Category: Uncategorized

By Mar Leeman, Dylan Walawender, Taylor Bramhall, Kya Primm, Joe Morgan, Olive Niccoli, Jenna Brace, and Sheridan Morgan
ENGL431
Dr. Beth McCoy
24 February 2023

In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, the readers follow the current and previous inhabitants of house 124, as the novel switches between the past and the present. Sethe and her daughter, Denver, live in torment with the ghost of Sethe’s past – her infant daughter, referred to as Beloved, who was killed by her mother to protect her from what she considered a worse fate. The ghostly Beloved is banished by Sethe’s old acquaintance, Paul D, “the last of the Sweet Home men,” but she returns in the flesh (Morrison 7). Prior to living at 124, Sethe and Paul D were enslaved; the plantation from which Sethe and Paul D escaped, Sweet Home, is originally run by Mr.Garner. Following his death, a much crueler man known as schoolteacher takes over, leading to Paul D’s imprisonment, which serves to emphasize Morrison’s examination of the contrapasso in Dante’s Inferno.

One of the most complex circles in Dante’s Inferno is the Eighth Circle – the start of lower Hell and entry into the domain of fraud. This circle is named “Malebolge,” meaning “evil ditches” or “evil trenches,” which features an architectural and urban built environment (contrasting the circle of violence’s natural environment.) The tortured souls trapped in this circle “committed ten different varieties of fraudulent sin” (Inferno 18 – Digital Dante) and Malebolge is subdivided into ten “evil trenches” that house different variations of fraudulent sinners. Significantly, the second holds flatterers, punished by being suffocated in a ditch coated in excrement, and the filth, holding those who made a living out of fraud or trickery, are punished by being “submerged in the boiling pitch with which the bolgia is filled” (AHC). These three bolgias are key components of Morrison’s Beloved – specifically in the imprisonment of Paul D. 

To contextualize the imprisonment chapter, it is important to note how Morrison builds from previous moments where Sethe and Paul D allude to their past traumas. Paul D confesses to Sethe that as her milk was stolen from her, her husband, Halle, had watched. Paul D likewise reveals that he could not speak at the time since he had an iron bit in his mouth, feeling inferior to a rooster. Even as this sharing of vulnerability brings them closer together, Paul D alludes to the “tobacco tin” in his chest, referring to the past he wants to keep hidden (Morrison 83). Morrison uses this image as a throughline in the imprisonment chapter to shape Paul D’s character. 

After being sold to a man named Brandywine, Paul D attempted to kill this new master and failed. He was then incarcerated with forty-five other men, who were forced to live in wooden boxes set down in ditches. Eighty-six days passed, and a torrent of rain halted their work. Eventually, the trenches filled with mud and water, becoming dangerous; but the forty-six men escaped and reached a tribe of sick Cherokee people. Paul D was the last to leave the camp, fleeing north to Delaware. The chapter concludes with a recurrence back to this tobacco tin in Paul D’s chest, the image of his hidden trauma, where “nothing in this world could pry it open” (Morrison 145). In Paul D’s imprisonment chapter, Morrison parallels the imagery of Canto XVIII and reverses the rationale behind the punishments administered in the Malebolge. In Inferno, Dante implies you are justly punished for the sins you committed in life, while in Beloved, Morrison demonstrates that enslaved people are subjected to an undeserved, yet similar torture. Through Paul D’s imprisonment, Morrison exposes the institution of whiteness as they use their power to unjustly punish those they deem as inferior. 

Morrison’s use of imagery, similar to that found in Dante’s Malebolge, is striking when reading the two works comparatively. In Beloved, the three feet of open trench in front of the gates that form the entrance to each cell, the two-foot-wide space that remains for the prisoners, covered with two feet of dirt over the scrap lumber that serves as its ceiling, is eerily reminiscent of a coffin in a grave (Morrison 125). Dante’s description of the sinners in the first bolgia as “crammed into the depths of the first ditch” is a fitting parallel, and it seems that Morrison is making a connection here to the “new suffering souls, new means of torture; and new torturers” that Dante finds there (Inferno, XVIII:22-24). Additionally, the three white guards who walk along the trench abusing the prisoners call to mind the “horned devils with enormous whips / lashing the backs of the shades with cruel delight” (Inferno, XVIII:35-36). As these trenches fill with water after nine days of rain, the decision is made to leave the prisoners locked in their wooden graves where they have no choice but to relieve themselves within the tiny confines of their cell, their feces and urine mixing with the same mud they eventually must submerge themselves in to reach freedom. Dante may as well have been standing above them, rather than the flatterers in the second bolgia, when he says, “from where I stood I saw / souls in the ditch plunged into excrement / that might well have been flushed from our latrines” (Inferno, XVIII:112-114). With this parallel relationship intact, we can see the ways in which morality and punishment operate in Inferno.  

Within Dante’s Inferno, the moral concept of sin and punishment is an integral theme. It is impossible to understand Inferno without understanding that Dante was coming from a society that grappled heavily with the concept of sin and subsequent punishment within the afterlife. Why, then, is Malebolge designed this way, to provoke this particular brand of suffering? Dante’s Inferno relies on his own self-condemnation and punishment for sins he has already committed, trying to walk through Hell with a guide. Morrison turns this idea on its head in Beloved, with no guide available to her characters in this instance. She uses Dante’s examination of punishment as her baseline in Beloved on power and punishment. How can this system be fair when it directly opposes the idea of a contrapasso? Morrison seems to suggest that there is no such thing as Divine Justice, and this idea is just that: a literary device. Dante’s entire journey, led by Virgil so far, is in an attempt to keep him from eternal damnation and lead him into Heaven; in contrast, Paul D is thrown into his own Hell through no sins of his own. But are any of the sinners truly guilty? Or are they simply subject to a punishment for which they have no recourse, no way to explain, or ask forgiveness? Much like the men who run the prison in Beloved, the demons take perverse pleasure in torturing those who have less power, as Dante demonstrates: “With a hundred prongs or more they pricked him, shrieking” (Inferno, XXI: 54). This also calls into question an important idea in Morrison’s works as a whole; who has the power to inflict pain and punishment upon others?

Morrison includes the element of a lead chain in the imprisonment chapter by saying “and the lead chain gave it everything he had” (Morrison 127). A lead chain is what large animal owners use to move and control the animals, and by using a lead chain Morrison is relegating the prisoners to animals. This may have been influenced by Dante’s treatment of the sinners, as he also strips away the identity of the prisoners, noting how they appear as “misbegotten souls, whose faces you could not see before” (Inferno, XVII:76-77). Whereas those in the Malebolge are stuck, never atoning for their sins despite enduring eternal punishment, Morrison twists this concept on its head, bringing her characters out of their Hell and allowing them the sweet taste of freedom. Although freedom is the ideal dream for the prisoners, it comes with a cost. In the present day of Beloved, he is forced to enact the sins that correspond with the punishment he endured. For example, one of the most prominently featured sins committed by Paul D was flattery. In Inferno, the punishment for flattery is being covered in feces, which is eerily reminiscent of Paul D’s escape from prison through the mud. Shortly after his arrival at 124, he begins a sexual relationship with Sethe that is colored by his desire for her from their past at Sweet Home. While the dalliance between the two contains traces of flattery, it is the later fornication between Paul D and Beloved that takes this concept over the edge. “If he trembled like Lot’s wife and felt some womanish need to see the nature of the sin behind him,” is what Paul D thinks once Beloved begins to approach him in a sexual manner (Morrison 137). By comparing him to Lot’s wife, Morrison is implying that Paul D is aware that what he is about to do is a sin, but he physically cannot help himself. It is in his nature to be so tempted by the past that it destroys his future, just as the aforementioned biblical figure did not leave her past in the past and ended up suffering, by turning into a pillar of salt.

 Unlike Dante, who championed a strict code of morals, Paul D begs for “sympathy, perhaps, for cursing the cursed,” suggesting that his sinning is not his fault, but a result of his circumstances (Morrison 137). This argument from Paul D encapsulates the reversal that Morrison is making. While Dante argued that the way one lives their life leads to the punishment they receive, Morrison heralds the belief that when one is punished, they are then shaped by those conditions and must learn to live with the weight of that torture; the moral system of Inferno does not exist in Beloved, and the system of whiteness producing enslavement and incarceration produces undeserving punishment. 

