Response #1:
In Beloved, Toni Morrison's tone indirectly reflects response to the oppression she experienced in her own life time and life times past. It is evident that survivors will often not discuss the unspeakable until they are forced to by some force or a resurgance of memories. As in the case of Sethe, Beloved only emerges when Paul D. arrives. Prior to Paul D.'s visit, Sethe had supressed her "rememories" and chose to block the experiences she knew she could not keep hidden. In some cases of speaking the unspeakable, individuals respond to a manner in which they equate the unspeakable with an everday experience, such as a minor car accident. However, in Beloved, Sethe cannot directly address the issue of her past. Sethe's unwillingness to discuss the past is an indication of Toni Morrison's hesitation to directly state the problem. Speaking the unspeakable forces one to realize that such experiences occur and continue to do so and that these experiences have a profound affect on those who have endured. Slavery, the Holocaust, and the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima are all similiar in that they ruined the lives of those who directly experienced the horror and terror. Such tragedies are ingrained in family legacies and subsequent generations must also feel the impact of the unspeakable.
Jessica Vianes, Roshanna Sabaratnam, Trent Davol
Response #2:
It seems that in Beloved, memories are repressed by Sethe both for her own protection and to protect her child, Denver. It is hard to understand, though, how this repression protects her daughter because she's already revealed a lot to her. Also, for Sethe, it seems as though the memories are living entities in their own right, capable of doing harm (p.36 p. 42, p. 73). In one of the Nagasaki accounts on "memory," a daughter writes about how her mother, a bomb survivor at 5 years of age, talks about the experience as if it were a "minor car accident." In some ways, Sethe also does this on the surface. Becuase she is hesitant to "go inside" (p. 46), Sethe's telling of her experiences to Denver have this similar feeling. And yet the actual events she recounts are unbelievably painful. In one of the Holocaust sites, a story is recounted about a man who can't come to grips with the existence of the holocaust until he meets an actual survivor in the flesh. It is only then, with a personal account of memories, that history becomes fact for this man. This seems consistent with Sethe's fears about Denver. Although Denver is certainly aware of slavery and some of its more vile effects, the personal story of her mother would affect her with much more force, just like the man in the museum was affected. In both instances, personal memories are much more powerful than dry history. Finally, in Beloved, we see proof that individual memories are what eventually make up our collective history. Through Sethe's experienc e, we see that it is only what she allows herself to remember and relate to her daughter that will become history. Therefore, her manipulation of her experiences ends up distorting her history for her daughter.
Dan Cohen, Tomoko Yamazaki, Rachel Luttio
Response #3:
It seems that in reference to Beloved, people "speak about the unspeakable" in the most matter-of-fact terms as possible; as if to avoid an emotional recollection of the horrible event. These "unspeakable" memories are often recollected in a fragmented form, as if they are unnaturally forcing themselves into the consciousness of the character whenever an experience allows them to do so. Often the memories of past events force themselves into the present (i.e. the infants ghost, the tree-like scars on Sethe's back) against the will of the characters. In this sense the process of memory is a painful one. These painful memories are usually individual struggles, and cannot be fully shared among a prevailing social consciousness. For example, Paul D. expells the infants ghost (an invasive memory of Sethe's past,) as an outsider, a member of the larger social consciousness, he is unable to participate in this painful memory (i.e. the infant's ghost) with Sethe, instead he expells the ghost. Paul D. also disposseses Denver from her world of memory by taking the infant's ghost (her only companion) from her. In general, people tend to relate painful events from the past to others in a stylized or artistic form. Pictures, songs, and poetry all serve to provide a medium of communication for painful memories. These media do not require the individual to face the memory in a completely realistic manner, and hence the individual does not relive the memory. Furthermore, the memory is often so powerful that it cannot be considered in its entirety without emotional damage, rather the individual adresses fragments of the memory through stylized or artistic means. END
Response #4
In our group we discussed how talking about the past can be a healing experience. The story of Sethe's escape from salvery was a heroic tale that Denver liked to talk about and listen to over and over. However, when Sethe reflects on her past expereinces, it is much more emotional and disturbing to remember. She is unable to run away from it and it seems that certain episodes of her past continue to haunt her in the present. For an example the ghost baby, though never clearly identified, is a physical representation of her past that has haunted her to the present. She says that when Paul D came to 124 he scared the ghost away but the ghost baby seems to be more representative of her living in the past than a real ghost. On the internet we looked at the testmony of people's memories of Negosaki. Most of the people were not looking at their own personal experiences but their experreinces through others or through other documentations. They saw the horor of the atomic bomb just how Denver looked back on the experiences of her mother. They felt personally connected to the experience despite having no actual contact with the events directly. Perhaps, actual witnesses to the events (i.e. Sethe, Paul D) have a greater dificulty sustaining an emotional attatchment to the experience than those who have no direct conenction. While those removed from the experience can freely explore their feelings about the bomb, direct witnesses have greater difficulty.
