beloved, by any other name?

Beloved centers on Sethe’s struggle to make peace with the choices in her past, and in the process we see Denver and Paul D. trying to come to terms with their own past as well. Even though none of them are still enslaved, the memories of Sethe’s and Paul D’s experiences at Sweet Home still haunt them both literally and figuratively. As they try to reclaim and understand the past, one of the most significant motifs in the novel is the importance of names and language.
           One of the first scenes in the novel shows how Beloved got her name, when Sethe heard the preacher address of the “dearly beloved” mourners and thought he meant her child. We never hear the real name of the child (if there is one), and she is known as “Beloved” by all of the other characters. It’s the most prominent example of a symbolic name in the book: she has no identity except for Sethe’s love for her, and, like the name, Sethe gave her that identity. The irony and truth in the name is a continuing theme throughout the novel, and the reader is always left wondering what it really means that the child is nothing apart from beloved.
         There are many other examples of the power of names and definitions in the novel as well. Sweet Home, the plantation Sethe and her family grew up on has an ambiguity that is amplified by its name. It was the site of horrific abuses, but at the same time, it was some kind of home in the sense that Sethe was together with friends and family there. The owner, Garner, said his slaves were “men,” but they were still slaves, and in a way his treatment of them only increased his own power. As the owner of the plantation, he got to decide how to define them and it became increasingly clear that their name -- the “Sweet Home Men” -- was seemingly dependent upon Garner to be true.
            For Stamp Paid and Baby Suggs, choosing their own name was a way to reclaim their life. Stamp Paid changed his name after his wife was taken because it was the only thing he could do to have some control over his life. Then as his life went on, it became the way he defined himself, and he dedicated himself to helping other people because of his name’s meaning. Baby Suggs was named “Jenny Garner” on her bill of sale, but she chose to be called Baby Suggs instead because that was what her husband called her. 
          The significance of choosing one's own name is even greater in the context of slavery. For slaves, literacy was discouraged, because it gave slaves the power to read the bible, news, and everything else that challenged the slave-owner's picture of reality. Slaves were often forced to take the last name of their owner, and slurs, especially the n-word, were used as a way to oppress and control them. In Beloved, we see examples of this, but also ways reclaimed names and language allowed many characters to have some measure of control over their own lives.

The trippy part

“...when you really think about it, me and America aren’t even enemies. I’m the horse pulling the stagecoach, the donkey in the levee who’s stumbled in the mud and come up lame. You may love me, but I’m tired of thrashing around in the muck and not getting anywhere.”

After reading the prologue of The White Boy Shuffle, the reader has the entire book to prepare for the (literal and figurative) nuclear bomb that will inevitably be dropped, but the last few chapters of the novel are still difficult and unnerving to read. Gunnar, Scoby, Yoshiko and Psycho Loco are the kind of characters that are fun to read about, and it seems like the prestige and influence Gunnar gained after growing up in poverty is something to be proud of.  The narrative itself, laced with Gunnar’s dry humor and compelling poetry, seems like a deeply honest social commentary but not a pessimistic one. All in all, even though you know how it’s all going to end up, it’s hard to comprehend why exactly Gunnar gave up all the advantages he seemed to have.  

It isn’t until reading the epilogue that the motivation behind Gunnar’s drastic decision comes to light, and even then, it still seems like it’s the wrong thing to do. But after reading the epilogue and reconsidering the rest of the novel from that point of view, another way of looking at the events of the novel is revealed.

Like Gunnar explains to Psycho Loco, his frustration doesn’t just stem from being “enemies” with America. It’s clear that on some level America is opposed to black people, but in the novel, it seems like the oppression Gunnar faces because of his race is often met with snide humor and sharp poetry rather than despair.

It isn’t outright discrimination that drives Gunnar to desperation but instead, the loss of his own agency and identity. From the very beginning, he wasn’t his own person, but instead just the latest in a series of Kaufmans whose lives all followed the same script: laughing at racist jokes in an effort to please the white people. As he grew older, he was defined by the incredible natural talent for basketball he had, but it was still the same idea: he became almost a mascot, and he was valued only as a novelty and a tool to keep the team on top. His poetry, at first, might seem like an escape from the same patterns, but it, too, became a tool for other people to use in their own ways, whether by publishing his work in a “coffee-table book of photographs” or reading it at a political rally.

As a reader, it’s easy to look at Gunnar as a basketball player and poet and see how successful he was, but by doing so, it’s almost like we’re proving the point he was trying to make. When we read his poetry, are we just like the stagecoach riders, watching him struggle and enjoying it the art of it? If we are, then his choice to wait for a nuclear escape seems almost justified. Gunnar’s poem, “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Crib Death,” warns “ “caveat emptor,”/let the buyer beware,” and by the end of the novel the reader is left wondering if we are that buyer. We’re the ones who regret Gunnar’s death. But are we mourning Gunnar, or his poetry: our “property, permanently damaged?”

would she actually care what Wright thinks though

Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God is widely recognized as an important piece of literature today, but at the time it was published, it was the subject of controversy among other contemporary black authors. Unlike Native Son or Invisible Man, in Their Eyes Were Watching God, the struggle of racism is secondary to the main love story of Janie Crawford, and because of this many felt Hurston wasn’t fulfilling her obligation as a black author: for Their Eyes Were Watching God to be a serious novel, it had to deal with the real social issues of the time.

