison, 1998, p. 9). Iron symbolize determination, however when the Schoolteacher arrived he “punched the glittering iron out of Sethe's eyes, leaving two open wells that did not reflect firelight (Morrison, 1998, p. 9). But “now the iron was back” (Morrison, 1998, p. 9). Furthermore, Paul D describes Seth’s scar on her back as “the sculpture her back had become, like the decorative work of an ironsmith too passionate for display” (Morrison, 1998, p. 17), and a “wrought-iron maze” (Morrison, 1998, p. 21). In the case of Seth iron presents her strong will and courage but in the case of Paul D it presents the loss of his manhood. As a slave he was constantly humiliated by iron collars and chains. When the Schoolteacher found Paul D while he was trying to escape Sweet Home, he chained him an put an iron bit in Paul D’s mouth, ”licking iron with my hands crossed behind me” (Morrison, 1998, p. 73). Moreover, working for the chain gang, he was physically restrained by leg iron. There is also his “tobacco tin” (Morrison, 1998, p. 72) 55

which symbolizes his repressed memories. Another image of iron is evident when Denver accuses Beloved of chocking Seth. “The circle of iron choked it” (Morrison, 1998, p. 101), which is a reminder of slavery and it refers to the iron collar that slaves wore to be physically controlled by their masters. The “iron circle” is mentioned again in the chapter where Beloved takes the identity of the slaves in the Middle passage, ”If they put an iron circle around your neck I will bite it away” (Morrison, 1998, p. 215).

5.3.7 Trees

“In the world of Beloved, trees serve primarily as sources of healing, comfort, and life” (Spark Notes, 2013).

Because Seth has experienced many horrific things in her life, her memory is focused on other things, ”Boys hanging from the most beautiful sycamores in the world. It shamed her--remembering the wonderful soughing trees rather than the boys” (Morrison, 1998, p. 6). “The trees point to a contemplation of her own experience, the experience of the chokecherry tree beat into her while she was pregnant” (Kang v Bloom, 2009, p. 33). Another tree image is a “chokecherry tree” on her back which is one of the central images in the novel. It is because of this “tree” on her back Seth’s and Paul D’s memories in slavery come to life. ”Schoolteacher made one open up my back, and when it closed it made a tree. It grows there still” (Morrison, 1998, p. 17). Even though the scar is a reminder of slavery, it is also a symbol of the natural beauty. When Seth tries to escape from Sweet Home, she hides in the forest, which provides the sanctuary it is Amy who points out:

It's a tree, Lu. A chokecherry tree. See, here's the trunk--it's red and split wide open, full of sap, and this here's the parting fo rthe branches. You got a mighty lot of branches. Leaves, too, look like, and dern if these ain't blossoms. Tiny little cherry blossoms, just as white. Your back got a whole tree on it. (Morrison, 1998, p. 79).

Paul D also remembers the trees at the Sweet Home: 56

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. Always in the same place if he could and choosing the place had been hard because Sweet Home had more pretty trees than any farm around. His choice he called Brother, and sat under it, alone sometimes (Morrison, 1998, p. 21).

Also, enslaved in Georgia he found his comfort in an image of a tree ”His little love was a tree, of course, but not like Brother--old, wide and beckoning” (Morrison, 1998, p. 221). And when he manages to escape, the Cherokee told him to ”follow the tree flowers” (Morrison, 1998, p.113). “The trees provide the critical information he needs in order to find his way to sanctuary and safety away from the brutality of Alfred, Georgia” (Gillespie, 2008, p. 33). On the other hand, there is a darker image of a tree in his memory. When the Schoolteacher found out that his slaves were trying to escape Sweet Home, Paul D and Sixo were tied to a tree, Sixo was burnt alive.

Moreover, the Clearing which was an important spiritual centre, a place of spiritual healing for the community is located in the forest;”while it was still the green blessed place she remembered: misty with plant steam and the decay of berries /..../ The old path was a track now, but still arched over with trees dropping buckeyes onto the grass below” (Morrison, 1998, p. 89). Stamp Paid remembers:”In the heat of every Saturday afternoon, she [Baby Suggs] sat in the clearing while the people waited among the trees” (Morrison, 1998, p. 87).

5.3.8 Animals and Bestiality

When Sethe remembers the birth of Denver she refers to Denver as ”the little antelope rammed her with horns and pawed the ground of her womb with impatient hooves /..../ Nothing was alive but her nipples and the little antelope” (Morrison, 1998, p. 31). Seth has never seen an antelope and did not know why she was referring to that animal, except for the dance called the antelope that the slaves were dancing.

However, mostly the animal images in the novel refer to bestiality. “The animal imagery is dominant through the treatment of the black woman and man” (Watson, 2009, p. 93). The slave holders believed that slaves had animal characteristics. For example, when Seth hears the Schoolteacher say to his students:”No, no. That's not the way. I told you to put her [Seth’s] human characteristics on the left: her animal ones on the right. And don't forget to line them up” (Morrison, 1998, p. 193). Moreover, his nephews treat her like an animal by milking her like a cow, ”after they handled me like I was the cow, no, the goat, back behind the stable because it was too nasty to stay in with the horses” (Morrison, 1998, p. 200). This Seth’s memory is evoked when Paul D finds out that Seth killed her daughter and he accuses her of having “four feet” meaning only an animal would do such a thing. “Violation to ethical love insofar as it quickly cancels out any trace of violence. For racist ideologues, slave infanticide is further proof of an animality inherent in black mother-hood: a propensity to violence from which white motherhood is exempt” (Peterson, 2009, p. 156).

Another act of bestiality is the act of sex with calves. Because there were mostly male slaves at Sweet Home, they satisfied themselves with calves. “These acts of bestiality are vivid reminders of how black men, made impotent by the white master, are expected to act like animals in the eyes of white society” (Watson, 2009, p. 96).

Paul D recalls the rooster named Mister. While Paul D was chained and gagged, “tied like a mule” (Morrison, 1998, p. 225) the rooster was walking freely:

Mister, he looked so... free. Better than me. Stronger, tougher. Son a bitch couldn't even get out the shell by hisself but he was still king and I was ... Mister was allowed to be and stay what he was. But I wasn't allowed to be and stay what I was. Even if you cooked him you'd be cooking a rooster named Mister. But wasn't no way I'd ever be (Morrison, 1998., p. 72).

Even an animal was being treated better than him, therefore he was not an animal, he was worse than that. Moreover, he remembers being enslaved in Georgia doing “mule work in a quarry” (Morrison, 1998, p. 41) and at Sweet Home he was “working like an ass and living like a dog” (Morrison, 1998, p. 41).

Moreover, Paul D starts questioning Garner’s slavery, his slaves were not physically abused, or treated as animals, but they were treated as watchdogs and workhorses, meaning domestic animals.

However,

A truth that waved like a scarecrow in rye: they were only Sweet Home men at Sweet Home. One step off that ground and they were trespassers among the human race. Watchdogs without teeth; steer bulls without horns; gelded workhorses whose neigh and whinny could not be translated into a language responsible humans spoke. “they were only Sweet Home men at Sweet Home. One step off that ground and they were trespassers among the human race (Morrison, 1998, p. 125).

5.4 Beloved Film

Toni Morrison on the film Beloved:

My general feeling is that some books should not be made into films. Many of the books that I've read throughout my life have impacted me in such a way that films have not. I think that a book should only be adapted into a film if its message is something that should be shared with a larger audience. By this, I mean that I was happy to see "Beloved" made into a film since its subject matter is still very relevant in our society today, and I was hoping that it would provide a wake up call to those who continue to live in ignorance about the effects that it had on our society (Auwers and Lyman, 2003).

According to Beaulieu (2003) the film was released in 1998, even though, Oprah Winfrey, as soon as she read the book knew that she wanted to turn it into a film, it made ten years for the film to be released. The first problem was turning the novel into a script which was difficult because of the novel’s shifting time and place. Winfrey’s choice to direct the film was Jonathan Demme who agreed. Oprah was criticised for not choosing a black director. Oprah played the role of Sethe, Danny Glover the role of Paul D, Kimberly Elise played Denver and Thandie Newton played Beloved.