Mary Ferguson, Tyler Moynihan, Mike Mercanti-Anthony
Response #5:
When people are faced with tragedy in their lives, it is often the case that they chose to refer to it indirectly rather than facing the memories head on. In the Nagasaki accounts, many people who lived at the time of the droppings recounted stories of Cold War preparation rather than the specific event of the Bombs. The memories of hiding under desks and crouching in hallways seem to be the first thing that speaking of the bomb brings about. It seems trivial now, as it should have in 1945, to be so concerned about the well being of oneself rather than focusing on the people whose lives were truly being affected by the bombs. The focus was not on the people that died, but on the possibility of a bomb being dropped. Morrison's approach in Beloved echos this sentiment of indirect storytelling of events. Sethe does not tell the story so much as she works to remember the events. A significant part of Sethe's memory is the act of remembering. This makes the reconstruction of the course of events fragmented, much the way that it is in the memories of persons regarding the Nagasaki bombing. The fact that Morrison chooses to tell Sethe's story indirectly does not minimize her pain, or the ability of the reader to sympathize with Sethe's experiences.
essay from Sara Allen, Antonio Oliver, and Blanca Ruiz
Response #6:
Some events are too horrible to fully understand without experienceing them first-hand. It becomes the the focus of the teller to try to find a way to help the listener gain more insight into events which are essentially out of their grasp. Morrison's character Sethe must coax the story out of her own memory before it can be transmitted to the reader, which is one way in which Morrison gives us a sense of the difficulty in relating the unspeakable. For someone who actually experiences such events, it is difficult, or perhaps impossible to approach the subject, but it must be approached as directly as possible in order for the listener to understand. This sets up a conflict between the need for understanding and the pain which remembering invokes. Morrison employs visual imagery as opposed to pure narration, in order to connote familiar emotions to the reader, which hopefully brings the reader closer to understanding the unspeakable event itself. This is similar to the way people understand events like Nagasaki and the Holocaust.