Not only were many people opposed to the lack of serious social criticism, many also felt that Their Eyes Were Watching God pandered to white audiences and was too reminiscent of the long history of minstrelsy. Hurston’s portrayal of black life and traditions could seem far too idealized, particularly in the migrant worker community of the Everglades, where she downplayed the struggles black people faced working in oppressive conditions. And the scenes of Eatonville seem theatrical, almost as if the black characters are parading around for the amusement of the white audience.

When I first read Their Eyes Were Watching God, it seemed to me that these critics were probably right. It’s a really enjoyable book to read, but it seemed so quaint, so idealized, that I felt like I shouldn’t be enjoying it at all. I kept waiting for the penny to drop and the real narrative of racial struggle to come out, and then when it didn’t, there was the uncomfortable feeling that I just read and enjoyed a book justifying a docile, happy caricature of black history.

But while we watched the documentary about Zora Neale Hurston, it seemed like her novel wasn’t that at all. She spent most of her adult life documenting and researching the traditions of black communities in the South, and during the rest, she seemed to do whatever she wanted without regards to what other people might think. My interpretation of the novel slowly unraveled, because Hurston didn’t seem like the kind of person to write a minstrel story at all.

Now, the more I reread the novel, the more it seems to be a novel illustrating Hurston’s love for the community and traditions she spent her life documenting. The poetic dialogue, written in a non-standard dialect, draws in the reader and shows the beauty of long oral traditions. The portrayal of life in Eatonville shows the rich music and culture that developed in black communities in the deep south. There are elements of the story that are undeniably problematic, especially reading it from a modern point of view. But it doesn’t completely deserve the harsh criticism from Wright and others. Their Eyes Were Watching God may not confront the same issues as Invisible Man or Native Son, but that doesn’t mean it is somehow less valuable, or that Hurston is betraying the black community by writing it. The novel isn't supposed to be a protest novel. It's a love story, between Janie and Tea Cake, and between Hurston and the culture she spent her life immersed in.

the mule of the world?

Reading Native Son and Invisible Man, it seems unnervingly easy to forget about women entirely. The real characters, the real struggles, the real search for identity seems to be always with the men. Bigger and Clifton and the nameless narrator and Dr. Bledsoe are the ones who matter, while the women are at best homemakers and at worst just a tool to influence men. It’s the brotherhood, after all. The “Women Question” is just a way to get the narrator out of the way of the real issues.

So it’s kind of strange to start reading Their Eyes Were Watching God, written by a woman about a woman, and even stranger to see how in just the first seven chapters there are probably more women than in Native Son and Invisible Man combined. But it’s immediately obvious that the main character Janie Crawford is very different from every woman we’ve encountered so far this year, and it’s interesting to consider how her struggles to live in a racist society will compare to those of the male protagonists we’ve already read about.

In just the first few chapters, it’s clear how Janie’s life is dictated by both race and gender. She marries Logan Killicks not because she loves him, but because it’s her grandmother’s dying wish to protect Janie from being raped like so many other women in her family. Even after she leaves Killicks to marry Jody, who she thinks she loves, Jody just becomes more and more controlling to try and make her fit his vision of a perfect wife. And no matter what she does, the male gaze is always there to watch her, judge her body and make her into an object of competition between men.

It’s hard to say so early in the book what will happen to Janie over the course of her life, but it’s clear that although the challenges she faces will undoubtedly be similar to those in Invisible Man, being a woman will also heavily influence her struggles. And judging by the character of Janie as she walks into town in the beginning of the novel, she ends up far from the passive and insignificant female character so common in other novels.

If history was a gambler

Throughout Invisible Man, the narrator struggles to find his own place in the world and be seen as who he really is. He strives to be like Frederick Douglass, and build his own name for himself in history. This theme of searching for identity as a part of history is recurrent throughout the entire novel, and in the scenes of Tod Clifton’s death, it is especially significant. The narrator is deeply unnerved by Clifton’s decision to leave the Brotherhood, because to him the Brotherhood is the only thing preventing them both from being invisible and forgotten. But Clifton's death, we see that the Brotherhood, the narrator, and the community all have different versions of what happened, and none of these histories tell the whole truth.

When the narrator first encountered Clifton selling the marionette dolls in the street, he was surprised and confused about why Clifton would want to let go of all the influence and respect he has by the brotherhood. “Only in the Brotherhood,” the narrator thinks, “[can] we make ourselves known, [can] we avoid being empty Sambo dolls”(434).  After years just following the path others laid out for him, the narrator thinks the Brotherhood is an opportunity to choose on his own what he wants to do, and make his mark on history. Those outside the Brotherhood are nothing but a “void of faceless faces, of soundless voices, lying outside of history” (439). He views the Brotherhood as his opportunity to be seen for who he really is, instead of being confined to a predetermined script.