Beaulieu (2003) points out that the film’s reviews were mixed. Reviewers mostly believed that the film could be comprehended only by the people who had read the book. The actors Glover and Elise were praised for their performance. Oprah too, received positive reviews for her performance. However, Thandie’s interpretation was mixed. Critical responses ranged from those who found Newton’s “depiction of Beloved riveting, even brilliant, to those who found it bizarre and revolting. New Yorker reviewer David Denby unﬂatteringly compared Newton’s performance to Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist” (Beaulieu, 2003, p. 53).

The director stayed true to the novel; however, there are some differences between the novel and the film. Robinson and Fulkerson (2001) point out that some side stories are not depicted in the film, and for that reason the film can be confusing for the people who are not familiar with the book. For example, the film does not mention the idea of Paul D’s his heart being replaced with a tobacco tin. Furthermore, “red heart” is mentioned in the film when Beloved seduces Paul D, without any context.

Baby Suggs’s role in the film is omitted. There is no mentioning of the feast she had when Seth arrived, the jealousy of the community and the fact that the people did not warn Baby Suggs and Seth about the arrival of the Schoolteacher. Yet, Baby Suggs’ preaching in the Clearing is depicted perfectly. “The scene in which the people gather, the children laugh, the men dance, and the women weep is potent in its activity and noise, and it conveys the importance of healing,

community, and love even better than the book does” (Robinson and Fulkerson, 1999, p. 106).

Additionally, some of the characters are not mentioned in the film. For instance, Sixo, Paul A and Ella.

Despite of Oprah’s popularity, the film was not a success at the box office. According to film critic Stone “this movie was hobbled by creative pretensions, not subject matter” (Stone, 1999).

6 HOLLYWOOD’S DEPICTION OF SLAVERY

According to Lawrence (2008), since the motion picture started developing in late 1800s, African Americans were presented in a way that reflected their socio- political status in America. They were considered inferior by white population and were depicted as such in films.

According to Guerrero (1993), there are three phases of depiction of slavery in Hollywood. The first one starting with The Birth of a Nation (1915) and extends throughout thirties with “classic cinema” and films Jezebel (1938) and Gone With The Wind (1939). However, during and after World War II Hollywood’s plantation mythology underwent some changes in perception of slavery by softening supremacist perception of slavery which is evident in film such as Band of Angels (1957). By late 1960s, because of intense black political struggle for human rights, a sharp reversal of changes is evident in films such as Mandingo (1975) and Drum (1976).

D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, opening in 1915 and was adopted by Thomas Dixon’s novel The Clansman was Hollywood’s first feature length studio production. The novel was Dixon’s view, which he believed was accurate, of the South during the Reconstruction period. “His book stereotyped African Americans as wild, sex-starved beasts and glorified the actions of the Ku Klux 61

Klan, who were in his view the saviour of Southern whites tormented by black savages” (Lawrence, 2008, p. 1).

The film remains the most controversial films in America’s history because of its racism and anti-black depictions. It was full of “the traditional stereotypes of docile, loyal slaves, glad to be part of benign, paternal slave system; the film debut of the black as a brute and a vicious rapist of white women; and the story’s twisted interpretation of Reconstruction and celebration of Ku Klux Klan terrorism”(Guerrero, 1993, p. 13).

Despite the controversy surrounding the film, it became very popular and dangerous as well. Guerrero points out (1993) that it was dangerous because it was shown in the period when Jimmy Crow’s segregation was on the rise and the oppression against African Americans was at its peak. Because of the film’s glorification of Ku Klux Klan, the film contributed to expansion of the Klan and to the tolerance of the Klan’s violence. For example, in some towns before the film was showed, there would be a troop of horsemen wearing white sheets of the Ku Klux Klan, therefore, the African Americans had a reason to be afraid of fiction becoming a reality.”Significantly, Birth solidified the five major stereotypes that circumscribed black performers in Hollywood cinema—the noble, loyal manageable Toms, the clownish coons, the stoic, hefty mammy, the troubled, tragic mulatto, and the brutal black buck” (Lawrence, 2008, p. 3).

Guerrero (1993) notes that in 1937 the romantic melodrama Jezebel was released. The story is set in 1852 New Orleans and it is about a rebellious Miss Juli played by Jane Fonda. The film depicts a romanticized image of antebellum society. Slaves and slavery are depicted in stereotypical way while privileging the white planters. The role of slaves “are not so much dramatic roles as structured spaces. In the film and in the historical slave system black are considered utilitarian commodities. They stand silently fanning or waiting on the master class, with no thoughts or articulations of their own, their actions and lines coming entirely in response to white commands” (Guerrero, 1993, p. 24). Furthermore, there are scenes of happy, singing black servants. The same, Gone With The Wind (1939) 62

“shows slaves as well-treated, blindly cheerful “darkies” loyal to their benevolent masters. Slaves are portrayed as normal employees, are rewarded with presents like the master’s pocket watch if they’ve been appropriately loyal, and are allowed to scold the young mistress of the house as if they were a part of the family” (SparkNotes, 2013).

According to Guerrero (1993) with the release of these movies the plantation genre peaked in popularity. However, African Americans opposed the depiction of slaves and slavery in Gone with the Wind. The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) put the pressure on the producer who cut some of the offensive scenes from the film.

Guerrero (1993) continues that after the World War II, plantation genre rapidly declined. Hollywood was also undecided of how to portray the Old South experience in the plantation genre. Walt Disney’s Song of the South (1946) which was set in 1870s south, was condemned by African Americans for its biased depiction of slavery. The film stared James Basket in the role of Uncle Remus “fashioned as the kindly Tom” (Gabriel, 2013) and Hattie McDaniel in the role of joyful mammy. Guerrero (1993) points out The film became the most protested by sine The Birth of a Nation. Because of the protest against false depictions of slavery, films with nostalgic views on the South became rarer.

From the late 1940s to 1960s “African Americans were experiencing a rising sense of political consciousness and activism that would irrevocably alter their relationship to America, as well as alter America itself” (Guerrero, 1994, p. 29). Guerrero (1993) notes that with the raise of the civil movements, the protesters became focused on film industry and its depiction of African Americans. Besides the political movements there was the Black Arts Movement. The Movement brought together black writers, artists and intellectuals who were emphasizing slavery’s cruelty and black resistance to it.

In 1970 a new movement arose, the blaxploitation movement. Blaxploitation films are films:

made between 1970 and 1975, by both black and white film directors alike, to exploit the black film audience /..../ Blaxploitation films feature a black hero or heroine who is both socially and politically conscious. They also illustrate that blacks are not monolithic by depicting the films’ protagonists in the roles of police detectives, vigilantes, and pimps, among others. The characters are strong because they possess the ability to survive in and navigate the establishment while maintaining their blackness (Lawrence, 2008, p. 18).

Moreover, according to Lawrence (2009), blaxploitation films are usually set in black urban spaces such as Harlem and Oakland and they give a sense of authenticity. Moreover, they contain themes that address black experience in America. The protagonists are surrounded by other African American characters. Importantly, in these films the whites are often cast as villains. Guerrero (1993) notes that films such as Shaft (1971), Superfly (1972) and Sounder (1972) are films about black confrontation and victory over white oppression.

Film such as Mandingo (1975) “turned the old plantation epics on their heads, depicting slavery as brutal, the whites as functionally deranged /.../. Slavery now mimicked Hollywood caricatures of Black Power, projecting new stereotypes of black manhood into the past. Slave women escaped their Mammy roles only to become sexual props, decorating celluloid plantations in lurid and salacious imagery” (Gabriel, 2013). Mandingo is worth mentioning because of its reversed point of view on slavery. According to Guerrero

much in the way that the literary genre of slave narratives argued against slavery by graphically inscribing a catalogues of its brutalities and horrors, the first scene in Mandingo turns dominant cinema’s representational strategy on its head by depicting the ugly commercial transaction so central to the slave system; the buying and selling of human beings (Guerrero, 1993, p. 32).