Though not quite the same, the prison system within the United States today is a new eighth circle of Hell for black men and women, with incarceration rates for black Americans exceeding the rate-by-population of white Americans. Brutality runs rampant amongst prison guards, the aggressors. In an article written by Andrea Jacobs in 2004, she describes a harsh institution of brutal treatment at the hands of prison guards: “Corrections officers at the Cheshire Correctional Institution in Connecticut subjected Ronald Nussle to an unprovoked and unjustified beating” (Jacobs 279). She continues on to describe his treatment in detail, which reminds one of the treatment of enslaved people almost 200 years ago. This serves as a cruel reminder that Paul D’s experience with imprisonment in Morrison’s fictional tale held true long ago and that the vestiges of slavery run rampant within American society today, particularly in the unjust justice system. For example, the 13th Amendment is widely known as that which rightfully ended slavery. However, this isn’t exactly true. It prohibits slavery “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted” (U.S. Const. amend. 13, § 1.). In other words, prisoners can be lawfully exploited for unpaid labor in the United States. This is even more significant when considering that 38.5 percent of inmates are Black due to the over-policing of marginalized communities (BOP Statistics: Inmate Race). Therefore, those subject to these conditions are overwhelmingly those who already face historic and modern maltreatment.

 Today, Black Americans have freedoms that Paul D, and other enslaved people were denied, but tales of horror seep out of U.S. private and public prisons, bringing us back down to the eighth circle. Dante describes the horrors of Malebolge and its own prison guards consisting of cruel devils, while Morrison draws a similar comparison in describing how the guards would shove and hit prisoners with the butt of their rifles (Inferno XVIII, Morrison 127). Looping back to unfair treatment within American prisons today and the idea of the eighth circle of Hell and the “cruel delight” of Hell’s own guards, it seems as though Morrison’s Hell outlined within Beloved never truly ended.

It is important to note that while Morrison wrote Beloved almost a quarter of a century ago, her concepts and meanings still apply to our own world. Dante’s Inferno, written six centuries before our own, also holds true in today’s society. As Morrison seems to demonstrate in drawing from Dante’s Inferno to craft Paul D’s imprisonment, by reversing the moral dynamic of contrapasso as seen in the Malebolge, there is an emphasis on the undeserved cruelty of incarceration, and enslavement, on the cruelty of white supremacy and dehumanization of Black people, and on the fictive quality of a moral system associated with constructs like punishment to prop up institutions of power.

WORKS CITED

AHC. (n.d.). Inferno. Ahc.leeds.ac.uk. Retrieved February 17, 2023, from https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/discover-dante/doc/inferno/page/5#:~:text=In%20this%20circle%20are%20punished 

Federal Bureau of Prisons. (2023, February 18). BOP Statistics: Inmate Race. https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_race.jsp.

Inferno 18 – Digital Dante. (n.d.). Digitaldante.columbia.edu. https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/inferno/inferno-18/ 

Jacobs, A. (2004). Prison power corrupts absolutely: exploring the phenomenon of prison guard brutality and the need to develop a system of accountability. California Western Law Review, 41(1), 277-302.

Morrison, T. (1987). Beloved. Alfred A. Knopf.

US Constitution, Amendment 13.

Authors: Hailey Cullen, Madolley Donzo, Genesis Flores, Laryssa Olsen, Meghan Havens, Shauna Blochwitz, Kyra Drannbauer, and Isabelle Covert

On their journey through Hell in Inferno, Dante the Pilgrim and Virgil encounter the Eighth Circle of Hell, the Malbolge, which consists of ten ditches or bolgia “ . . . cut out of stone the color of iron ore, / just like the circling cliff that walls it in” as described in Canto XVIII, lines 1-9. Dante the Poet describes the Malbolge in Cantos XVIII-XXX. The travelers cross each bolgia by crossing a bridge made out of rock. In each bolgia, they encounter sinners who are receiving punishments corresponding to their sins. As with the sinners in the other Circles of Hell, the sinners are subjected to contrapasso, meaning that the punishment meted out to the sinners in Hell matches their crimes. This idea is explicitly mentioned in Canto XVII of the Malbolge with Bertran de Born, whose head is cut off as his punishment for his cutting “the bonds of those so joined” between Absalom and David in lines 133-142.

In the fifth bolgia, grafters, or corrupt politicians, are forever bobbing in boiling tar, sometimes pushed in and under by the Malebranche devils. The imagery surrounding this bolgia is very distinct, with the sinners’ heads going under and coming up, as in line 46 of Canto XXI: “that sinner plunged, then floated up stretched out.” Dante the Pilgrim recalls first seeing the devils and Virgil protecting him: “my guide, shouting to me: “Watch out, watch out!” / took hold of me and drew me to his side.” As Dante and Virgil descend into the sixth bolgia, which punishes hypocrites by covering them in golden cloaks lined with lead to weigh them down, Virgil acts as a helpful and protective guide for Dante as their escape from the angry Malebranche continues. Dante comments in Canto XXIII lines 37 through 39, “My guide instinctively caught hold of me/ like a mother waking to some warning sound/ who sees the rising flames are getting close/ and grabs her son and runs—she does not wait.” Virgil leads Dante through Hell, discovering the sins of humankind in the afterlife.

The novel Beloved explores one of these humankind sins through man’s experience of enslavement, and of the human vices that result from the effects of those horrors. Each character struggles with trauma resulting from their enslavement, which appears in different ways. Morrison, in her novel Beloved, uses and manipulates the archetype of a Virgilian guide, which originates with Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” in ways that show that different people and characters have different ideal guides, and that the ideal guide can change as a character’s situation changes. For Paul D’s character, his circumstances place him in prison, where he utilizes a guide as he faces further horrors in his imprisonment.

Paul D’s arrival to prison began with a murder. After Sixo’s murder at the hands of schoolteacher, after the previous losses of Paul D’s best friends and family, and after Paul D was sold to another man, Brandywine, Paul D attempted to murder his new master. As a result, he was sent to prison where he, and 45 other men, experienced brutality at the hand of their captors. Paul D and the others designated their foreman as Hi Man, the “lead chain” who would come to serve a Virgilian role throughout the grueling duration of their enslavement; “With a sledge hammer in his hands and Hi Man’s lead, the men got through” (Morrison 127). With a guide established in Hi Man, as their designated savior-figure, the men were able to recognize their strength as a group which would lead to their eventual escape.

The opportunity for escape first came in the form of the rain, which turned the ground into pliable mud that allowed them to slip underneath the bars. The internal strength to take their opportunity came from each other, from Hi Man down, as they communicated with each other through the tug of the chain, “Some lost direction and their neighbors, feeling the confused pull of the chain, snatched them around. For one lost, all lost. The chain that held them would save all or none, and Hi Man was the Delivery” (Morrison 130). Under the bars, and into the night, through the escape they could rely only on each other. Hi Man remained their faithful guide across Georgia, leading them to the Cherokee, who broke their chains, and gave them the ability to restore some semblance of their ordinary lives, “Hi Man wanted to join them; others wanted to join him. Some wanted to leave; some to stay on. Weeks later Paul D was the only Buffalo man left-without a plan” (Morrison 132). Hi Man and the bond the men formed among themselves brought the men out of enslavement, out of their own hell, and allowed them to embark on their own journeys of self-discovery and freedom.

The Paul D imprisonment chapter is evocative of Dante and Virgil’s time in the Malbolge. When Virgil and Dante the Pilgrim enter the bolgia, they see “two files of sinners,” which is reminiscent of the prisoners in Georgia, chained up in a single file line, and being forced to dig ditches. Ditches make an appearance in Inferno since each group of sinners is placed into different ditches based on what Dante would considered their deserved punishment. This ties into Dante’s idea of contrapasso because, in Beloved, the white guards believe that the Black men deserve their imprisonment for the crimes they committed against their slave owners, however, the similarities of these beliefs change. Morrison’s novel is rooted in the sense that enslavement and Paul D’s imprisonment weren’t something that the characters who experienced it deserved, but one that is happening to them; without their consent. As the rain rages on while the men are being forced to work, the guards lock them away in holes, which is representative of the sinners who were stuffed into holes shaped like baptismal fonts with their feet burning. Though the prisoners aren’t on fire, they do find themselves stuck in a hole, awaiting whatever fate befalls them. When the ditches begin to flood, the prisoners are able to escape without a trace due to the heavy rain. In another section of Malebolge, Dante watches the sinners “without an escort, [moving] along, one behind the other, like minor friars bent upon a journey,” which is distinctive of how Morrison explains the escape of the prisoners. They tug on their chains, following Hi Man out of the hole to freedom, one behind the other, and continue on in a single-file line until they reach the Cherokee people.