But after Clifton dies, it starts to seem like that’s not the real situation. The narrator soon sees that there are several different stories of Clifton’s death, and none seem to be saying the same thing. The Brotherhood considers Clifton a traitor. The police see him as a criminal. And after hearing the narrator’s speech, the people of Harlem see Clifton as a martyr for the black community.

By dying at the hands of the policemen, Clifton seems to reenter history; everyone knows who he is, and after the narrator’s powerful memorial speech, he is now a symbol of the black struggle. But they don’t see the real Clifton. Everyone tells a different story, and even though some might be mostly true, every one of these histories are carefully crafted to achieve a predetermined goal. Contrary to what the narrator believes, rejoining history has made Clifton even less of his own person; instead, a traitor, a martyr, a criminal, his life is still defined by whatever is most convenient to the narrative, and he is even more invisible than before.

Optical Allusions

Chapter ten of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man follows the narrator’s first, surreal day working at the Liberty Paints factory. The prize product, Optic White paint, is supposedly so white that the government relies on it to paint their national monuments. And yet the process the narrator sees is messy, frantic, and fragile enough that a few drops of the wrong black liquid can ruin an entire batch of paint. This imagery of the perfect white paint, but with a conflicted and volatile history, has important implications in Ellison’s critique of American society.

Lucius Blockway tells the narrator the paint is“so white you can paint a chunka coal and you’d have to crack it open with a sledgehammer to prove it wasn’t white clear through,” and Kimbro remarks upon how the batch is “white as George Washington’s Sunday-go-to-meetin’ wig and as sound as the all-mighty dollar.” The narrator mentions how the buildings of the college are kept brightly painted, to keep them looking respectable and maintain the facade of the college. But the Golden Day and Trueblood’s cabin, which show the reality of life for many people, are left to peel in the sun. Optic White, a thin layer of paint with which Liberty Paints strives to “Keep America Pure,” represents the similarly thin facade that separates what people see from the reality.

The contradictions of the paint itself and the method used to make it are significant. The paint itself isn’t as pure white as it wants to be: small drops of black liquid are required, and they are a vital part of the process even as they are quickly drowned out by the white. And inside the factory, even as it revolves around making uniformly white paint, there is class conflict on a small scale between unions, workers and supervisors. The factory churns out massive amounts of paint every day, but the system ultimately depends on one man and can be ruined by just a small amount of the wrong additive.

The paint factory and Optic White can be read as an allegory for American society. Optic White strives to cover up anything that doesn’t look right, and is so good at doing so that it can even cover up the blackness of coal. The oppressive system in America at the time made similar efforts to conform to the white narrative. And yet even when the paint seems to be successful, there is still conflict, and the entire system is much more fragile than it might seem.

The Real Significance of Bigger as a "Native Son" of Racism in America

 

 One of the most prominent themes in Native Son is how Bigger's city is sharply divided between blacks and whites. “Half the time,” he says, “I feel like I’m on the outside of the world peeping in through a knothole in the fence.” He and his family live together in one cramped room, in the only corner of town the white landlords allow them to live in. Bigger and his friends make their living as thieves - but they only rob other black people, because the white police won’t care. Bigger’s life is confined to a cramped and dismal script, with the white world always looming overhead. From the moment he steps out of his house, Bigger is confronted by a white face, “fleshy but stern,” reminding him that “YOU CAN’T WIN!”

Growing up in this environment, Bigger’s understanding of himself and the world around him would seem to be shaped by racism and the ever-present class divide that puts whites above blacks. He works for the Daltons and ostensibly plays the part of the obedient young black man perfectly. But still, he is an outlier, even among his own family. While his mother and siblings are proud of his new job offer, Bigger sees it as a “cheap surrender.” He eschews religion as well, seeing it as just another false hope for those who’ve given up on this life. For Bigger, nothing seems to be able to satisfy his “gnawing hunger and restless aspiration,”  or distract him from the “great natural force” of white people that “as long as they lived here in this prescribed corner of the city, they paid mute tribute to."
       Bigger Thomas, as a character, stands out from the rest. And because Native Son is a protest against the racist system of 1930s Chicago, Bigger isn't just a fictional character, but a message to the reader. The title of the novel gives a hint at what that message might be. In the words of Max: “The consciousness of Bigger Thomas, and millions like him, white and black, form the quicksands upon which the foundations of our nation rests.”

      Bigger, the “Native Son,” not raised in America but born from it. Born from the centuries of oppression his ancestors faced and the segregated, racist system he still lived in himself. But also born in equal part from those classic American virtues, stubbornness and hope and a refusal to accept unfair circumstances. Bigger Thomas is not unique, Wright tells us: he is an inevitable and constant result of racism in America. He is not necessarily an inspirational, moral, or particularly sympathetic person. Rather, Bigger’s significance lies in the fact that he is a Native Son, one of many such characters, whose very existence serves as a reminder of how the system of racism can never truly succeed.