Moreover, Guerrero (1993) claims that whites are now depicted as cruel slave owners and not as aristocratic ladies and gentlemen who have nothing to do with brutality of slave ownership. Slaves are shown of running away, having consciousness of their rights as humans. The film also breaks the last taboo of interracial sex.

With the end of blaxploitation slavery disappeared from Hollywood, however television made up for it with the miniseries Roots (1977). “Roots mirrored the attitudes of an emergent black middle class, providing a vision of African Americans as strong, moral, hard working and grounded in traditional family values. Sanitized and homogenized for mass consumption” (Gabriel, 2013).

Hollywood’s depiction of slavery continued with the film Glory (1989) which retells the story of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry which was one of the first African American regiments during the Civil War. Some historians say that the film did “did a credible job portraying the struggles of African-American soldiers during the Civil War” (Nittle, 2012), Leonard (2006) claims that the film “appears to tell a story about the African American community, it ultimately chronicles the heroism of white masculinity as the source of redemption and salvation for the black community” (Leonard, 2006, p. 6). The same, Amistad (1991) which portray a rebellion of the slaves on a ship bound form Cuba to America, is a film that “is revised to extol American patriotism and memorialize great white men” (Gabriel, 2013).

The newest films about slavery are Lincoln (2012) and Django Unchained (2012), the latter is analysed in the next chapter. Lincoln, however, is again a film that “manages to make itself almost completely about great white men. Slavery here is a thing, both debated and settled by important white men while blacks await deliverance. Who comes out on top by the film’s end? America, of course” (Gabriel, 2013).

7 DJANGO UNCHAINED

Django Unchained was directed and written by Quentin Tarantino whose other known films include Inglorious Bastards (2009), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), Jackie Brown (1997) and Pulp Fiction (1994). What these films have in common? As Russell (2007) claims, in all of Tarantino’s films something goes wrong in the life of some violent, cruel man, because of his intentional actions. “The second thing that these films have in common is that brutal and violent behaviour ensues as a result of what goes awry in the lives of the violent men” (Russel, 2007, p. 4). Moreover, in Tarantino’s films these violent men usually get what they deserve.

So, violence is common to all of Tarantino’s films. In 1993 he told the Newsday

Violence is just one of many things you can do in movies,” People ask me, 'Where does all this violence come from in your movies?' I say, 'Where does all this dancing come from in Stanley Donen movies?' If you ask me how I feel about violence in real life, well, I have a lot of feelings about it. It's one of the worst aspects of America. In movies, violence is cool. I like it.” moreover, he told Orland Sentinel in 1994:“I have no problem with screen violence at all,'' he said, ''but I have a big problem with real-life violence (Zuckerman, 2013).

The film Django Unchained takes place in Antebellum South two years before the Civil war. It is a spaghetti western which is a sub-genre of Western films emerging in the 1960s. According to Nudge (2013) they were produced in Europe, mostly by Italian studios (that is why they are called spaghetti western), due to lower costs of production. One of the most violent spaghetti western, which was banned in several countries, was Sergio Corbucci’s Django. Corbucci’s film was Tarantino’s inspiration for Django Unchained. “As he [Tarantino] listened to the Corbucci soundtracks in his hotel room in Tokyo, he had an epiphany: What would happen if a slave became a bounty hunter? He started writing, and that idea blossomed into Django Unchained” (Hirschberg, 2013).

Because Django Unchained is a spaghetti western and it is directed by Tarantino it is naturally full of violence, some say it is too violent. However, according to Tarantino

What happened during slavery times is a thousand times worse than [what] I show," So if I were to show it a thousand times worse, to me, that wouldn't be exploitative, that would just be how it is. If you can't take it, you can't take it ... Now, I wasn't trying to do a Schindler's List you-are-there-under-the-barbed-wire-of-Auschwitz. I wanted the film to be more entertaining than that. ... But there's two types of violence in this film: There's the brutal reality that slaves lived under for ... 245 years, and then there's the violence of Django's retribution. And that's movie violence, and that's fun and that's cool, and that's really enjoyable and kind of what you're waiting for (Fresh Air Interview, 2013).

Skinner (2013) point out that Django Unchained is full of references to other films. From spaghetti westerns such as Corbucci’s Django, Minnesota Clay and The Great Silence (Skinner, 2013). Tarantino also makes fun of films such as The Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind.

Django is a spaghetti western but it is also, according to Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Professor at Harvard University and a scholar of slavery “a postmodern, slave- narrative Western” (Henry Louis Gates Jr, 2012) and “one of the first -- if not the first -- postmodern feature films about the enslavement of our African-American ancestors” (Henry Louis, 2013). Additionally, Tarantino claims his film to have slave narrative characteristics ”I am taking the story of a slave narrative and blowing it up to folkloric proportions and to operatic proportions” (Palmer, 2012).

The film tells a story of slave named Django who, in exchange for freedom, helps a German bounty hunter Dr. Schulz to capture Brittle brothers (a gang of criminals). When they manage to do that, Django becomes a free man and decides

to find his enslaved wife Broomhilda and Dr. Schultz decides to help him. The film includes themes of slavery, revenge and love.

7.1 Plot and Analysis

The opening scene shows chained and barefoot slaves, led by two slaveholders – Ace and Dicky Speck. We can tell that the slaves have been whipped, because of the scars on their backs. One of them is Django, the main character. The night comes and the slaves shiver because they are cold. Suddenly a light appears and a man comes from the woods. He politely introduces himself as Dr. King Schultz, he also introduces his horse Fritz who, by the sound of his name, bows his head. The Speck brothers are noticeably irritated by the stranger and ask him what does he want. Dr. Schultz wants a slave who was a resident of Carrucan Plantation. The interesting thing about this scene is that Dr. Schultz is German and very articulate, however the Speck brothers do not understand him;”speak English” (Tarantino, 2012) one of the brother says to him more than once. When Django admits that he was enslaved in Carrucan Plantation, Dr. Shultz wants to know if Django could identify the Brittle brothers. Django’s answer is affirmative and now Schultz wants to purchase him. However, the Speck brothers are not interested and getting more and more irritated. The role of Ace Speck is being played by an actor James Remar, who also plays another role in this film. Ace aims a rifle at Schultz who throws the lantern at the ground and shooting one of the brothers in the face and kills the horse of the other brother, both falling on the ground.

Schultz looks for the key and unlocks Django. Then Schultz throws the key to the other slaves. Django and Schultz get on their horses and ride into the night. The next morning they arrive to Daughtrey, Texas. The whole town is staring at them because they have never seen an African American on a horse. From the events that follow, we find out that Schultz is a bounty hunter and he is after the Brittle brothers, so he needs Django’s help because he knows what they look like. When they leave Daughtrey, after Schultz kills a wanted criminal, Django tells him that the wants to find his wife Broomhilda and buy her freedom. Before they head of

to find the Brittle brothers, Schultz and Django go to a store where they sell servant outfits and Schultz tells Django to pick his own clothes.

In the next scene we see Dr. Shultz and Django arriving at the plantation of Spencer Bennet aka Big Daddy. Django wearing a blue suit for which many claim that it reminds of Blue Boy Fauntleroy suit. As Sharen Davis, a costume designer who worked on the film, pointed out,

It’s quite accurate for a valet outfit. Not colour, per se, but valets did wear that. It’s not an exact copy of the ‘Blue Boy’ Fauntleroy suit (painting by Gainsborough), but it just pops off the screen. At first Quentin thought it wasn’t bright enough and I thought “are you kidding? He is a moving target! (Laverty, 2013).