Aside from the many similarities between Paul D’s imprisonment and Dante’s cantos on Malebolge, Morrison also manages to recapitulate Inferno by mirroring her characters after those Dante the Poet used in Inferno; she uses the traits and characteristics of his characters to create more realistic and complicated characters of her own. When looking at Beloved, it is common to want to assign one of the characters as Virgil; someone who may guide the characters throughout the entirety of the novel just as Dante the Pilgrim’s guide leads him through the layers of Hell. However, as the pasts of Morrison’s characters get revealed, one realizes that there isn’t a singular Virgil. The characters in Beloved––Paul D and Sethe––all have different guides throughout the novel who help them through different aspects of their lives. In the Paul D imprisonment chapter, Paul D is guided by Hi Man, the Cherokee people, and the flowers he follows towards freedom in the North. When Sethe decides to escape from her enslavement, she relies on Amy to guide her through the night and help her give birth in the boat.

Not only does Morrison’s usage of a Virgil character differ from Inferno, but also the characters’ interactions with their Virgilian guide drastically varies from how Virgil and Dante interact on their journey through Hell. Since Sethe initially wasn’t expecting to gain help or support from someone on her journey to freedom, she was very wary of Amy, especially since Amy was a white woman. Through the night, Sethe’s uneasiness abates, allowing her to be more appreciative of Amy, even going as far as naming her newborn daughter after this guide. Through their time together, Amy and Sethe never divert from the path, whereas, Paul D seems to constantly stop following the flowers as a guide. He is a traveler at heart, and he knows (without really knowing) that they are taking him to 124––to Sethe––so he finds himself stepping off the path every now and then, but eventually he gets where he needs to be. Most of Morrison’s main characters seem to rely heavily on their guides, whereas, in Inferno, Dante the Pilgrim doesn’t think he relies on Virgil. Though he follows Virgil through the layers of Hell, Dante is under the impression that he’s the one in charge. Virgil also doesn’t have a moralistic ground as Dante’s guide, allowing Dante to stay rooted in his beliefs of contrapasso; treating the souls however he wishes and forcing them to retell their stories so he can write them down.

Paul D, specifically, changes in his experiences with guides in Beloved, from his time at the prison to the end of the novel. Paul D heavily relies on Hi Man as a guide both inside the prison and during the escape. Inside the prison, Paul D and all the prisoners rely on Hi Man in a literal sense because they follow his verbal signals to start and stop working but also in an emotional sense as his consistency helps them get through the torture they endure at the prison. In their escape, Paul D and the other prisoners are led by Hi Man towards salvation. As his story continues and his situation changes, however, Paul D begins to rely less on guides like Hi Man, and becomes a guide himself. He acts as a guide towards Sethe when he first arrives at 124, providing her support and the promise of a new, happier life together. His role as a guide for Sethe culminates, though, in his return to 124, when he helps Sethe move forward from her horrific past of killing Beloved by reminder her that she is her own “‘best thing.’” By showing that Paul D both needs a guide and can be a guide in Beloved, Morrison manipulates the Virgilian guide archetype. She shows that unlike in Inferno, where Virgil is indisputably the guide figure and Dante the Pilgrim is the follower, the characters of Beloved  can be interchangeably guides and followers. In doing so, Morrison creates a more complex and realistic portrayal of human beings, especially for human beings who have experienced something as evil as enslavement. 

In Beloved, we see conversations about characters and morality/ideology/belief in the ideas of Virgilian guides and of Contrapasso. Guides and mentors are something that everyone has in common. Anyone can tell you someone that influenced them, helped them, or guided them at some point in their life. In Dante’s Inferno, Dante the Pilgrim finds the ultimate, true guide in Virgil, who is obviously someone who Dante the poet found really influential. However, Morrison brings in the idea that no guide can be true or perfect, because people’s needs and wants in a guide changes as they do. Morrison embodies this by giving each character several guides that are different depending on where the character is in their life and journey.

Showing that no guide in Beloved is perfect leads to one of the main themes in both Beloved and Inferno, which is what it means to be a good person. Dante’s solution to this is Contrapasso, where all people are punished in Hell in ways that are equal to and reflect their sins, so they have earned that punishment with their actions. Morrison seems to be really aware of this ideology as she thinks through Beloved and the specific challenges that  her characters face. Obviously, the hell that was enslavement was not earned by anyone who was enslaved; however, this may not be Morrison’s main conversation with contrapasso, as she said in her interview with Mervyn Rothstein that this book is not about enslavement. A lot of the conversation seems to be revolving around the events that led to Paul D’s imprisonment and the events that transpired when Sethe killed her daughter. Paul D is sent to prison for attempting to kill his enslaver, which, in itself, is a justifiable action. His punishment for this, the prison in Alfred, Georgia, is cruel and barbaric, and is not at all justified by his “crime.” Sethe’s action in trying to kill her daughter and attempting to kill her other children is best moralized by Morrison’s statement in this interview: “It was absolutely the right thing to do… but she had no right to do it.” While the actions that Paul D and Sethe did are, by definition, similar, the contexts and situations could not have been more different. Sethe felt, and continues to feel, justified in her actions, but the “punishment” she faces in the violent ghost of the baby and the parasitic physical presence of Beloved that almost kills her is not in any way equal to what she does. This question of morality, sin, and punishment is one that tends to haunt us as people, as we move through life, and Morrison seems to be assuring her readers that their “punishments” may not be in any way connected to or reflecting the ways in which they have sinned.

Just like the characters in Beloved, we, as students, will experience different forms of guides in English 431 as we grow and change throughout the course. We have Dr. McCoy as a guide for navigating the intricate concepts with Morrison’s work and, for many of us, encountering Dante for the first time. We also have our peers to guide us as we work collaboratively, showing each other new ways to interpret the texts and reexamine our original thinking. But, analogous to Paul D switching from needing a guide during his time in prison to becoming a guide for Sethe at the end of the novel, we can take on the role of guide ourselves in this course. We can guide each other by giving feedback, inspiring/encouraging each other, and managing conflict if/when it arises, which are all behaviors that help to develop the competencies for career readiness that NACE states college graduates should strive for when entering the workforce. We can also guide ourselves by keeping ourselves on task, communicating clearly, and reflecting on our own strengths/weaknesses, more behaviors suggested by NACE. In this way, we can take the idea of guides as depicted in Beloved in relation to Dante’s Inferno, and develop lifelong skills that will help us tackle what we learn in English 431 and what we encounter in the workforce and beyond.

As I stand at the threshold of this course, nervous but ready to explore both the differences and similarities between Dante and Morrison’s work, I am wondering what will I be able to contribute to this course? What will my role in this journey be? What will I gain out of it? How will I view things after this course? Most importantly, who will I become after this course? I have so many thoughts and questions running through my mind while taking part in this course so early on. I am sure to have these questions answered throughout the course and surely will be able to reflect upon it at the end of the semester.

I have no background knowledge or experience in working with Dante besides hearing things from peers and friends who have taken courses about Dante. This far into the course I have already been able to see and connect references in Morrison’s Beloved to Dante’s works. When I have missed some connections my classmates sometimes would see things I was not and that was very stimulating and helped me to think about text’s more deeply and in different points of views. Through the course I am looking forward to challenging myself and improving my reading, writing, and observation skills. As I am standing in the threshold of this course I will continue to venture on with an open mind. 

When reading the first Canto in Dante’s Inferno I must admit I was somewhat lost. The difficulty I was having spiraled from the thoughts “what is this really saying?”, “how does this have anything to do with Morrison’s Beloved?”, and the overwhelming thought of “wow this is the most challenging work I have ever read”. With all of these overwhelming thoughts of having to make connections from two completely different time periods, it took me taking a deep breath and realizing I can only try my best and I am not in this alone, that I was then able to start making and understanding connections. 

One of the class discussions that has really resonated with me, is the connection of the seven deadly sins. The relationship between the seven deadly sins and the characters (or their actions) in Beloved relate to Dante as well. Dante encounters many different souls who are being punished for the deadly sin in which they are most guilty of during their life and are bound to eternal punishment. The sin that stood out to me the most in Beloved was pride. Sethe demonstrates pride in many ways throughout one is how prideful she is about killing her child and saving her from the enslaved life she lived. Right in the beginning of the reading I was already thinking “how can a mother love their child so deeply that killing them to protect them seems like the best choice they have?” In the article by the New York Times “Toni Morrison, In Her New Novel, Defends Women” we read “But mother love is also a killer” (paragraph 6). In the novel Sethe seems to hold onto her pride and almost lets it consume her bow because she was not allowed to feel that before. However, Paul D. challenges her pride when she is telling her story of her having enough milk for all her children. He tells her that she has two legs and not four and then leaves (Dr. McCoy’s class notes from February 8th). After the class discussion on this I was thinking more about how a mother’s love can be a killer? Is it because of the sacred bond of growing a human being inside of you that can make some mother’s love dangerous? Can it be over barring? 

