Freedom Is Not Black And White
Beloved by Toni Morrison is written about how the cruelty of slavery is effective far past the years of being a slave. The novel follows the story of a former slave named Sethe in the year 1873. Sethe is an African American women who is the daughter in law of Baby Suggs, who also escaped slavery. Sethe and her daughter Denver have lived in their haunted home called 124 for the past 18 years, Baby Suggs dying 8 years before the time that the book begins. Sethe also had an unnamed daughter who she killed as a baby in a struggle to save her from the cruelty of slavery. Her other children, Howard and Buglar ran away from home a short time before Baby Suggs death due to being frightened by her dead baby’s ghost who was haunting their residence (124). Sethe has a relationship with an eternally complicated man named Paul D. Soon, a mysterious woman named Beloved enters their lives and impacts them all differently, changing their perspective on their lives after slavery. The use of different symbolic measures strengthens the idea that the pain and inner conflict that the characters experience is due to the inescapable past and the difficulty of reconstructing their being due to the everlasting effects of slavery. The recurring theme of color that appears both subtly and in obvious uses throughout the novel is used by Morrison as a motif to represent the desire for a life of freedom and the recurring impact that slavery of the past has on the characters present.
The first occurrence of this motif is mentioned when describing Baby Suggs last days before death. As the old withering woman lay in her bed placed in a barren colorless room, she requested little but the bringing in of color. “Her past had been like her present-intolerable-and since she knew death was anything but forgetfulness, she used the little energy left her for pondering color”(4). Suggs’ end of life craving for color was not questioned by Sethe, but she did wonder what made the woman desire such viewings. Baby Suggs dying progressive color viewing was not left in the past. As Sethe developed as a character she soon began to understand the pleasures and privilege that color gave.
For former slaves such as Sethe and Baby Suggs, color blindness was recognizable as how most animals are colorblind. Sethe’s realization of her lacking experience of color is revealed as she fathoms her mothers seeking for color, “Now I know why Baby Suggs pondered color her last years. She never had time to see, let alone enjoy it before” (237). The idea that even the appearance color was taken away due to the brutality that slavery delivered emphasizes the everlasting influence that enslavement had on their existence.
The adoption of the overbearing theme of colors is also broken apart into individual uses throughout the novel. There are certain colors that continuously represent certain events and that evoke particular feelings in each individual. For instance, the color red symbolizes different things for different characters in the novel. However, the consistent meaning of the color red is death, love, and hope. For Sethe, red is the resemblance of blood and violence; particularly embodying her actions of killing her daughter. Despite her trying, Sethe cannot escape her past of killing her baby girl. “Every day she saw the dawn, but never acknowledged or remarked its color. 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” (47). The red represents the blood that was spilled when her daughter’s neck was slashed and all the pain that was brought with her death but also the love that caused it. Pink is in the same spectrum of red, which is why Sethe chose it for the headstone.
Later in the novel, red is again used to exemplify pain. Stamp Paid, an underground railroad worker, who helped Sethe to her freedom found a red ribbon, representing the suffering and violence a slave went through. “Tying his flatbed up on the bank of the Licking River, securing it the best he could, he caught sight of something red on its bottom. Reaching for it, he thought it was a cardinal feather stuck to his boat. 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” (213). This quote reiterates the anguish that red represents. Although red is the color of pain, it also portrays love and passion. This is shown particularly in Paul D's experiences. "She moved closer with a footfall he didn't hear and he didn't hear the whisper that the flakes of rust made either as they fell away from the seams of his tobacco tin. So when the lid gave he didn't know it. What he knew was that when he reached the inside part he was saying, "Red heart. Red heart," over and over again. Softly and then so loud it woke Denver, then Paul D himself. "Red heart. Red heart. Red heart" (137-138). The color red emphasized the passion Beloved made him feel but also the underlying representation of death.
The progression of color is used by Morrison to accentuate the gradual introduction after a lifetime of slavery. “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”(237). This piecemeal approach to color that Baby Suggs experienced is an interesting contrast to Sethe's abrupt poignant nature of discovery. Like the color red; blue, yellow, and green have significance as well. They represent the things in life that are not affected by the actions of others. The progressive order stresses the importance of what the colors represent. Yellow and blue mix to make green. As the inescapable past mixes with the ongoing present to create the future. This agrees with the overlying theme in the novel that the past (slavery in particular) is forever embedded into the present.
Although they were free, the characters lives as slaves followed them. Like Baby Suggs, Sethe had no time to enjoy colors during her time as a slave. Morrison uses particular colors to evoke certain emotions within each person. Red is an “inside color” meaning it represents emotions and feelings. Blue, yellow, and green are “outside colors”. This means that they are not affected by Baby Suggs or Sethe or anyone else. They are a joy that took time to understand. The noticing of colors is often in contrast to events that may have occurred. For example, when Sethe confronted her slave master and again when a community member came to deliver bad news, “The sky was blue and clear. Not one touch of death in the definite green of the leaves. ”(Pages 162, 308). The two concerning events happened in the same environment which showed little concern. The outside world does not change with what is going to happen or with people’s emotions and feelings. Color as a motif emphasizes this point.
After Sethe lost her baby, she became insensitive to colors, but the colors were still there. After she realized that Beloved was her dead daughter, she started to look out for the colors. She began to understand that to her freedom was not black and white as her past had been. The brutality of slavery has taken its toll and freedom meant more than seeing in color for the first time.