Spencer does not like the idea that an African American rides on a horse, however, Schultz explains to him that Django is a free man and he can do whatever he wants. When Schultz tells Spencer that they came to buy a slave girl, he replies:”Well what if I say, I don't like you, or your fancy pants. n*****, and I wouldn' sell you a tinkers damn - what'cha gotta say about that?” (Tarantino, 2012). He quickly changes his tune when Schultz replies:” I have five thousand things I might say, that could change your mind” (Tarantino, 2012). Spencer invites Schultz for a drink and orders one of the slave girls to show Django around the plantation. While the girl shows Django around, he asks her whether she knows three overseers, brothers by the name of Brittle. She does not, however, there are other three brothers working in the plantation by the name of Shaffer. She points them out and Django realizes those are the brothers he and Schultz are looking for. We see a flashback of Django’s wife being whipped by John, one of the brothers, because she and Django tried to escape from him, and Django has to watch her being tortured. Django begs for them to stop and Big John Brittle replies:”I like the way you beg, boy” (Tarantino, 2012).

Back to the present, Django asks the girl to show him where the other two brothers are. John is just about to whip a girl and now the time for Django’s

retribution has arrived. Without hesitation Django shoots him. Furthermore, Django picks the whip, starts whipping Roger, another Brittle brother, and finishes him of by shooting him several times. When Shultz arrives at the scene he, form the distance, kills Eliss, the third brother. In this scene there is an important image of bloody cotton. When Eliss is shot, his blood is spattered on white cotton. The image is symbolic because the cotton industry in fact was bloody

Of course, Spencer is furious because a black man killed two white men, but because all three brothers are wanted by the authorities, he must let Django and Schultz go. He warns them though that they will never make it out of the country alive.

The next scene is one of the most memorable and funny in the film. It makes fun of the Ku Klux Klan, which at that time was not formed, and to Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915) in which Griffith praised the Klan. Moreover, the music in this scene is the music form The Birth of a Nation. Tarantino said that he made that on purpose and that he is obsessed with The Birth of a Nation because

I think it gave rebirth to the Klan and all the blood that that was spilled throughout -- until the early '60s, practically. I think that both Rev. Thomas Dixon Jr. and D.W. Griffith, if they were held by Nuremberg Laws, they would be guilty of war crimes for making that movie because of what they created there (Henry Louis Gates, 2012).

In this scene, Bennet leads a group of white men on horses wearing hoods. Bennet wants to kill Django and Schultz, but the conversation between the men turns into a funny discussion about the holes in the hoods because they are not made properly and nobody can see. However, Bonnet demands that the hoods stay. The men attack Schultz’s carriage, but he and Django set them up. They observe from the distance and begin to shoot.

After a conversation Django and Schultz decide to team up. Django promises to help Shultz with the bounty hunting through the winter and Shultz promises he 70

will help Django to find his wife. Shultz starts training Django for bounty hunting business. Django’s first victim is Smitty Bacall. Shultz gives the handbill to Django, for good luck, which later on seems to be lucky indeed.

Shultz initially is some sort of a mentor to Django. “The initial mentor relationship quickly transforms into a partnership, with the men developing a strong bond based on mutual admiration” (Caldwell, 2013).

“And after a very cold and very profitable winter, Django and Dr. Schultz came down from the mountains and headed for ... Mississippi” (Tarantino, 2012) the sign says. The scrolling of the “Mississippi” text is similar to the opening of Gone with the Wind film. However, Gone With the Wind portrays an idyllic South, Tarantino, on the other hand, shows enchained slaves in mud. Django and Schultz walk into a record office where they find the name of the man who owns Broomhilda. It is a man named Calvin Candie who owns a plantation called Candyland. Django and Schultz make a plan of how they are going to get Broomhilda. Because Candie is a fan of Mandingo fights (a fight of two slaves for white men’s entertainment), Schultz and Django are going to pretend that Django is a Mandingo expert and Schultz is a buyer from Dusseldorf interested in buying a slave from Candy.

They arrive at the Cleopatra Club. The door is opened by a black girl wearing a French made costume. Leo Moguy, Candie’s lawyer, descends from the stairs and greets Django and Schultz. The latter asks Moguy if there is anything he should know about Candie. Moguy says he if a Francophile. However, when Schultz starts speaking French, Moguy warns him that Candie does not speak French, and he could embarrass him by speaking the language. When they enter the room, there are two Mandingos fighting. Candy and an Italian man named Amerigo Vassepi are watching the fight. Without being introduced, Candy asks Shultz why he is interested in the fights. He replies that it seems fun. Candie shakes hands with Schultz and Django is escorted to the bar. The scene of two slaves fighting is very brutal. They have to fight until one of them dies. Blood is everywhere, there is a sound of breaking bones and the white men are having a great time, except for 71

the Italian whose slave is losing the fight and Schultz who is pretending to be amused. Candie gives his slave a hammer and orders him to kill the men he is fighting, he obliges.

The Italian man goes to the bar, where Django is having his drink. Two Djangos are now together in the same scene. The actor playing the Amerigo Vassepi is Franco Nero. He played Django in Corbucci’s version. Candie is not interested in selling his Mandingos until he hears the magical words twelve thousand dollars. Candie:”gentlemen you had my curiosity, now you have my attention” (Tarantino, 2012).

The next morning they are all headed to Candyland (Django, Schultz, Candie, Moguy, five slaves and some of other Candie’s entourage). Shultz, Candie and Moguy, ride in a carriage, other whites and Django on horses, slaves by foot. Django is dressed like a cowboy and wearing sunglasses which are “The replicas of Charles Bronson’s in The White Buffalo. Quentin didn’t actually know about them; the guy who made them told me [the costume designer] he made them for Charles Bronson” (Laventry, 2013).

The following scene is one of, if not the most brutal in the film. They arrive at a bunkhouse of trackers (they track down slaves). A slave named D’Artagnan is up in the tree, surrounded by dogs. He tells Candie that he cannot fight anymore. However, for Candie this is business. He invested five-hundred dollars in the slave who has fought three fights, and two remain. Candie wants reimbursement. Shultz can stand the torture and offers five hundred dollars for the slave, however, Django stops him because he knows by being sympathetic to the slaves they can be quickly exposed. The dogs are released and they tear the slave apart while everybody is watching. Shultz is visibly upset, other slaves as well, because they know the same could happen to them. It is interesting that despite the fact that Django is aware that being a black slave trader is worse than being a white one, however, he follows the plan. It is Schultz who gets carried away by his emotions and he is to emphatic to all the slave mistreats.

“When depicting the type of daily brutality that black slaves experienced /.../ Tarantino does not deliver violence as spectacle. Instead he presents violence as vicious, cruel, sadistic, cowardly and devastating” (Caldwell, 2013).

They arrive at Candyland. On the porch is Steven, Candie’s slave servant and his go-to man. Schultz gets right to business and starts asking questions in order to find out where Broomhilda is. She is the only slave who speaks German; that is how they know that she is at Candyland. Shultz asks Candie to be introduced to her; however, according to Steven she is in “the hot box.” Candie orders them to take her out and that is what they do. Django sees his wife after a very long time.

In the evening Broomhilda is escorted to Shultz’s bedroom, where she is reunited with Django. During dinner, Stephen notices that Django and Broomhilda know each other and also realises what Django and Schultz are up to. As a loyal servant he tells that to his master. Candie returns to the dinner table with a box. He opens it and he takes a scull of his father’s servant out of it. He has a speech about Africans having differently developed brains, the centre for submissiveness being bigger. He lets Django and Schultz know that he figured out their plan and he demands twelve thousand dollars for Broomhilda or he will smash her skull with a hammer. For the first time, Django and Schultz are not in control anymore.

Of course Schultz buys Broomhilda and Candie signs the bill of sale. Schultz seems very distracted, haunted by what he has seen on his way to Candyland. He is very upset and asks Candie’s sister Lara who is playing Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” to stop. He enters Candie’s library and the Candie follows him. Schultz points out that he Candie must be an Alexander Duma’s admirer because he named one of his slaves after his character. Candie replies;”you doubt he’d approve? /..../ Soft hearted Frenchy” (Tarantino, 2012). Shultz tells him that Duma is black.