I am someone who finds numbers very important and meaningful so, when we were discussing number three in class it has had me thinking about it ever since. A thought that came to mind after class while I was driving to work was “bad things come in threes” and the opposite of the “good things happen in threes”. I have heard people say it both ways all my life and to me I thought about the relationship between Beloved, Sethe, and Denver. From pages 236 to 256 we hear from Sethe, then Denver, then Beloved, then on page 256 Beloved ends by saying “You are mine, You are mine, You are mine” these words gave me the chills. As Beloved says “You are mine, You are mine, You are mine” (256), she is describing the complexity of their relationship by saying it three times sticking to our theme of things coming in threes. Sethe plays the role of a mother to Beloved and Denver, Beloved plays the role of sister and a guide for Denver but to Sethe she is her “second chance” because she is making up with Beloved for her guilt she holds within. Denver plays the role of the guide and sister to Beloved, but also the “forgotten” because Sethe is not a very present mother to her like she is to Beloved. This forms a love triangle between the three of them. I am wondering if in the rest of the trilogy (seeing how trilogy means three) will we see the number three be an important factor until the end? 

Standing in the threshold of what I feel will be a really great experience, class thus far has started calming my anxieties of starting a new course with new classmates and a new professor. As someone who worries about letting others around them down, the first couple weeks have ensured me that I will not do so in the duration of this course, instead I will be heard and guided through a journey. The class environment alone has made me feel as though I can relax and be involved in class without being criticized or made to feel inferior. I have much to learn and I am looking forward to having further small group discussions and collaboration along with full class discussions. I am looking forward to challenging myself to find connections between different texts and seeing myself grow as a not only a student but as a person as well. 

Standing at the threshold of this course and an exploration of the commonalities between both Morrison and Dante’s text, the first word that comes to mind would be conversations. How are we in conversation with each other, with our own thoughts, and among our individual interpretations? Additionally, how are the texts we read in conversation with each other? This is one question which I know based on the dynamic of our course already will certainly be answered by the firmament.

Where my background in Morrison’s work is limited, my understanding of Dante’s work supplements this and I feel that this understanding of Dante will assist me in making the connections between Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise. Based on even these first few classes, I began to see how these texts are in conversation with each other as we read Beloved and recognize the parallels in Inferno. I’m most curious about explorations into the inspiration Morrison found in the 14th century epic poem and how this influenced her writing. 

One conversation which I feel has proved my peers and I some difficulty, which only leads to further discussion and exploration, would be how a 14th century text could relate to a novel from the 20th century. At first glance, it was challenging to relate the two based on not only their differences in times of publication but in the authors and the stories they’re telling further. From such different eras and perspectives, how to analyze the texts even to begin with is a vastly different approach. However, when it came time to read Beloved, with my experience reading Dante it seemed to click and make sense even without these connections and conversations being introduced within our class meeting period. When we did discuss these texts together rather than separately, these connections became more comprehensible. 

One of the connections that has occupied my thoughts while reading and analyzing both works would be the significance of numbers and the role they play amongst the words of both Morrison and Dante. What is the relevance of Dante’s 33 cantos among three books, the division of the parts of hell, and that first line of Beloved, “124 was spiteful” with a lack of the number three- similar to the absence of Sethe’s third child? In particular, Morrison’s conversations of Sethe, Denver, and Beloved between pages 236 and 256 revolving around these characters and their relationship to Beloved I saw to highlight this importance of three- especially the ending lines of this excerpt repeated thrice, “You are mine, You are mine, You are mine” (256). Here is where I truly began to more closely examine Morrison’s craft and how the relationships of these characters are shaped by their experiences, both past and present, on their journey. I related this much to Dante’s journey through the three parts of Hell and how his pilgrimage also takes place at a point in his life where there is a notion of confusion and being lost at a midpoint in life. 

The concept of the journey is one which I can both observe in our readings as well as have experienced in my own life, connecting back to the idea of the conversations that we can engage in with literature. Class discussions have led me to understand the journey that these characters choose, such as Denver being confined to 124 and all she’s known and her departure or Paul D and his return following his egress. The journeys of the characters of Beloved and how they seem to serve somewhat ironically can be mirrored within my own journey recently. As a childhood education major, the culmination of my undergraduate studies I’ve always anticipated as student teaching my final semester and finishing my degree in the classrooms that I will someday soon be teaching in. However, having completed student teaching prior to my final semester and returning to college classes to finish my concentration in English almost seemed backwards initially as I stood at the threshold of the semester. I’ve been preparing myself to teach and felt so comfortable in that position that I was anxious upon returning to the routine of college classes and once again becoming a student. Nonetheless, I’ve found that to be far from the case even only a few short weeks into the semester. I’ve regained my confidence in working with peers to examine the literature we read outside of class and what we can then bring to our class discussions to work through the language and our different interpretations. This current part of my journey is one which I was apprehensive of, and although initially I was anticipating teaching so much so it’s all I wanted to get right back into following my experience in the classroom this past semester, it’s one I’ve found easy to settle back into. I’ve even found that this part is exceedingly rewarding, much like teaching has been for me. I enjoy the time I’m able to sit down and read literature which I know I won’t be focusing on necessarily as I teach third graders how to multiply and divide or about precipitation cycles. Where I was anxious to return back to the classroom as a student rather than a teacher, I’m reminded that one of the highest beliefs I hold as a future educator myself is that learning and growth is never linear and definitely as a teacher I also hold the role of student simultaneously. This reminds me of the duality of Dante as both pilgrim and poet, and myself as both a teacher as well as a student, and how these roles must be considered both separately as well as together. 

I feel the conversations which I have engaged with in this class have all the more increased my sense of belongingness, that despite being ready for this next chapter of my life I am fully anticipating as well as cherishing the threshold that we stand in not only at the beginning of a new term but also as many of us are preparing for careers, new paths that we may not have planned for, the semester in general, or any of the journeys we face throughout our lives. I’ve enjoyed the many different interpretations of Beloved and Inferno based on not only our experience or lack thereof with these texts but also how our connections to the text can be made with our lived experiences. I’ve appreciated hearing and coming to a better understanding of the individuals that make up our class as this is valuable awareness to have especially in a class where it’s our relationships we bring to the texts we read that make these conversations all the worthwhile. 

All in all, while thinking of the conversations which we have already began to discuss along with the collaborative projects that will be done this semester, I feel that the comfortability with looping back in this course proves to our advantage and reinforces my thoughts on the journeys we are taking within the course and outside- and how these may be more related than it may appear initially. At this threshold, I am eager to challenge myself and my thinking through the connections and conversations that arise from both Morrison and Dante’s work and am anticipating my final semester of my journey here at Geneseo to be most influential and transformative!

In the first few weeks of this semester’s classes, I have been thinking a lot about Toni Morrison’s Beloved. The concept of the story gripped me the moment I heard it. I was initially worried about the theme of infanticide, because it’s a very difficult thing for me to read, but once I read about the inspiration for the book, it became much easier to read about. The thing that most disturbs me about the topic is the sheer brutality of the action, but after reading Mervyn Rothstein’s article “Toni Morrison, In Her New Novel, Defends Women” in class, I was able to separate the violence of the action from the intention. Where as I had at first assumed that the murder of the child would be a villainous act with the intent to hurt them, my worries had been assuaged by the revelation that the act was one of mercy. The act as a whole, intentions and all, is neither wholly good nor bad, it rests in a moral threshold between admirable and admonishable. Sethe’s goal was not to hurt the child or abandon it, but to protect it, and due to the trauma she received in slavery, the best way for her to do that was to end its life. The context surrounding the topic made it easier to stomach it. I’m the kind of person who views the world in shades of gray rather than put everything into a category of black or white. Most things fall somewhere in the middle, on the threshold between good and bad, much like Sethe’s actions in Beloved. 

A threshold isn’t just a middleground where point A meets point B, a threshold could be an entrance to a different place, literally and metaphorically. These first few weeks of the semester have been a threshold that I must cross in order to succeed in my classes. I must transition from my habits and the mindset I had been in over winter break into a mindset that will keep me motivated in my classes. It’s not an easy transition, and I tend to struggle with it every single semester, even after going to school for the last fifteen years of my life. I would say my biggest problem has been feeling as though I have to do everything by myself. Afterall, how am I going to prove that I am capable if I can’t do it on my own without any help or assistance? This mindset has not only affected my schoolwork but also how I deal with interpersonal problems and my own mental health. If I faced a problem by myself and manage to come out the other side, then I proved to myself that I could, and therefore, did not need any help going forward. This is not true. This only makes my life harder. A goal I have set for myself this semester is to stop doing that. I must recognize the fact that if I am the “Sethe” or “Dante” of my own story, I don’t have to traverse “Hell” by myself. I can look for help and find my “Stamp Paid” or “Virgil” to guide me through it and provide assistance when I need it.