Two relevant web pages concerning motherhood and slavery: http://vi.uh.edu/pages/mintz/21.htm
http://vi.uh.edu/pages/mintz/37.htm
Ginna Hamner, Patrick Hruby, Mike Stokes
Response #7:
The Holocaust, the institution of slavery, and Nagasaki are events of such magnitude that articulation and reconciliation can be very difficult and powerful endeavors. Morrison's __Beloved__: -discusses the tragedy of slavery via non-linear tales and descriptions -construction of novel is akin to the way one remembers painful experiences:spontaneous, erratic, irrational, uncontrollable -yet, incredible detail and vivd imagery Holocaust interviews are articulated in a different manner: straightforward, methodical, well thought out
Zach, Ben, lexi
Response #8:
At http://squash.la.psu.edu/~plarson/smuseum/sata.html the writer notes that Many people tend to think of slavery as some archaic feature of a long dead past, a bygone practice with littlerelevance to our lives today. Of course North Americans are one century and several generations away from the age of slavery and Africans are even closer to it (slavery was ended in Africa only during the early twentieth century); but the truth is that in terms of social time, slavery is right in our backyard and sometimes uncarefully swept under our living room rugs. The modern Atlantic world--including the countries, cultures and practices we know today in Africa, Europe and America--was significantly shaped by the institution of slavery. We continue to live the legacy of slavery (for example, we can hardly imagine what an Atlantic world without slavery would look like today). We should not, indeed we cannot, ever forget slavery. If we do, we lose our humanity by refusing to reflect on one of the fundamental institutions of the past which "got us where we are." While this view of slavery's relevance to our modern world seems to have more political and economical implications, there are an abundance of social and psychological implications as well. At http://squash.la.psu.edu/~plarson/smuseum/numbers.html it reads: In the middle of a blank page at the beginning of her celebrated work BELOVED, A NOVEL, Toni Morrison writes:
Sixty Million
and more
This is very important to keep in mind. Just as the Jews are well aware
of the more than 6 million that were executed during the Holocasut, it
is necessary for us all to remember the magnitude of slavery. On pages
210 and 211, Morrison poetically writes on these sixty million and more,
and the effect that their experiences still have on us today. She says
things such as "it is always now", possibly referring to the
historical value of slavery in America. She also writes, "it is hard
to make yourself die forever", which speaks to the same idea. Morrison
writes that "there is no room to tremble", and "I cannot
fall because there is no room". This could easily relate not only
to the experiences of slaves, but to those affected by the atomic bombing
and the holocaust as well. There seemed to be a definite parallel between
some of the experiences related in the Nagasaki bombing commentaries and
some of the experiences of Sethe in Beloved. In relating her painful experineces
at Sweet Home, Sethe says "The picture is still there and what's more
If you go there - you who never was there - if you go there and stand in
the place where it was it will happen again: it will be there waiting for
you...."(p.36) This experience is extremely painful for Sethe to think
about - as if when thinking about it, she relives the experience - thus,
no matter how many years go by, no matter how far away she travels, she
can never escape the experience, through memory - which in turn will always
be real. The best she can do is to protect her children from reliving the
same pain, even thogh they may never have experienced it themselves. In
the same way, many of the Nagasaki narratives are from people whose parents
or grandparents were survivors fothe bombing. They talk aobuty how matter
of factly these elders related theri experiences during the bombing - thus,
the children felt as if they didn't understtand the gravity or the profoundness
of the experience as much. It seems as if the parents we4re protecting
the children from the pain, much like Sethe was. However, as the children
grew up and learned more about what happen, either throgh visiting Nag.,
or through visual media, they begtan to understand and trully feel the
horror, and how real this expereince really was and is. It seemed as though
some of these people truly understood what Sethe meant when she said that
"it's going to always be there waiting for you." Indeed, for
those who either actively or passively experience such a tragedy, the pain
is eternal because "anything dead coming back to life hurts"(p.35)
Also, on the Holocaust there is a play at
http://remember.org/educate/hist.persp.genericide.html
This one-act play (performed August 24-28, 1994 at Wismer Theatre on the Chico State campus, written and directed by Michael Dunn) addresses the difference between history, memory, and virtual reality in the time passage of a single day. The play begins and ends with a dream, mingled with four fantasies weaving in and out of Carl's reality framed by the two dreams. The line between history and memory is a central theme to this play. The Holocaust is an event whose recreation creates an abstraction; it is impossible, short of torturing prospective actors, to recreate the degradation. By doing so, a myth has been created of what the time period was like. This play works against the myth and into the memory of the survivor, a participant in history who was turned in by her German friend, Karl, just when she was about to escape a concentration camp. History is represented by Carl Mari, who upon learning of her plight in a dream and confirming it in reality, spends the entire play trying to rescue her from her own past. It seems long, but check it out for the relationship between memory, history, etc. Also, to quote one Holocaust survivor: "I don't want to remember, but I just can't forget."