Shultz puts the papers in his pocket and wants to leave; however, Candie does not want to give him the satisfaction and wants to shake hands with Schultz. Schultz is not willing to do that and after a long negotiation it seems as though Shultz will

give in. Now, here is where Tarantino’s action reality starts. Instead of shaking Candie’s hand, Schultz pulls out a gun and kills Candie. Shultz is shot by one of Candie’s men and Django starts shooting everybody in the house. Blood is everywhere; you hear the screams of wounded men. However, Django finds himself in a position he cannot win. The others capture Broomhilda and now he has to surrender or they will kill Broomhilda.

Django is hanged naked from the ceiling. A man named Ace Woody is just about to cut off Django’s genitalia when Stephen walks in and tells him that he has been sold to a mining company.

Django is now transported by three white men; Floyd, Roy and Jano, and one of them played by Tarantino himself. There are also three other slaves being transported, the same who travelled to Candyland before. Django manages to trick the white men by saying that he is not a slave but a bounty hunter and he could help them get eleven thousand dollars if they caught the Smitty Baccal gang who are being sought by the authorities. Django claims that they are hiding at Candyland. He takes Smitty Bacall’s handbill from his pocket and gives it to Jano. If they give him a pistol and a horse, he says, he will point the criminals to them. Roy comes up to the other slaves in a cage and asks them what they know about Django. Everything they say supports Django’s argument. The white men set Django loose and give him a pistol. He shoots all the white men, takes a horse, and the dynamite. He also frees the horse by taking his saddle which symbolises Django’s freedom. Now his personal vengeance starts. First, he arrives at the bunkhouse where he kills all the trackers, then he heads to Candyland where he saves Broomhilda. At the end he heads for the house. Here, he is confronted by Candie’s closest collaborators, including Steven. Django is wearing Candie’s clothes and retribution follows.

In the final scene the Candyland goes up in flames, and Django and Broomhilda ride away into the night.

7.2 Characters

7.2.1 Django

Django Unchained is a story of Django’s journey and transformation from slavery to freedom and his revenge to white slaveholders. Furthermore, he is “a knight in shining armour” trying to rescue his lady. Also important, as Dr. Boyce Watkins claims, is that ”Django, played by Jamie Foxx, is one of the few serious black heroes ever produced by Hollywood, a place that tends to put black people in a really degrading box. Django wasn’t just a sidekick or comedic buffoon /..../ Django was simply a strong, brave, highly-skilled black man who loved his wife enough to put his life on the line to save her” (Watkins, 2012). Tarantino’s explanation of Django: ”I guess the reason that actually made me put pen to paper was to give black American males a Western hero, give them a cool folkloric hero that could actually be empowering and actually pay back blood for blood” (Sims, 2013).

If one compares Django from the beginning of the film and the Django at the end, it is like they are completely different people. In the first scenes Django is a slave, wearing rags, no shoes he is not very articulate and he cannot read. When Schultz writes his name in the bill of sale and asks him if the D is silent, Django does not understand what that means. Moreover, he does not understand what the word positive means. His transformation begins when Schultz, who in a way becomes his teacher, unchains him and he gets on a horse. Furthermore, it is the outfit which presents not just his physical transformation but also a shift in personality.

One of his first physical transformations is his blue costume. Even the fact that he was able to pick his own clothes was a surprise to him. Wearing that outfit and strutting on a horse is something that was unimaginable not just to white people but African Americans as well. It is in that outfit that he revenges himself on his former master, whips him in the same way he whipped Django’s wife and kills him. This moment presents the beginning of Django’s retribution.

“Django goes from the slave who can barely read a handbill out loud, to the Spaghetti Western hero that tricks his white imprisoners with his eloquent persuasion” (Thomas, 2013).

Throughout the film Django is constantly thinking about his wife and is determine to rescue her. Even though, Schultz frees Django and he could easily go to North where slavery was abolished, he wants to find his wife. Him and Schultz go on a rescue mission and this time Django has to pretend to be a black slaver, ”You want me to play a black slaver? There ain't nothin lower then a black slaver. Black slavers are lower then head house n*****, and buddy, that's pretty f****** low” (Tarantino, 2012).

He plays his role perfectly. When faced with Candie and his bunch, Django is not a person he was in the first scene. Now he seems fearless and does not watch what he says. When Moguy tells Schultz that he went to boarding school with Calvin’s father, Django remarks:”One could almost say, you a n*****” (Tarantino, 2012). This was a bold thing to say as an African American to a person who supports slavery. Later on, he adds to Candie’s bodyguard:”Even I know you take your hat off indoors, white boy” (Tarantino, 2012). On the way to Candyland he lets all the slaves know:”You n****** gonna understand something about me! I'm worse than any of these white men here! You get the molasses out your ass, and you keep your goddamn eyeballs off me” (Tarantino, 2012). But his performance as a black slaver is tested just before d’Artagnan is fed to the dogs. By wanting to stop that he would give himself away. He keeps his poker face and dogs are released. However, that poker face is gone when they arrive at Candyland and he sees his wife. Everything goes wrong after that point.

After Shultz’s death comes the second stage of his retribution.

Django has to serve several purposes. He has to convince in the gradual liberation of a slave encountering the world for the first time as a free man. He has to serve as an embodiment of Siegfried which means he has to slay the Dragon and save the girl, quite a restrictive destiny for a

Tarantino film. He also has to assume the false identity of a black slaver for a crucial stretch of the film, thereby complicating his audience empathy and the arc of his development (Wordpress blogs, 2013).

7.2.2 King Schultz

Django Unchained is just as much about Schultz as it is about Django. He is a German bounty hunter who frees Django and helps him to find his wife. Schultz is played by the brilliant Christoph Waltz who won an Oscars for this role. Waltz describes his character saying:

yeah, he's a bounty hunter, which just means lethal killer, but he still has a view of the world that gives every human being the same chance and the same rights /..../ The fact that this foreigner and stranger with those convictions is inserted into a world that contradicts his point of view so fundamentally, it makes for fabulous drama (Strauss, 2012).

When we first meet Schultz he is very articulate and polite, we cannot say the same for the Speck brothers. However, Schultz shows his other side by pulling of his pistol, which he does in a collected manner, and kills one of the Speck brothers. It is clear from the beginning that he is not keen on slavery or even very familiar with it. When he and Django arrive to Daughtery, Shultz is very confident, like there is nothing unusual about the scene – a white and black man riding on a horse like two cowboys. Schultz asks Django;”What’s everybody staring at” /..../ What's this bizarre obsession they have with you not riding horses” (Tarantino, 2012).

Shultz finds himself in a tricky situation ”On one hand, I despise slavery. On the other hand, I need your help, and if you're not in a position to refuse, all the better. So for the time being, I'm going to make this slave malarkey work to my benefit. Still... having said that, ... I feel guilty” (Tarantino, 2012). However, when Django fulfils his promise Shultz volunteers to help him find his wife. Schultz teaches Django how to handle weapons and turns him into a bounty hunter. Shultz is responsible for Django’s transformation. And they make a great duo. On one 77

hand, Shultz is a voice of reason, for example when Django is playing the role of a black slaver and he is too cruel to other slaves. On the other hand, Django does not succumb to his feelings as Shultz does when he almost ruins their cover.

Shultz is very collected when faced with criminals whom he is after. He has no problem killing a man in front of his son (Django is the one who actually does that) but he hesitates and Shultz encourages him to pull the trigger by saying:”This is what I do. I kill people, and sell their corpses for cash. His corpse is worth seven thousand dollars. Now quit your pussyfootin’ and shoot him” (Tarantino, 2012).