Which now brings me to the topic of this essay. I think the way this class is graded is an excellent way of guiding students through a daunting level-400 english course while also ensuring they take responsibility for their own learning. It removes a significant amount stress from the class, allowing us to fully focus on the course material. Being graded on our growth puts emphasis on self improvement. The goal of the class is no longer to get an A, but to actually learn something from the class. It’ll allow students to fully absorb the material without fear of failure because the act of putting effort into learning is what their grade is based on. It puts the professor in the position of Virgil leading Dante through a dark and unfamiliar situation, which makes the “Hell” of schoolwork easier to bear. Without the burden of needing this essay to be perfect, I am able to get my thoughts out on paper and know that I will have the opportunity to improve my writing skills for future assignments. All this to say that I deeply apologize for the non sequitur that I’m about to move onto. 

One topic that we discussed in class that I found interesting was that of Patterson’s Slavery and Social Death. In class, “social death” was defined as being targeted by the law without being protected by it. Obviously, this is specifically about slavery, but I see that idea present in all forms of oppression. In general racism that continues into modern day, there’s housing discrimination such as redlining and gerrymandering, there’s overpolicing of non-white neighborhoods, and strict drug laws that disproportionately affect people of color due to that very overpolicing. Social death also happens to women in the case of Roe v. Wade’s recent overturning. Women’s bodily autonomy is being restricted without further legislation to give them options in the event of an unwanted pregnancy. When it comes to transphobic legislation, lawmakers in many states are making gender-affirming healthcare less accessible without enforcing any legal protections for trans people, who are now in even more danger without being able to transition. 

All in all, I’m looking forward to the rest of this class so that I may improve my structure when it comes to long essays like this one.

For my past seven semesters here at Geneseo, I have approached settling into my classes for the most part in the same way, with small variations as I advanced in my college career. Things like memorizing my class schedule, picking my “unassigned assigned” seat, deciding how to feel best prepared for each class, and so on. Now, three weeks into my final semester at Geneseo, one thing that has been made abundantly clear to me is how strongly I relied on found communities within my clubs and classes to ensure a successful semester. More specifically, a community within a classroom environment has been invaluable to me. Most commonly, my classmates and I may have a different reading of the text which in my experience requires trust on behalf of both parties that neither will intentionally act in bad faith. As a result of these found communities, I have established relationships that have kept me grounded throughout my college career which were particularly helpful during the pandemic and as we transitioned back into the in-person format. In this regard I would go on to say that pillars of community rely on trust to take care of each other. As I reflect on the communities that have impacted my life and my college career, I think it’s only fitting that we explore the communities that we witness throughout Toni Morrison’s novel: Beloved. 

Despite House 124’s first depiction being “spiteful” (3), the audience learns that prior to the death of Beloved, the house served as the center of the community. At 124, the main way they interacted with their community revolved around the feasts and the labor of meals. For example, the audience follows Stamp Paid as he makes a treacherous journey to get blackberries for Baby Suggs: “He walked six miles to the riverbank… Scratched, raked and bitten, he maneuvered through and took hold of each berry.” (160). Here, the reader recognizes that Stamp Paid has risked his safety and well-being for the berries, and as several of my peers pointed out during in-class discussion, Stamp’s act of sharing the berries was incredibly nurturing, selfless, and neighborly. Luckily, Baby Suggs was thankful for his efforts so, “She had decided to do something with the fruit worthy of the man’s labor and his love.” (160). Through Baby Suggs, Morrison effectively conflates the act of labor to love, and thus, it was something that should be shared, just as Stamp Paid had done. This act of labor from Stamp Paid not only fed 90 people but it strengthened their community: “124, rocking with laughter…Giving advice, healing the sick, hiding fugitives, cooking, cooking, loving…” (161). What began as sharing love, transformed house 124 into a literal safe haven for members in their community. During these feasts, their comfort with each other encouraged them to be vulnerable, express their problems and receive advice – just as they would do for others. The community began to rely on each other for food, advice and joy. However, this sense of community at 124 was short-lived. 

As the community flourished, the envy of some of its members caused an irreparable rift. While most of the community members appreciated the abundance of their feasts, a select few became envious: “Her friends and neighbors were angry at her because she had overstepped, given too much, offended them by excess.” (163). The envious members maintained this position that Baby Suggs for one reason or another was not deserving of the abundance that she had, and consequently shared. And it was that envious attitude that can be identified as the direct cause for the death of Beloved, and thus the dissolution of the community. In that, if you excessively talk negatively about someone – consciously or not, you will act or fail to act on behalf of those feelings. The community of 124 was no different as they failed to warn Baby Suggs and Stamp Paid that the four horsemen had returned looking for Sethe. As Stamp Paid recounted the death of Beloved to Paul D, the audience learns why Stamp Paid couldn’t stop Sethe: “Not anybody ran down or to Bluestone Road, to say some new whitefolks with the Look just rode in…Maybe they just wanted to know if Baby really was special” (184-85). Here, we see that gone unchecked, the envy of some within the community prevented the saving of Beloved. 

Although most of the novel centers around 124, Morrison is deliberate in demonstrating other communities to the audience through Paul D. He formed a community with 45 other enslaved men after he tried to kill Brandywine. While community typically has a positive connotation, in reality, that is not always the case. Sometimes, you build bonds of trust as a means of survival in situations that you are otherwise forced to be. In the case of Paul D, he was chained together with 45 men, so they needed to rely on each other. Here, the men were so in-tune with each other that they were able to communicate with their eyes: “They were the ones whose eyes said, ‘Help me, ‘s bad’… A man could risk his own life, but not his brother’s. So the eyes said, ‘Steady now,’ and ‘Hang by me.’” (128-29). As I researched the etymology of community and communication, it was no surprise that they both originate from the word “common,” but this just affirms to the audience how vital communication is to a community. Here, the men relied on their communication to keep each other alive. On the other hand, if anybody from the community at 124 had warned Baby Suggs about the arrival of the four horsemen, Beloved could have been saved. As we move forward in the semester and the novel, I look forward to exploring how communication may work to save communities, just as communication eventually freed the 46 chained men.

At this point, it would be remiss of me not to mention the found Community or relationship between Denver and Beloved and its relation to Dante. As a result of her sister’s murder, she and Sethe were essentially isolated from the rest of the world, “I can’t live here…Nobody speaks to us. Nobody comes by.” (17). It is only when Beloved returns that Denver feels she finally has a companion who she cares for in house 124, “Denver tended her, and, out of love and a breakneck possessiveness hid…Beloved’s incontinence” (64). Immediately following her sister’s arrival, Denver was protective but also kept Beloved’s secret which involves layers of trust and intimacy often found in a community. However, when there is an exchange of trust between people, there is an opportunity for betrayal. As demonstrated in the chart of Dante’s Inferno, the ninth circle of Hell, also known as Cocytus, contains “Caina,” otherwise known as betrayers of kin. Following 18 years of solitude, Denver is incredibly attached, and even feels a sense of ownership over Beloved, so the mere thought of Beloved leaving her causes her to become upset. Upon losing her in the shed, and between tough swallows, Denver says, “Don’t. Don’t go back…I thought you left me. I thought you went back.” (145). Considering that Denver and Beloved are one of only pairs of siblings, I believe we are on the threshold of an upcoming betrayal between the two of them. My beliefs are confirmed even more when we consider Cocytus, the ninth circle of Hell, which Dante depicts as a lake of ice. Similarly, Morrison depicts a scene where Beloved, Denver and Sethe all venture out to skate on the ice near 124: “Holding hands, bracing each other, they swirled over the ice. Beloved…Denver… step-gliding over the treacherous ice.” (205). This scene shows them recklessly skating over the dangerous ice which signals to me that they are again dangerously close and have arrived at the threshold of betrayal. 

On the thresholds of this class, my hope is that I can continue my tradition of establishing a community built on trust with my peers. As we saw with the communities from 124, with Paul D and between Beloved and Denver, they rely on each other’s vulnerability. And as Morrison depicts, the communities that thrived were the ones who communicated with each other. Being that this is only my second Morrison novel, I am excited to see how the other communities within the novel and the trilogy unfold as she continues to make intricate connections to Dante. 

