University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Faculty Publications -- Department of English English, Department of Spring 2003 Truth in Timbre: Morrison's Extension of Slave Narrative Song in Beloved Peter J. Capuano University of Nebraska - Lincoln, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishfacpubs Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Capuano, Peter J., "Truth in Timbre: Morrison's Extension of Slave Narrative Song in Beloved" (2003). Faculty Publications -- Department of English. 87. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishfacpubs/87 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications -- Department of English by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Truth in Timbre: Morrison's Extension of Slave Narrative Song in Beloved His voice was faint.A rustleof leaves. Then Reb lifted his head and began to croon in a tongue incomprehensibleto me. Anothermourner began to sing. Then another.The sound swelled, expanded,ate space, filled the woods like a splash of Peter J. Capuano is a wind, blended with the air, turnedand touchedoff, one by one, the differentvoic- PresidentialFellow in the es of the others,then Reb sang louder-or, better,bellowed like a steer.Abruptly, Universityof Virginia'sdoctor- they stopped, my own face was hot and thick,the tearsflew back into my nose al programfor English when I sniffled and burnedmy throat.It was then, as Reb drove home the first Languageand Literature. His nail to seal his son's casket,as I felt the sound of metal ring on metal in the deep- researchconcentraton is the est coils of my ears, that a voice behind me, toadlike,said: nineteenth-centurynovel. "At least he was spared the mines, eh, Andrew?"(Charles Johnson, Oxherding Tale) In her 1987 novel Beloved,Toni Morrisonacknowledges and even borrows from FrederickDouglass's 1845Narrative, but she also makes a resolute breakfrom its rhetoricaland political objectives.Historical differences between the audiences of Douglass and Morrisonaccount for a large part of their contrast- ing styles, particularlyin their treatmentof slave song. Since Douglass composed his Narrativeas a fugitive slave in the early 1840s,he was aware of his principallywhite audience and also of his precarioustask of presenting an attacknot on white America, but on the institutionof slavery itself. Douglass's judicious deci- sion to report the bleakness of slavery with austerityof tone allows him to present this attacksuccessfully. He relies heavily on factual evidence, ratherthan on the tremendouslyemotional slave songs, to present the most appalling scenes of brutality endured by the slaves in his narrative. This shrewd emphasis on the factualenables Douglass to navigate between the specific facts and the general nature of slav- ery in a way that informs ratherthan offends his audience. In 1845 Douglass could not afford to focus repeatedlyon the "ineffa- ble sadness" of slave songs or on the songs' reflectionof "souls boiling over with the bitterestanguish," even though he reports early in the Narrativethat "everytone [is] a testimony against slavery" (58). As readers,we learn the importanceof slave song at the outset, but we learn far more about the exact number of Colonel Lloyd's slaves, horses, and plantationacreage throughout the remainderof the narrative.We come to know the exact assignments involved in Edward Covey's wheat-fanningopera- tion with a precision that leaves us unsatisfied with the important but brief descriptionof the songs reverberatingthrough the pinewoods of the GreatHouse Farmat the outset of the narrative. Despite this, Douglass's task of uncovering the truth of slavery's brutalitywithout mitigating that truth with indignant protesta- tions has proven to be at once inhibitingand fecund. The aware- African American Review, Volume 37, Number 1 0 2003 Peter J. Capuanoau ness of this predicament limits his "personhood" in a world where slave treatment of slave song in the 1845 humanity is constantly challenged and Narrative, but it also creates a colossal denied. Morrison's treatment of song paradigm of song's importance for in Belovedprovides the reader with a many contemporary authors such as testimony that is significantly different Toni Morrison and Charles Johnson, from the testimonies set forth in the who explore similar topics. slave narratives. Morrison's testimony Morrison's Belovedresponds delib- does not end with the establishment of erately and exhaustively to the descrip- slavery's barbarity; it chronicles her tion of slave song that appears at the characters' endurance and ability to outset of Douglass's 1845 Narrative. survive during and after these periods The fact that Morrison is not inhibited of physical brutality and psychological by the pressing need to abolish slavery abuse. The principal characters of the allows her to explore the specificity of novel-Sethe, Paul D, and Sixo-all the slave songs to a degree that associate song with their humanity and Douglass simply could not