When Django and Shultz go on the rescue mission, Shultz too is playing a role. A role of a German who is interested in Mandingo fights and wants to buy a slave from Calvin Candie. When he meets Candie, Shultz is very polite as ever and a bit ironic, however, it becomes extremely difficult for him to stay in his role. It is because he meets evil in person. For the first time he whiteness what slavery is really about. From Mandingo fights which he can barely watch, to the worst scene ever, the dogs killing a slave. He is noticeably upset by the scene unwinding in front of his eyes. Even Candie notices it but as Django puts it:” Well, him bein' German an' all, I'm a little more use to American's the he is” (Tarantino, 2012). According to Tarantino:

the teacher-student relationship shifts once they get into Mississippi. Because Django knows exactly this world and understands it. And Schultz is coming from almost a 21st-century perspective. He understands, intellectually, slavery, but he's never seen the everyday horrors and degradation of it (Henry Louis Gates, 2012).

When their cover is blown, all the atrocities he has witnessed flash in front of his eyes. For the first time he cannot keep his calmness and gets very upset by the sound of Beethoven’s “Für Elise” and shouts: ”Stop playing Beethoven” (Tarantino, 2012). “The idea that one of the high points of modern civilization can co-exist with such depravity is intolerable to him” (Bertsch, 2013).

Shultz is the only white person in the film portrayed as a positive character. Besides the fact that his English is better than that of other whites in the film, he is also more intelligent. For example, Schultz assumes that because Candie named one of the slaves (d’Artagnan) after Alexander Dumas’ character, and because his library if full of Dumas’ books, Candie is a fan of his. Schultz shocks Candie that Dumas is black.

When Candie wants to shake hands with Schultz he cannot give him the satisfaction. Shaking hands is a sign of respect, and Schultz has none for Candie. When it looks like Schultz is about to give in, he reaches for the gun ”I couldn’t resist” (Tarantino, 2012) and kills Candie. According to Tarantino the main reason Shultz sacrifices his life is because ”he had to put on this facade in dealing with this inhuman depravity that he's witnessing. Now that he's on the other side of it, it's all raining down on him /..../ I think he's actually realizing inadvertently he caused d'Artagnan's death” (Henry Louis, Gates, Jr., 2012).

7.2.3 Calvin Candie

Calvin Candie owns forth biggest plantation in Mississippi named Candyland. For his entertainment he arranges Mandingo fights. Furthermore, he is the main villain in the film, an obvious racist. He is played by remarkable Leonardo DiCaprio, who in the opinions of many deserves an Oscar for this role. According to DiCaprio:

He's the most deplorable human being I've ever read in a screenplay in my life, he was rotting from the inside. He was, you know, a young Louis the XIV that had been brought into a world of entitlement and lived his life ... essentially owning other people (Fashingbauer Cooper, 2012).

Before we actually get to see Candie, his lawyer describes him as a Francophile, but he does not speak a word of French and he does not know that Alexandre Dumas is black which means he does not really know the French culture. When Schultz and Django are introduced he is showing his back and does not spend any 79

time on pleasantry and gets straight to the point. Schultz’s answer to why he wants to get in the Mandingo business ,“the awful truth. I’m [Schultz] bored, and it seems like a good bit of fun” (Tarantino, 2012), satisfies him right away. For Candie the fight of two slaves till death is also considered entertainment. It is evident from the first scenes he is not a guy you would want to mess with. He looks like a gentlemen on the outside but he is rotten on the inside. He is not interested in selling his slaves to Shultz until he offers him a ridiculously high amount of money. Now he is ready to even put up with a free slave.

Candie is ruthless, money driven individual who is not ready to forgive. When D’Artagnan begs that he cannot fight any more Candie replies:”Now now, no beggin', no playin' on my heart” (Tarantino, 2012) which is ironic because he has no heart. Because D’Artganan is a bad investment he has to get rid of him and he does that in front of his new investors - Django and Schultz. He puts them to a test by releasing bloodthirsty dogs on the poor helpless slave and closely watches Django’s reaction.

Interestingly, in his interview with Henry Louis Gates Jr., (2012), Tarantino claims that in other circumstances Candie would not have done that but he wants to test Django and Schultz.

Candie does not notice anything strange about his guests; it is Steven who realises what Django and Schultz are after, which is ironic considering Candie believes African Americans are not as intelligent as the whites.

Now, Candie gives his speech on phrenology. He walks into the dining room with a skull, his attitude completely different. He explains that the scull belongs to his father’s servant who shaved him every day and he wonders why he never cut his throat. “The science of phrenology is crucial to understanding the separation of our two species. And the scull of the African here? The area associated with submissiveness is larger than in any human or any other sub-human species on the planet Earth” (Tarantino, 2012). We know all along that Candie is racist. From the Mandingo fights to addressing his slaves as “boys”, this is how masters usually

address their dogs; he lets his slaves know who is the boss. However, with the speech on phrenology he explains why he believes slavery is just.

Until this point Candie himself has not physically hurt anyone, he just gave orders, but now he is willing to crush Broomhilda’s scull unless Shultz pays the the promised amount, which he does. Despite the fact that he got an absurd amount of money for a slave who was not worth that much, he is still not satisfied because he knows that Django and Schultz got what they wanted. He wants to shake Schultz’s hand and that costs him his life.

7.2.4 Stephen

Stephen is Calvin Candie’s house slave who also served his father and he is Candie’s right hand. He is played by Samuel L. Jackson, who has worked with Tarantino on several films. Jackson on his character:

I don't think there's any question Stephen is one of the most despised Negroes in cinematic history. He's unapologetically menacing. He's the power behind the throne. He's the Dick Cheney of Candyland. But I also understand his position. He doesn't want to upset the apple cart. On the plantation, he can function like a free man. But he goes 75 miles away and he's just an ordinary slave (Zeitchik, 2012).

When we first see Stephen, it is evident that he and Candie do not have a typical master-slave relationship. When Candie asks Stephen if he missed him, Stephen replies:”Yeah, I miss you like I miss a rock in my shoe. Like I said, who's this n*****, up on that nag” (Tarantino, 2012). This is definitely not the way a slave should speak to the master. However, Stephen is not an ordinary slave. Actually he does not consider himself one and seems quite content with his situation because in a way he is a black slaver. If slaves in the house misbehave it is Steven who decides what their punishment should be. For example, because Broomhilda tried to escape it was Stephen who ordered for her to be locked in the hot box.

Samuel L. Jackson agrees

Slavery has been in effect, more or less, for 150 years before you meet him. And as far as he's concerned, it's going to be in effect for 150 more. He lives a comfortable life. Somebody has to run the plantation. Stephen does that. He writes the cheques, he makes sure people do their jobs… Stephen makes sure those things happen so that the plantation continues to run (Mottram, 2013).

Stephen is no fool and quickly realises that there is something peculiar about their guests. He is the one who finds out Schulz’s and Django’s plan and points it out to Candie. The scene in the library shows how much Candie is dependent upon Stephen. “Stephen is the example of the calculating, critical thinking slave who learns/masters the plantation system/culture and manipulates it to his good fortune regardless of whom he must hurt” (McInnis, 2013).

7.2.5 Broomhilda

Broomhilda is Django’s wife. She was brought up in a German household and she speaks German. The story revolves around Django’s and Schultz’s search for her. Broomhilda is played by Kerry Washington and she is not Tarantino’s typical female character. Tarantino:” 'I would think that from the man that made 'Kill Bill' [you] would like to see the black heroine kicking ass. This story to me there is an aspect of Broomhilda is a princess in exile” (Ellwood, 2012).

Broomhilda is not the film’s central character. It is true that the story is all about Django rescuing his wife, however more than the half of the film; Broomhilda is just in Django’s head. On one hand, she is portrayed as a damsel in distress; on the other hand, she is not just passively waiting to be rescued. For example, when Django and Schultz arrive, we find out she tried to escape.

