Word: belovedness
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To a remarkable extent, Beloved does just that. Toni Morrison, the author of four previous novels including the acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977), certainly displays slavery in all its cruelty and loathsomeness, but she does so from an intriguing, unsettling perspective. Her heroine is Sethe, who has run away from...
Evidently something terrible has happened here, and much of Beloved is devoted to a painstaking unraveling of this mystery. Sethe is an unwilling participant in the process, since she has everything to forget and believes that "the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay." She cannot quite...
Morrison's supple prose makes such desperation palpable. Beloved is full of vivid images, freshly rendered. Here is the runaway slave facing the Ohio River, which stands between her and liberation: "Sethe was looking at one mile of dark water, which would have to be split with one oar in...
The flesh-and-blood presence of Beloved roils the novel's intense, realistic surface. This young woman may not actually be Sethe's reincarnated daughter, but no other explanation of her identity is provided. Her symbolic significance is confusing; she seems to represent both Sethe's guilt and redemption. And...
On Wednesday afternoons when school is not in session, French children can tune in a popular TV game show that has no American parallel. The program confronts young contestants with invidious English expressions that have infiltrated common parlance and invites them to concoct substitutes in their own language. Some of...