托尼·莫里森《宠儿》读书报告(英文)

FACE TO HISTORY, OPEN TO FUTURE

——Book Report of Beloved 2013级汉语国际教育刘倩瑶2013101058

It was not a story to pass on. It was a story about an imagined history of slavery, both reality and myth at once.

Beloved turns on the slaughter of a baby by her own mother. Sethe kills her child rather than have her returned from freedom to slavery. Sethe has escaped from Sweet Home in Kentucky to freedom in Ohio, where she has joined her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, whose freedom has been bought by the labor of Sethe’s husband, Halle. Sethe’s three elder children, two boys and a “crawling-already” daughter are already in the free house, number 124. Sethe has given birth to another daughter, Denver, on the way there. 28 days later, when the slave owner, Schoolmaster caught up to them, Sethe killed her “crawling-already” daughter. “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 one hand and infant by the heels in the other. She did not look at them; she simply swung the baby toward the wall planks, missed and tried to connect a second time, when out of nowhere-in the ticking time the men spent staring at what there was to stare at-the old nigger boy, still mewing, ran thorough the door behind them and snatched the baby from the arc of its mother’s swing. ”It is the first part of the story, and in one word, the “crawling-already” daughter was killed by her mother because she didn’t

want her to suffer pain and misery as she suffered in the past. As negro slave, even though we know the history of slave trade, it is still difficult for us to comprehend what did they go through during the dark century. Sethe’s escape is modeled on the story of Margaret Garner, who escaped from Kentucky with sixteen other slaves in January 1856. The fugitives were pursued by a posse of slave masters and sheriff’s officers. They fought back. Margaret Garner cut her youngest daughter’s throat with a butcher’s knife and tried to kill herself and the rest of her children. There was a sensational trial, in which the slaves’ lawyer paradoxically suggested that Margaret be charged with murder and the others with complicity-trying to ensure that she remained in the Free State to be judged as a person, not returned as property. She was, however, returned, and her other baby daughter was drowned when the boat returning them capsized. Margaret is reported as having “displayed frantic joy”at this death.

I was totally astonished by the description of Negro’s grief which came from their miserable experience in this novel-actually we can say in the true history. Baby Suggs has said, “Not a house in the country ain’t packed to its rafters with some dead Negro’s grief.”From Beloved’s monologue, we can know that some Negro was forced to eat nasty themselves, and the men without skin bring them their morning water to drink. If Negro had more to drink they could make tears. They cannot

make sweat or morning water so the men without skin bring them theirs, even one time they bring them sweet rocks to suck. Paul D has always known his value-as a hand, a laborer who could make profit on a farm-but now he discovers his worth, which is to say he learns his price. The dollar value of his weight, his strength, his heart, his brain, his penis, and his future. Maybe for them, being alive was the hard past instead of death. But we cannot just focus on the grief of these poor Negro, it is also necessary to consider the second part of this story and investigate what is the meaning by this kind of deconstruction and postmodernism style. The number of figures involved in this novel was not many, but what is complex for readers is that who Beloved is on earth. Most of readers might consider Beloved as the daughter who was died 18 years ago because it’s just too coincident. Nevertheless, what if these coincidences are just coincidences? Probably, Beloved is Sethe’s mother, or she is a strange Negro girl who has no relationship with the dead daughter’s ghost. It’s hard for us to ensure who Beloved is, what we certainly know is, the returning of Beloved reminded Sethe of the past life, the misery she suffered, the hurt she has been trying hard to forget during the years.

It was time to lay it all down. I guess Morrison wrote this story for telling the Negro not drowns them in the previous misery, and there are still many beautiful things worthy to do. Sethe wished for Baby Suggs’fingers molding her nape, reshaping it, saying, “Lay em down, Sethe.

Sword and shield. Down. Down. Both of em down. Down by the riverside. Sword and shield. Don’t study war no more. Lay all that mess down. Sword and shield.” And under the pressing fingers and the quite instructive voice, she would. Her heavy knives of defense against misery, regret, gall and hurt, she placed one by one on a bank where clear water rushed on below. The author suggests colored people to save themselves from memory, in Baby Suggs’ view.

There is a sentence from the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that 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.” But in the time of Beloved, “being so in love with the look of the world, putting up with anything and everything, just to stay alive in a place where a moon he had no right to was nevertheless there.”

“How much is a nigger supposed to take?” This is a question asked by Paul D. Nowadays, slavery was abolished, but racial discrimination hasn’t been completely eliminated from all people’s mind. Beloved is a good reference for the African Americans to escape away from the miserable memory and hold the bright future. As for other people, it tells us the truth, mentioned by Obama in his speeches, that all men are created equal.