Kerry Washington on her character: 82

There are two dynamics for me that are really interesting about this character. One, that she’s a fighter, she’s a runaway …The other thing is I think she is a little bit of a princess in a castle, a little bit of a damsel in distress, and that was exciting for me because as black women we really weren’t allowed that fantasy. Because of how our men were treated and how our families were torn apart we were never made to believe that our men could protect us and rescue us. That element of being a damsel in distress is interesting and important (Morrales, 2012).

7.3 Music

Tarantino is known for using already existent music in his films instead of hiring a composer or an artist to create original music for the film. This time he made an exception. Yes, he also included tracks from other films; however, he went to artists such as Rick Ross and John Legend who made original music for the film. Music genre in the film varies from country, soul and even rap.

Tarantino on Django’s soundtrack; ”It’s a pretty eclectic soundtrack as [are] most of my soundtracks. This one in particular, though, is a neat mix of old school songs, spaghetti western soundtrack pieces, and some new music, which is actually a very first for me” (Lewis, 2012).

In order to be aware that Django is a spaghetti western (besides the costumes) Tarantino took most of the music in the film from American Westerns and Italian spaghetti western from the 60s. For example, the film opens with the song titled “Django” which is taken form Sergio Corbucci’s original Django. The song is sung by a singer whose voice sounds like Elvis Presley’s.

“When I [Quentin Tarantino] came up with the idea to do Django Unchained, I knew it was imperative that I open it with this song as a big opening credit sequence. Because basically this movie is done in the style of a spaghetti western, and any spaghetti western worth its salt has a big opening credit sequence. In fact, if it doesn’t, I don’t really want to see it” (Lewis, 2012). 83

However, as Jagernauth (2012) points out, this is not the only track taken from Corbucci’s film. When Django says goodbye to Schultz for the last time and rescues Broomhilda, “Un Monumento” from Corbussi’s Hellbenders is playing. The song was composed by the man whose name comes up many times on the track list. It is Italian composer Ennio Morricone. There are two other sounds Morricone created for Clint Eastwood’s Two Mules for Sister Sarah which Tarantino used in Django. Moreover, Morricone composed an original ballad for Django titled “Ancora Qui” which plays before Broomhilda enters Shultz’s room at the Candyland estate.

Not all “old school” songs are taken from the westerns. For example, there is Jim Croce’s folk song “I’ve Got a Name” when Django becomes a free man and makes a deal with Schultz of becoming a bounty hunter. According to Rosen, “it is a signature Tarantino trick: he excavates a pop artefact widely maligned as trash, championes its coolness and reveals its beauty” (Rosen, 2013). Furthermore, James Brown’s “Payback” is included in the scene when Django surrenders to Candie’s men and Johnny Cash’s “Ain’t No Grave” is playing when Django is taken by the mining company.

Original songs in the film are part of hip-hop and soul genre and are not something you would expect in a spaghetti western. The first original song comes up while Django is having flashback of his wife being beaten. It is a “neosoul ballad, full of suffering and resolve” (Rosen, 2013) titled “Freedom”. The next song is a rap song. “100 Black Coffins” performed by Rick Ross and produced by Jamie Fox who plays Django. It is a “a toe-tapping rap with a Morricone-esque whistling hook backed up by an ominous male choir” (Radford, 2013). There is another rap song in the film. Tupac’s “Untouchable” played during Django’s combat with Candie’s men, which makes audiences believe they are watching a gangster film rather than a western. Another original song for the film is John Legend’s “Who Did This to You”. John Legend said, “It's about retribution, it's about avenging your lover's honor, it's about a desire to find your love and exact retribution on whoever harmed her, which obviously fits perfectly with the plot of Django” (Syckle, 2012). 84

According to historian Ramey Berry

Tarantino creates an anachronistic moment with the soundtrack by allowing the audience to escape the past and experience the film through the eyes of the present /..../ The music also facilitated Foxx’s character as a gangsta while at the same time highlighted his modern verbal swagger in an effort to appeal to members of the Hip Hop, X and Y generations (Ramey Berry, 2013).

8 DEPICTION OF SLAVERY IN DJANGO UNCHAINED

Quentin Tarantino: “When slave narratives are done on film, they tend to be historical with a capital H, with an arms-length quality to them. I wanted to break that history-under-glass aspect, I wanted to throw a rock through that glass and shatter it for all times, and take you into it” (Pulver, 2012).

The film received many positive as well as negative criticism. The latter mostly referring to the fact that Tarantino is mocking slavery and that some scenes are too violent. An African American director Spike Lee responded that “American slavery was not a Sergio Leone spaghetti western. It was a holocaust. My ancestors are slaves. Stolen from Africa. I will Honour them” (Child, 2013). Spike Lee’s accusations are not to be taken seriously because he did not see the film and it is a known fact that he and Tarantino had disputes in the past. But what do historians have to say about slavery in Django?

Firstly, Django is freed by Shultz and is able to ride a horse but everybody seems surprised. According to Bryant (2000) it was illegal in some cases for slaves to ride horses because the slaveholders feared they would run away. However, there were black horsemen. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. points out, George Washington’s slave and personal attendant William “Billy” Lee was a great horseman, riding

behind his master (Henry Louis Gates Jr., 2013). Moreover, Django is allowed to have dinner with slaveholder’s family. In reality that would never happened.

According to historian Kelly (2013) horrors of slavery such as whipping, family separations and auctions did take place during the slavery. Purchased slaves then many times had to walk thousands of miles shackled to one another. Iron bits were inserted in their mouths and iron collars were used to punish and torture slaves. Moreover, according to Bryan (2013) it is impossible to say whether Mandingo fights actually took place, but there is no documented evidence of that happening. Edna Greene Medford, Professor and chairperson of the history department at Howard University in Washington, D.C., told to Nextmovie.com:

My area of expertise is slavery, Civil War, and reconstruction and I have never encountered something like that,” said Professor Medford. “It was rumored to have occurred. I don’t know that it was called Mandingo Fighting, however, but there were all sorts of things going on in the South pitting people against one another. To the death, I’ve never encountered anything like that, no. That doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen in some backwater area, but I’ve never seen any evidence of it (Evry, 2012).

It is possible that Tarantino got the idea from the film Mandingo (1975) which he praised by saying that it is “one of the few big budget exploitation pictures made by a studio” (Evry, 2012). Medford explained that Mandingo refers to an ethnic group Mandinka “but it has also come to personify the very powerful enslaved man who’s rather ferocious. It’s equivalent to ‘the big black buck,’ it’s more of a recent term” (Evry, 2012). The same, the scene where a slave is being torn apart by the dogs was part of reality. In an interview with Tarantino, Henry Louis Gates Jr., claims that the French used the dogs in Haiti revolution (Henry Louis Gates Jr., 2012,). Tarantino continues, ”Oh, yeah. They get these vicious dogs when they’re just little puppies. Have black slaves beat them and torture them and withhold food from them, so those dogs got to fixate on black skin as an enemy” (Henry Louis Gates Jr., 2012). Moreover, David Doddington (2012) claims that 86

dogs played an important role in slavery and quotes a slaveholder Bennett B. Harrow from Luisiana: ”hunting Ruffins Boy Henry, came across Williams runaway caught him dogs nearly et his legs off, near killing him” (Doddington, 2012).

In one of the scenes Candie wonders: ”I spent my whole life here right here in Candyland, surrounded by black faces. And seeing them every day, day in day out, I only had one question. Why don’t they kill us?” (Tarantino, 2012). The truth is, slaves rebelled against their masters many times. “The slaveholding class existed in a state of constant paranoia about slave rebellions, escapes, and a litany of more subtle attempts to undermine the institution” (Cobb, 2013). As Bryan (2013) point out, the most known slave rebellions in U.S history include Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser, John Brown and Stono Rebellion.

Candie’s speech on phrenology also refers to reality. Phrenology was popular in the 19th century. “Phrenology is the belief that different aspects of your character manifest themselves in bumps and bulges in the skull, which correspond to the area of the faculty responsible for that trait in the brain itself” (Knevitt, 2011). It was used to justify slavery by slaveholders.