risk in 1845. use it as a shield against indignity and The essential goal of Douglass's despair. In this way, Morrison relies on Narrative in 1845 was to inform what the rubric of the "sorrow songs" from William Lloyd Garrison dubbed a Frederick Douglass's 1845 Narrative in "stubbornly incredulous" white audi- Belovedto challenge a contemporary ence of slavery's politically sanctioned audience to recognize slave humanity barbarity (40). Since Morrison is not beyond the simple (but no less impor- inhibited by the socio-political exigen- tant) acknowledgment of slavery's bru- cies taken on by Douglass, she is free to tality. focus more on song as a point of access Often in Beloved,when characters into the reverberating effects of slav- cannot read or write or even talk about ery's horrors -the same horrors that the brutality they experience as slaves, Douglass relates to his readers with a they sing to affirm their participation conspicuous deficit of emotion. The in life and defend their status as project of Morrison's novel is to regis- human beings. Song offers slaves the ter and index the vital relationship opportunity to express their personal between the "personhood" of African testimonies while remaining within the Americans and the specific songs of framework of their larger cultural former slaves. This is to say that the experiences-all without actually original description of slave song in speaking of their shame and trauma. Douglass, looming in the background Although Nellie McKay does not of Morrison's novel, shapes her han- specifically identify song as a response dling of music and song, her insistence to the silencing of slave stories in the on its signal importance as an indicator introduction to her Belovedcasebook, of human status in Beloved. she acknowledges the need for an Morrison's consistent but subtle alternate slave "voice:" "So grotesque use of song takes the reader beyond the were many [slave] experiences, and so horrifying facts of Douglass's narrative vulnerable did they feel, that for them and into the more profoundly emotion- the act of remembering was risky, al turmoil of a post-emancipation com- shameful, and dangerous" (10). Song munity. Morrison reverses the tradi- fulfills the need for what McKay calls tional slave narrative format and an "alternate voice." The slaves of expands the scope of the reader's com- Beloveddefend their personhood and prehension by investigating a crime revive their endurance when it is chal- committed by the oppressedrather than lenged and violated by "mossy teeth," by the oppressor. Through her explo- numerical measurements, and leg ration of the black experience within irons. For these reasons, it is fitting that slavery and beyond, Morrison shows Sethe characterizes Paul D, a man who how song defines and affirms slave endures enormous physical and psy- 96 AFRICAN AMERICAN REVIEW chological abuse, as a "singingman" at but never identifies the role of song in the outset of the novel (39;italics what he calls a "musicalnarrative" mine). (56). Likewise, MarilynMobley notes how Belovedemploys "the trope of memory"to make the slave experience more "accessible"to contemporary raditionally,critics have either readers (357).She does not analyze, . ignored song as a legitimate vehi- though, the crucialrole that song plays cle for establishing slave humanity or in the characters'recollection of these have limited their appraisalof song. horrifyingmemories. Mobley makes a MargaretAtwood notes how the theme brief and oblique analysis of song as of "tyrannicalprice" runs through she mentions the way the fragmented Belovedbut stops short of offering stories of each character"illustrate the analysis of how slaves combat this call and response pattern of the tyranny with song and re-establish African-Americanoral tradition,"but their humanity by singing about life she misses an opportunityto investi- (49). The slaves of Belovedhave their gate the significanceof these particular humanity stripped from them through- slave songs, offering as they do a dis- out the novel, as cold statisticianslike tinctive culturalvoice to the African- Schoolteacherattempt to calculateand Americanoral tradition.With record their "animal"tendencies above Morrison'sBeloved, we hear the spoken and beyond their "human"characteris- stories of Paul D, Sixo, Baby Suggs, and tics. In one such instance,Paul D learns Sethe, and we are also aware of their "the dollar value of his weight, his songs that bear witness to the unspeak- strength,his heart, his brain,his penis, ablehorrors of slavery-those experi- and his future"but responds by ences whose shame transcendseven singing of the "bosses and masters and the spoken word. misses; of mules and dogs and the WhereasDouglass cites the impor- shamelessness of life" in order to con- tance of slave song for the first and last firm his humanity in the face of time at the end of his narrative'ssec- Schoolteacher'sdehumanizing "value" ond chapter,Morrison establishes song equations (226, 108).