Bailey 204 is a vestibule. A room we will inhabit for the present moment that will lead us into our future selves. As current and future writers, graduates, and productive citizens, this room and its inhabitants stand on a threshold of understanding. These first few weeks of class, we have had valuable conversations in class, that makes me feel confident that, as a group, we will come to a fuller understanding of the texts we engage with, the symbolic implications of that text, and the practical skills that will come from comprehending that text and applying our self-evaluative skills as well as our writing abilities. Of the text as we begin our journey into Morrison’s work and engage with “Beloved,” I have found the text to be profoundly insightful and empathetic to the plight of its characters. The text is heavy, as discussions of slavery are due to the horrors enacted under it. Still, beyond that, I believe the text provides a deep understanding of human flaws and how they exist due to how a person’s circumstances shape them and how they respond to the individual traumas levied at them. At the beginning of this class, the threshold I stand in will take me toward empathy, skill, and comprehension, both as a lesson from the pieces and from the practical application as I foray into our self-evaluative and communal discussions.

At my first ingress into Morrison’s work, I noted the article concerning the historical inspiration for “Beloved” as extremely valuable to my experience, particularly as it gave context for the novel’s events alongside the actual events which touched real people in history. The article “Margaret Garner and the Complexities of Slavery and Gender” by Jessica Parr details another author who wrote about Margaret Garner, Niki M. Taylor, and Taylor’s impressions of Garner’s story, considering the legal facts of the trial as well as the response she was given by the public, and the reaction to the trauma of slavery which caused Garner to take action. Parr wrote, “As a society, we are not generally conditioned to feel sorry for a woman who kills her child.” This quote stuck with me because it accurately depicts how the dominant culture behaves; we often ignore the reasons behind an action in favor of the direct moral dilemma in front of us. In this instance, in particular, Margaret Garner’s act was reprehensible. Still, as I discussed earlier, this preconceived notion concerns the threshold to empathy and understanding. Margaret Garner was operating under impossible circumstances, one that was, and should not have been, coopted by racist ideology. Her actions came from a place of love and fear that her children would have to experience the slavery she had fought to protect them from. Works like Morrisons give a symbolic voice to those oppressed and vilified and implore its readers to understand the reasons behind the actions and how the pressures of circumstance may incline someone to undertake heinous acts.

Parr’s article, as paired with the piece “Toni Morrison, In Her New Novel, Defends Women” by Mervyn Rothstein, gave me, as a reader, an insight into the historical context and writing process that I would not have otherwise had. Rothstein details Morrison’s writing process in this quote: “The novel is not, she said, about slavery. ‘Slavery is very predictable,’ she said. ‘There it is, and there’s some stuff about how it is, and then you get out of it, or you don’t. It can’t be driven by slavery. It has to be the interior life of some people, a small group of people, and everything that they do is impacted on by the horror of slavery, but they are also people.’” Morrison’s depiction of slavery is striking and upsetting, but the piece is not about slavery; as she stated above, slavery is the conduit of trauma that shaped how the players in the novel operated and how they lived their lives. This was valuable to me at the outset because of how often slavery is mentioned in the piece, how the horrors of slavery become their own setting, their own presence in the novel, and this early reading showed me that despite the heavy presence looming overhead, that fundamentally, slavery had been a trauma, one that affected the characters, and real people to this day; however, slavery did not permanently take away the agency of the enslaved people who operated under it, and at the core, enslaved people were always first and foremost people, with their own faults and traumas and hopes and dreams, which Morrison aims to highlight in this piece.

Reading the novel has been an exceptional experience, as it is a profound exploration of its characters, its history, and the masterful way Morrison writes and creates an environment that simultaneously marks the flaws of its characters while providing an explanation for why they behave in the way that they do as individuals and socially. Reading the novel, I was caught off guard by the sensitive topics depicted in the novel, as they are difficult to imagine and harder still to know these atrocities impacted real people, but I think Morrison’s handling of the topic was essential in allowing her readers to understand her characters, the trauma they experienced, and their rationale for the actions they took throughout the novel, even if- and indeed when, those actions exceeded the bounds of decency.

The idea of sins in the novel was interesting because the characters often exemplify the 7 deadly sins in their behaviors. Sethe, for example, is a highly prideful character. She does not ask for help or sympathy and feels justified in taking whatever action necessary to protect the things she is proudest of- her children. Paul D. is lustful, having a sexual relationship with the woman his partner sees as a daughter. Denver is slothful; she always stays home and does not work. Beloved is greedy, particularly for attention, especially from Sethe, and she is also envious of Paul D. and drives him out for it. These sins are all explained by the individual’s past and how the events that have occurred previously have triggered a response in those committing the sin. Sethe couldn’t be proud because of the effects of enslavement, so she clung to her pride the moment she was allowed to have it, even to her detriment. Paul D. spent years unable to marry because he was constricted by enslavement.
Denver is slothful because she fears her mother and waits for her father, ““All the time, I’m afraid the thing that happened that made it all right for my mother to kill my sister could happen again… Whatever it is, it comes from outside this house, outside the yard, and it can come right on in the yard if it wants to. So I never leave this house, and I watch over the yard, so it can’t happen again, and my mother won’t have to kill me too.” (Morrison 306) Beloved is greedy because she was taken from her mother multiple times, craves that affection (while also resenting Sethe for the abandonment), and is envious because she wants to be noticed by the mother she was separated from. These reasons do not excuse the sin but demonstrate why the sins happened in the first place. This character complexity is a brilliant part of Morrison’s work, and I think it reflects the way we should approach people in good faith by not necessarily excusing the sin but understanding why the sinner sinned in the first place and having empathy for the traumas that they experienced.

One of the things I thought was notable from our class discussion on Wednesday was the idea of possession around Beloved, Denver, and Sethe, which is demonstrated in the quote, ““You are my sister/ You are my daughter/ You are my face; you are me/ I have found you again; you have come back to me/ You are my beloved/ You are mine/ You are mine/ You are mine” (Morrison 322). The possession in the way that Beloved, Denver, and Sethe talk about each other really resonates because, from the perspective that Beloved was a young child when she died, she was still physically in a development state where she needed her mother, to the point of identifying herself and her mother as one person. Still, more than that, when there is a home full of people who have never been able to love fully, completely, and without reserve, it follows that at the first opportunity, they want to exert all of the closeness they had been closed off from. Sethe had never been able to experience such intimacy because of her enslavement, where she could have lost anyone or anything at any time; Beloved had only one love in her mother, which she could not experience fully because of her separation from her mother (in escape and in her death); Denver could only love her mother from a distance because of her fear of her that if Sethe could kill one child, she could kill another. Unfortunately, this love is not healthy, as demonstrated by the similarities to Satan (three heads on one body), as discussed in class, and how this possession of each other allows them to lose their individuality.

In this class, I am excited to continue exploring the material and its meaning, especially as I find our discussions in class to be thought-provoking and productive. Exercises such as this essay, the writing of which was a challenging experience without a direct point to make or prove, feels like an exercise that will allow me to grow as a writer and better understand my limits and goals. This threshold into the semester has been exceptional, and I look forward to pushing forward further into the material and the semester.

Something that I have been thinking about during these first few classes is how intertwined our lives and fates can be with one another. The idea that humans are so deeply connected with one another can be terrifying to think about, yet also so fascinating. You never know when meeting someone if they will end up being an important part of your life, whether that ends up being negative or positive. While I have not yet read the entirety of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, this already seems to be a prevalent theme throughout the novel. All of the characters’ lives are so deeply intertwined with each other, some on multiple levels, that both their actions and feelings greatly affect those around them. As the main character, Sethe has the most connections. She has deep and complex relationships with Denver, Beloved and Paul D, as well as many of the other characters in the novel. Despite knowing each character for different lengths of time and having very different types of relationship with them, Sethe still has intense connections with each one of them. 

Being in close proximity to one another causes all four of these characters’ fates to be intimately connected in ways both seen and unseen in the novel. Every decision, whether it is positive or negative, will also end up affecting the other three people who live in the house. A big example from Beloved is when Paul D shows up on their doorstep to see Baby Suggs, and Sethe lets him stay. This action not only impacts Sethe but also greatly affects Denver’s everyday life, as well as Beloved when she shows up a little while later. Almost immediately after being welcomed into their home, Paul D ends up scaring the ghost of Sethe’s dead baby away, something that very much displeases Sethe and Denver. The addition of Paul D into 124 causes immediate disruption of the daily life that Sethe and Denver have come to know. While Sethe does not really seem to have a problem with this in the beginning, Denver clearly does not like having Paul D around. Despite her daughter’s clear discontent, Sethe does not make Paul D leave or do all that much to stop him from treating her a certain way. Paul D being in the house also impacts Beloved’s life, even if Sethe does not really know it. Paul D’s presence at 124 is basically the catalyst for the entire narrative of Beloved because he scares the ghost baby away and causes Beloved to essentially rise from the dead. 