In Django, Stephen is a traitor of his race. According to Bryan (2013) when a slave Gabriel Prosser planed revolt in Virginia he included hundreds of slaves but he was betrayed by some slaves who told their masters what was about to happened. However, according to historian Cobb (2013) “The use of this character as a comic foil seems essentially disrespectful to the history of slavery. Oppression, almost by definition, is a set of circumstances that bring out the worst in most people. A response to slavery—even a cowardly one like what we witness with Stephen—highlights the depravity of the institution” (Cobb, 2013).

The film is also criticizes for using the N word to much (more than 110 times).

If somebody is out there actually saying when it comes to the word n**ger, [that] I [Tarantino] was using it in the movie more than it was used back in the antebellum South, in Mississippi, in 1858… then feel 87

free to make that case [against its use in the film]... But no one’s actually making that case (Dray, 2013).

Samuel L. Jackson agrees:”If you’re going to deal with the language of the time, you deal with the language of the time. And that was the language of the time. I grew up in the South. I heard ‘nigger’ all my life. I’m not disturbed by it” (Mottram, 2013). As Emmet D. Carson notes ”Like it or not, during slavery African Americans were referred to by slave owners using the N-word. Being called the N-word was really the least of our problems. It was far down on the list after being considered property, held in bondage, raped, mutilated and murdered /..../ Django reflects the rampant use of the N-word both during slavery and today and remains the least of our community's problems” (Emmet D. Carson, 2013).

9 COMPARISON BETWEEN BELOVED AND DJANGO UNCHAINED

Beloved is a story of the traumatic experience of slavery on individuals. Django, on the other hand, is a story of a freed slave who turns bounty hunter and is searching for his wife. So, what do a neo-slave narrative and a neo-slave western have in common?

Beloved revolves around two time frames. One is set before the Civil war and the other in 1873 which is eight years after. Django too is set before the Civil war, the year is 1858.

Both stories include horrific scenes of slavery like chain gangs, whippings and slaves being chained with iron collars which were part of reality during slavery. If Beloved shows what actually happened during slavery, Django is part fiction. For example, Mandingo fights never took place. However, Django is focused on the physical torture, and is primarily a love story of a man looking for his wife, while, Beloved is more concentrated on the psychological scarring. All the characters are physically free but mentally they are trapped in the past which they were trying to suppress.

Slavery is the only theme these two stories have in common. While Django includes themes of love and vengeance and is primarily a western that includes a lot of violence, the letter is dramatized and exaggerated for the sake of viewers’ entertainment. The fact that the main character Django gets to revenge to his former masters and other slave owners is pure fiction. On the other hand, Beloved is realistic and deals with the affects that slavery has on individuals and their identities. The story shows the reader the inner struggle the characters have due to slavery.

In Beloved, the main characters are women-Seth, Baby Suggs and Denver. Slavery has caused great amount of pain and grief to all of them. Baby Suggs spent most of her life as a slave, being sold many times, sexually abuse and losing her children. Moreover, Seth was abused as well and could not allow for the same to happen to her children, so she killed one of them. Denver experienced slavery through her mother. She is isolated because of her mother’s crime. But these women are strong and determined, except for Baby Suggs who gives up at the end. For example, pregnant Sethe escaped from Sweet Home by herself, she endures the baby ghost in her house, refusing to leave. “She wrestles the embodiment of her guilt to a truce so strong, so enduring that a second buggy in the yard resurrects the image of deadly spite that thwarted Schoolteacher 18 years earlier” (Robinson and Fulkerson, 2001, p. 104). Denver too, becomes a heroine at the end by going to seek help. On the other hand, in Django, he is the main character and the hero who saves his beloved Broomhilda. Tarantino’s story puts a male hero in the forefront. For Django too, slavery was painful but all his painful memories include his wife, which makes Django a love story. Many reviewers claim that Broomhilda is in a way princes waiting to be rescued, however, when we see her for the first time, not including the flashback scenes, she is put in a hot box because she wanted to escape. Therefore, she is not waiting to be rescued. She also endured a lot of pain. Like Sethe, she has scars on her back.

But there is something that they have in common. In Beloved the Schoolteacher is embodiment of slavery, in Django Calvin Candies is that too. They both 89

command other people to torture and abuse slaves, while they watch. Moreover, they are both familiar with phrenology. Candie acknowledges that in his speech, while Schoolteacher’s head measuring prove that he is a practitioner of the “science”.

Django has a happy ending-he and Broomhilda ride into the sunset as free people. Beloved, does not have the same happy ending, however, the characters do have a chance of a brighter future.

In conclusion, Django Unchained is another Quentin Tarantino action films that is made mostly to entertain its audience. On the other hand, Beloved is Toni Morrison’s masterpiece that raises issues of slavery and its effects on one’s identity.

10 CONCLUSION

The origins of African-American history date back to the 17th century when first ships with African slaves were brought to the area of North America, in the colony of Jamestown. The first slave laws were adopted in Virginia, followed by South Carolina. Slavery was widespread in 17th and 18 century in all American colonies. The American Revolution brought freedom to the slaves in the North of the country, but did not end prejudice. In the South slavery continued. During the revolution, a movement to abolish slavery appeared. In the middle of the 19th century there was a thorough debate on slavery, which triggered the American Civil War (1861-1865). Although the war ended slavery, the struggle for equality continued with the so called reconstruction (1865-1877).

The history and fate of the African American population has had a major impact on African-American literature. The main theme that is explored by African- American authors is the social position of African Americans in American society. This refers to the problem of slavery, racial inequality and the fight for equality. As the social position of African Americans has changed through the years, so too, have the topics addressed by African-American authors. Before the civil war, topics of slavery were at the forefront. During the fight for equality the authors were focusing on the problems of racial segregation. Today, African- American literature has become an integral part of American literature.

Slave narratives which are autobiographies of former slaves, are an important record of history. They show the atrocities slaves had to endure. One of the most known slave narratives are Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) and Harriet Jacob’s Incidents of the Life of the Slave Girl. However, in the twentieth century, African American writers, despite the fact that they never experienced slavery, revived the slave narrative tradition with the neo-slave narratives. One such work is Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved which describes how traumatic experiences from the past affects the lives of individuals in the present. The story is about Seth and her daughter Denver, who live in the house number 124, isolated from the rest of the world, because her community criticizes her for what she did 91

in the past. It's been 18 years since Seth has escaped from slavery; memories of it are very much alive. She served as a slave on the estate called Sweet Home from where she wanted to escape, but failed because her master soon found her. As Seth did not want her children to become slaves again, she decided that she would kill them; however, she managed to kill only one. After 18 years, Seth is deeply traumatized. The house where she lives with his daughter is haunted by a ghost, for which both of them assume is Seth’s dead daughter. When one day a girl named Beloved appears, it becomes clear that the latter is the spirit of Seth’s deceased daughter.

One of the main themes of the novel is a necessity for people to confront their past, no matter how cruel it is. Beloved embodies the traumatic experience of slavery, which still haunts Seth eighteen years after the liberation. The work is a personification of African American slaves.

Furthermore, the experiences of slaves are shown on the big screen. The depiction of slaves in movies has changed over the years. Birth of the Nation is the first film that depicts African American slaves. The film is full of racism, and the viewer does not get to know the actual fate of African American slaves. The message of the story is that African Americans did not want freedom, and that their emancipation was the biggest American disaster. One of the latest films on slavery is a Quentin Tarantino movie Django Unchained “which it is one of very few American films, that addresses slave-owning relations topics. This is one of the largest taboos in American history in relation to the film” (Popek, 2013). The story is about Django, liberated slave who becomes a bounty hunter and is looking for his enslaved wife.

Even though slavery is something Americans do not like to remember, it should also not be forgotten. Novels such as Beloved and films like Django keep the memory alive.

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