Doug Boin
Cleveland Lawrence III
Patrick Ball
Response # 9:
We looked at web sites pertaining to the Holocaust, slavery and the dropping of the bomb to better understand how people talk about the unspeakable. We found different ways of dealing with this difficult challenge. On page 36 of Beloved Sethe is talking about remomories and telling Denver she can never go to Sweet Home. The reason is that even if everything at Sweet Home dies and that place is no longer there, "if you go there and stand in the place where it was, it will happen again." This reality of living memories was apparent in the Nagasaki atomic memories page through MR's account of his learning of the bombs. His Mother survived the Nagasaki bomb and related her story to him as he was growing up. However, he says he did not fully know or understand what had happened until he visited Peace Park in Nagasaki with her. Another common way of responding to untellable stories is to relate the cold facts with little or no opinion offered. In many of the slave narratives, the authors only had to relate their experience to convey the severity of their situation. It was not necessary for them to tell us that it was terrible, that was obvious from the story. Another feature common to both the Slave narratives and the Holocaust was the way children came to understand their plight. It seems common to have had the child come to a realization based on experience rather than being told by their parents.
The slave narratives are filled with stories where a child only truly knew what it meant to be a slave after receiving their first beating. When children did not experience the horrors for themselves, they usually came to understand them through their parents. However, the terror of the past was never openly discussed. As in Beloved, children like Denver learned of their parent's past through bits and piece. One survivor of the holocaust, Anne Levy, described how she remembered her parents talking only to each other about the past and very rarely to their children.
John McGowan, Grace Slattery, Meghan Cunningham
Response #10:
We found through our search that memories can take on a life of their own. Often in their retelling and with the passage of time, the initial impression of the experience is distorted and can take on a new historical context. In this way history can act as an external force that constantly reshapes personal memories. From this base, we discussed the ability of memories to hold the storyteller captive. Memories can take possession of a person's senses, as the memories of Sethe's past take control even of her house.
Liz Stapleton, Aaron Davis, Sarah Toner, and Allison Tepley
Response #11:
The novel Beloved is told in a flashback manner, in line with the workings of the human mind. It illustrates the painful course of memoryin a survivor of a tragedy as painful as slavery or atomic destruction orconcentration camps. As the events happen, the focus is on one principle - survival - without much moral consideration or analysis included. In the aftermath of the event, the memories become dream-like, as if they never were real, but the truth of the matter is that they areall TOO real. When the reality of the memories begins to dawn upon thesurvivor, there occurs a desperate attempt to force the memories back intothe depths of the unconscious, so to not relive them in all their pain,this time actually assessing them and analyzing them for what they reallywere. But the memories always seem to come to the fore. They come out inactivities of every day life, against one's will. Or as in the case of the novel, they manifest themselves in other subconscious events that are outof the survivor's control. The ghost of the baby Beloved, represents theterror of Sethe's past. It forces her to confront the events which tookplace upon her escape from slavery, and to come to terms with them in alltheir violence and reality. Despite the pain of the memories, their presence is needed inorder for one to know onesself and make sense of the terrible reality of one's past. The memories also serve to pass along the experience to others in its purest possible form so that they can witness the reality of thepast and know its signs. The phrase "Never Again, Never Forget" as oftrepeated about the Nazi Holocaust and in this case about African-American Slavery is a testament to the necessity of telling the story and passingthe horrific images onto the next generation, so that they can keep that reality and the lessons of that reality alive even after the survivorsaren't left to speak of it. Sethe is tormented by her child's ghost, butat the time time she does not wish for the ghost to leave, for that wouldmean that the reality of her suffering would vanish and be possibly forgotten.
Leah Marcus
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