Along with this, I have also been thinking about how these connections with those around us can inform our actions and emotions in many different ways. Sethe wanted to keep her children safe and out of slavery, which led to her killing one of her children. Halle saw his wife get assaulted and did nothing to stop it, causing him to go mad. Denver immediately feels protective of Beloved even though she did not fully know that they were sisters. The people around us can greatly impact who we are and the things we do, even if we do not realize it. This can be both positive and negative, and many of the examples that Morrison gives us lean more towards negative. These connections can also end up causing tensions in relationships. The biggest example of this from Beloved that I can think of is Sethe’s difficult decision to murder her infant daughter in order to protect her from the horrendous life of slavery. This decision, while made with the best of intentions, ends up affecting Sethe’s relationships with almost every other character in the novel, as well as with seemingly everyone she knew. One of the most obvious examples of this is with Paul D, who at first staunchly refuses to believe that Sethe would have the capacity to do something so horrific. When Stamp Paid is trying to tell him about what happened, he just keeps denying what is right in front of him, saying that the woman in the picture cannot be Sethe, refusing to see her for the person who actually is: “‘This ain’t her mouth. I know her mouth and this ain’t it.’ Before Stamp Paid could speak he said it and even while he spoke Paul D said it again. Oh, he heard all the old man was saying, but the more he heard, the stranger the lips in the drawing became” (Morrison 183). When he finally comes to terms with the fact that this is something she did and that she does not seem to be very regretful of it, in fact she is almost proud of her decision, he leaves 124 and essentially abandons Sethe, Denver and Beloved. Paul D is completely unable to understand Sethe and why she does the things she does, and this misunderstanding between the two creates distance that may not ever be filled. I think it is very interesting how there are some people who you can fully understand the actions and feelings of, and then there are others who make no sense to you as people, who you are consistently baffled by. There are many people in my life who I feel that I understand pretty well, and yet there are also many who I do not understand at all and regularly am bewildered by, even if I have known them for a long time. Sometimes there are just people who you will never fully understand. While that is something that can certainly be frustrating, I think it is also really fascinating because there is always more to learn about them and their perspective. Not understanding someone completely can be a new opportunity to listen and try to see the world or a situation in a different way. It is important to keep an open mind, which is something that Paul D definitely does not have when it comes to Sethe. When Paul D looks at Sethe, all he can see is the person who he wants her to be, and the strong woman that she is does not fully fit with that idea. He is not even open to the idea of hearing her reasoning and will not keep in mind that she was put in an impossible situation. 

I am very interested to see how this theme may continue to occur in Morrison’s other works, as well as possibly in Dante or some of the other pieces that we will be reading this semester. This is a theme that I feel is often in many works of art, however it often seems to be overlooked by a lot of people. The basis of it is all about human connection, which is something that has always intrigued and interested me. The ways in which we interact and inform each other’s lives is something so beautiful and interesting that is purely a product of the human condition. Our lives can be extremely intertwined with those around us, yet we can also be completely separate from someone and know nothing about them. Much of the time we do not even know the ways in which we affect other people’s lives, especially with people we do not personally know very well. Even with people we know, sometimes those connections go deeper than we could possibly see. The fact that humans’ lives are so intrinsically weaved together is endlessly fascinating to me, and I always enjoy seeing it represented in different types of media. Individual stories always have a different way of showcasing the complexity of human relationships, and Morrison’s version of this really interests me. I am very excited to see how this theme may be relevant to the stories in Jazz and Paradise, as well as how similar yet different the connections between characters will be to those in Beloved.

Halfway through his life, Dante the Pilgrim, wakes to find himself lost in a dark wood.” As a thirty-nine-year-old approaching Morrison for the first time, the opening line of Inferno is a perfect description of the way I felt as I began reading Beloved. We awake in 124 Bluestone Road, thrown into a world quite unlike our own, a world where spirits interact with the physical, and the reactions of the humans who perceive these signs— shattered mirrors, handprints in a cake, overturned furniture— often seem strangely subdued. This disorientation, the inability to find solid ground to stand on, does not seem to be a problem that Morrison is working to solve as we move through the novel but rather a deliberate feature she maintains throughout the work. 

It is not in setting alone where I feel this disorientation, but also in my understanding of the characters, each incredibly complex and often contradictory in the ways they think and act. As a ghost, the “crawling already?” baby fills the house with “venom.” She is spiteful, full of rage directed not only at Sethe but at all the inhabitants of 124. She eventually drives the boys, Howard and Buglar, away, and with the death of Baby Suggs, finds herself alone in the house with Sethe and Denver. This seems to raise the question of whether she is angry with Sethe or if she just wants her all to herself since her intrusions into their lives become less violent once it is just the three of them left in the house. When Denver and Sethe attempt to conjure her once everyone else has fled from the home, “The sideboard took a step forward but nothing else did.” This might indicate that the ghost finds the present situation closer to ideal, but with Beloved’s emergence from the river and her subsequent treatment of Sethe, we quickly realize that the grounds we may wish to stake this claim on are not as solid as we may have imagined.

I am thinking particularly of the scene in the Clearing where Sethe asks to feel Baby Suggs fingers on the back of her neck. She does begin to feel them, but they soon change from a loving caress to an attempted strangulation. Denver understands that it was, Beloved, not Baby Suggs, who was responsible for the fingers on Sethe’s neck, and so we are once again unmoored: does Beloved love Sethe with a passion bordering on obsession, or does she want to kill her for what she did to her as a child? Perhaps both? We cannot be sure.

Morrison’s treatment of Beloved’s relationship with Paul D. is equally challenging to parse and possibly paradoxical. One of the questions I still do not feel like we get a satisfying answer to, again this may be intentional, is whether Beloved and Paul D. actually do have sex or if Paul D. only believes that they did. Either way, that particular union contradicts the way the two appear to have felt about each other up until that moment. There seems to be a mutual disdain for each other that causes each to continually be on the lookout for how one can remove the other from the home and, therefore, claim Sethe’s attention and love for themselves alone. 

When Beloved approaches Paul D. in the shed and asks him, “touch me on the inside part and call me by my name,” the request is surprising considering how clearly it seems she dislikes him. Perhaps we could see this as a calculated way of getting Paul D., using that deadly sin, lust, against him in a way that would ensure Sethe’s rejection of him. A lot is going on in this scene, and I am not going to take the time here to pull it apart completely, but as it relates to the argument I am making about disorientation, I find the final few sentences of the chapter that concludes the scene especially relevant: “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” (italics are mine). When I first read this, I took this to mean that Paul D. had dreamed this entire episode and that by crying out “Red heart!” loud enough in his sleep, he woke himself from the nightmare. However, later, when he prepares to approach Sethe outside of the restaurant where she works, he is terrified to reveal to her that he and Beloved have had sex. I either missed something in between or here we find another example of action taking place that we cannot quite square with logical, temporal reality. Beloved seems to possess knowledge that, while short of omniscience, is beyond the ability of humans, while Paul D. appears to become increasingly confused by the web-like relationship he finds himself caught in. As readers, Morrison seems content to keep us closer to Paul D.’s level of understanding, at least at this point in the novel. At the very least, this interaction between the two of them adds another layer of complexity to Beloved as a character and expands what methods we can imagine as possible for her to employ to possess Sethe in the way she desires.

Another issue that I’m thinking about, specifically as a common theme in both Beloved and Inferno, took shape for me today in a conversation Owen and I were having outside of class. It is the concept of love as an emotion or principle that can move one to perform an action that we typically would associate with evil. For Dante, my sense is that this began for him as the question, “How can God, who IS love, have created hell and damned numberless souls to spend an eternity in torment there?” Dante’s Christian faith required him to see hell as yet another expression of God’s love, but how could that possibly be? Morrison, as a Catholic, may have struggled with the very same questions, but Beloved asks it from another angle. When she came across the story of Margret Garner, I imagine that what caught her was the question, “How can the love of a mother move her to murder her own child?”

I have only read Inferno, not the rest of the Divine Comedy, and when I finish Beloved this evening, it will be the only book of Morrison’s trilogy I will have read, so I am unaware of how either author attempts to come up with satisfying answers to that question. But, already in Beloved, Morrison is proving this is a question worth asking and thinking deeply about. So many of Sethe’s actions are clearly motivated by an intense, ferocious love for her children. The agony she endures as she pushes her body to the brink of death in order to be reunited with them after she risks everything to free them from slavery is just one of many moments we can point to where her self-sacrificing love for them appears undeniable. Yet somehow, her actions in the shed upon the arrival of the four horsemen seem inconsistent with her former devotion.

Paul D. represents one side of the argument that I think both Dante and Morrison see as valid: there had to be another way. As Dante circles deeper and deeper into the inferno and the torments become increasingly disturbing, he, as well as his readers, seem to be justified in assuming that a God of love, who also possesses the qualities of omniscience and omnipotence, must have had other options available for dealing with sinners. Unfortunately, for true believers, this is not an acceptable position to hold, so the struggle becomes how to understand hell, or the murder of your own children, not just as an act of love but of perfect love. 

Honestly, for me, this is an impossible position to defend and is a core reason I left the fundamentalist Christian faith that I was raised in. Ever open to understanding how faith or beliefs work for others in ways they just do not seem to for me, I am intensely interested in exploring the rest of Morrison and Dante’s works to see how they continue grappling with this question. I am eager to find out if I can understand how, or perhaps if, they answer it in ways that allow them to come to peace with the version of love their God claims to be. Whatever the result, reading each author has been wonderful from an aesthetic perspective which makes the exploration of such heavy topics a delight, both intellectually and artistically. As dark and, at times, depressing as Beloved has been, there are certain moments and passages where I truly get carried away by the prose in the way that only the most talented of artists seem able to manage. Finding beauty in tragedy is something that each author is a master of, and it has been a pleasure to be a pilgrim on this voyage so far. I am looking forward to much, much more.

When I entered through the threshold of English 431 (the doorway into Bailey 204) on my first day of spring semester classes, I expected to find myself steamrolling solely in the direction of the future, which for me is graduating in May and beginning to enter the workforce as a teacher. Or, at least, I expected to be focusing on my present, which consists of me taking the last English class I will ever take and a few other required courses at SUNY Geneseo. Instead, as I reread Dr. McCoy’s syllabus and browsed my previous blog posts on  sunygeneseoenglish.org, I was transported to the past. 

As mere happenstance, I began, and am now ending, my college career with an English class taught by Dr. McCoy. I started my fall semester as a first-year student in Dr. McCoy’s English 203: Reader and Text class on the works of Percival Everett, and now I am finishing my spring semester senior year with English 431: Toni Morrison’s Trilogy. This inverted symmetry reminds me of the literary device, chiasmus (a term introduced to me by Dr. Graham Drake in his class on the Bible due to its frequent appearance in biblical literature). Because of this chiasmus-like situation, I am directly confronted with how I began as a student and as a reader/writer at Geneseo as I end both journeys. 

I have been recalling how I felt and what I thought in English 203 and reflecting on how I may have a changed perspective in English 431. I remember my fears of inadequacy in my writing and in my abilities as a student in general as a first-year. Back then I wondered: What if I can’t understand the books we read? What if my writing is not at the college level? Is college even for me? Now, I feel more assured in my reading and writing abilities, but I am not free from all insecurities. I still question: Has my writing improved? Will I be able to apply the skills I have learned in college to my future career? 

In reflecting on my past experience in English 203 as I stand at the thresholds to English 431, I am reminded that a threshold, which can mean both a point of entry and/or a doorway/ gateway, swings both backwards and forwards– sometimes concurrently. In other words, when it seems like you are crossing a threshold to the future, your past may find you there, waiting for you to face it. While reading and thinking about Toni Morrison’s Beloved and the elements of Dante’s Inferno that, as Dr. McCoy notes in her class notes from February 1st, Beloved may be read as being in conversation with, I notice this forwards/backwards motion of thresholds, where when one thinks they may be moving in one direction, they are actually moving towards another. Especially in Beloved, the inescapability of the past becomes evident as characters try to cross thresholds forward. 

The characters of Beloved, whether consciously or subconsciously, resist memories of their horrific past as they attempt to make a life for themselves outside of enslavement. Paul D tucks the obscene images from a prison in Alfred, Georgia and the taste of an iron bit at Sweet Home into a “tobacco tin lodged in his chest.” Baby Suggs can only seem to recall, of all the details of her eight children, that her eldest was fond of the bottom of burned bread. And Sethe, who slit the throat of her own baby to protect her from being subjected to enslavement, has forgotten the language her own mother spoke, forgotten many memories of her two boys, and “forgotten the other one: the soul of her baby girl,” who she killed. Despite their resistance, however, the past haunts the characters of Beloved– literally and figuratively– as they try to move forward. 

The most obvious haunting of the past in Beloved is the arrival of Beloved, the dead daughter who was killed by Sethe, at house 124. Beloved arrives just when Sethe stands at the thresholds of possibly beginning a life with Paul D. Paul D, having just recently arrived at 124 himself, insists that he, Sethe, and Sethe’s youngest daughter, Denver, attend a visiting carnival together. At the carnival, Sethe notices how Paul D’s charming presence eases the tension between her and the rest of the community and allows fun into her and Denver’s life. She wonders if the three of them could build “a life.” It is when the three of them are walking home, and Sethe observes their shadows holding hands, that they find Beloved, “sopping wet and breathing shallow” outside 124. Sethe, trying to cross the threshold into the future, is thus directly confronted with her past. Her hellish past, refusing to be avoided, shows up on her doorstep, not in the form of tormenting memories, but as Morrison herself says in her interview with Mervyn Rothstein, “incarnate,” “the dead returned.” Sethe, therefore, cannot evade her painful past and move forward towards a pleasant life with Paul D. She must confront it head on. She must face her past– even if it’s Hell. 

This idea is reminiscent of the journey that Dante the Pilgrim takes with his guide Virgil through the Circles of Hell in Inferno. In Canto I, Virgil tells Dante that in order for him to eventually reach the hills flooded with sunlight, he must go through Hell and Purgatory. Dante the Pilgrim, similar to Sethe then, must face Hell in order to move forward towards Paradise. In fact, it is only in Canto 34, when the two travelers reach the absolute pit of Hell, underneath the frozen lake of Cocytus and clinging to Lucifer’s thigh, that Virgil and Dante the Pilgrim begin to move in the opposite direction, “out once more to see the stars.” The two travelers, seemingly entering the threshold into the worst depths of Hell, unexpectedly find themselves crawling the opposite direction out. This scene in Inferno suggests two notions to me: one being that in order to escape Hell, you must pass through it and the other being the idea that a threshold can move both backwards and forwards. 

Another example of when Sethe is confronted with her past despite being at the thresholds of a new future, is when she is running away from Sweet Home and Stamp Paid ferries across the Ohio River to freedom. Upon first inspection, Sethe appears to be crossing through the threshold into freedom as she enters the free state of Ohio. That even though the image of her being ferried across the river evokes the image of Charon ferrying Virgil and Dante the Pilgrim across the River Acheron into through the threshold into Hell in Canto III, Sethe cannot be not moving towards Hell but away from it, as she has just escaped Sweet Home and is heading towards a better future, right? Except that Sethe only spends twenty-eight days living this better future until Hell appears again in the form of four horsemen seeking to return her and her children to Sweet Home. At the idea of her children living the abhorrent life in enslavement she experienced, Sethe unsuccessfully attempts to kill all her children and herself, which results in her not being taken back to Sweet Home but still trapped in Hell, the Hell of a house haunted by a child she murdered. Therefore, Sethe, despite heading one direction through the threshold towards freedom, finds herself back where she came from, in Hell once more. Interestingly, this is the exact opposite direction that Virgil and Dante the Pilgrim traveled when seemingly headed through the threshold towards the depths of Hell only to find themselves escaping it on the other side.

Beloved and Inferno both appear to contend that, because thresholds move both backwards and forwards, one may find themselves moving in a different direction than which they expected when crossing through a threshold. Both works also seem to suggest the notion that when journeying forward, you may find yourself in Hell, in which case you have to face it, be it climbing down Lucifer’s frozen body or reuniting with the daughter that you murdered. Still, it remains unclear to me, if Sethe, having faced her undead daughter, will begin to travel back up and out of Hell in the same way that Virgil and Dante the Pilgrim did once they reached its pits. Or if the impact that enslavement left on her is just too great for her to cross that threshold into the future and she will remain stuck in that hellish past as a result. Either way Beloved calls for us as readers to face this past with her, to acknowledge the horrors of enslavement. To closely investigate the story of just one person, of the many who were enslaved, as she tries to recover from experiencing the depths of Hell. 

As I stand at the thresholds of this class, then, looking both backwards towards my time in English 203 and forwards towards what I will encounter in English 431 and beyond, I recognize that the direction that I think I am going may not be where I end up. I also know that in order to move forward with my thinking and writing this semester, I will need to loop back and face the past. Of course, my past is not Hell nor is at all comparable to what the characters in Beloved must face. Yet, my past writing, insecurities, and perspectives can inform me as I cross the threshold into this class and journey forward.