For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (novel #232)

No man is an island,

Entire of itself;

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less,

As well as if a promontory were:

As well as if a manor of thy friend’s

Or of thine were.

Any man’s death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

~ John Donne

 

 

In him, too, was despair from the sorrow that soldiers turn to hatred in order that they may continue to be soldiers. Now it was over he was lonely, detached and unrelated and he hated every one he saw. ~ narrative regarding Robert Jordan, the hero of For Whom the Bell Tolls

For Whom the Bell Tolls is set in Spain, during the Spanish Civil War. The main character, Robert Jordan, is an American fighting for the Republic against the fascists. He is a man on a mission: to blow a bridge. To do so he must travel behind enemy lines and seek the assistance of guerrilla fighters. As the novel opens, he has already found Anselmo, who in turn introduces him to a small band of guerillas ostensibly led by Pablo, but in truth led by Pablo’s wife Pilar.

 

There is immediate friction between Pablo and the Ingles as Jordan is called. Pablo believes the dynamite can be put to better use than a bridge, while Jordan has orders from the organized Republican Army. Blowing the bridge will prevent the fascists from sending reinforcements to an upcoming battle.

 

Among the guerrilla band, there is Maria, an emotionally scarred young woman the fighters rescued from the fascists. Romance develops between Roberto and Maria. They seize each possible moment and pledge themselves to each other for whatever time they have.

 

There are complications with the bridge, with Pablo, with the dynamite, with true love, but there remains the chance that things will work out, including escape after the bridge is blown.

 

The opening line of the book, and the closing find Robert Jordan in ironically similar physical positions, yet with drastically different prospects.

 

Opening line:

He lay flat on the brown, pine needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tips of the pine trees.

Closing line (three days later):

He could feel his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest.

This was a reread, but it’s been over 30 years since I last read it. I appreciated it more this time, understanding the inescapable interconnectedness of our lives that Hemingway portrayed and that he alluded to in the title. He initially intended to call it The Undiscovered Country, but eventually decided on a line from Donne. Good choice, I think.

 

Like many of Hemingway’s novels, the main character resembles Hemingway, without the novel being autobiographical. The most poignant similarity between Jordan and Hemingway, is that their fathers both shot themselves.

 

And that Jordan contemplates becoming a writer. While watching some planes overhead he muses…

They are shaped like sharks, Robert Jordan thought, the wide-finned, sharp-nosed sharks of the Gulf Stream. But these, wide-finned in silver, roaring, the light mist of their propellers in the sun, these do not move like sharks. They move like no thing there has ever been. They move like mechanized doom.

 

You ought to write, he told himself.

 

This is the fourth novel I’ve read by Hemingway. The others: The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and The Old Man and the Sea. The Old Man and the Sea is my favorite, but For Whom the Bell Tolls is a close second. The message is profound, and the characters are memorable, believable, lovable, pitiable. One complaint, that I’ve had before with Hemingway, the dialogue between lovers is absurd, preposterously cloying. (I would cite an example, but I don't want to nauseate you.)

 

Nevertheless…

 

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

 

 

For Whom the Bell Tolls is not a glorification of war. In the introduction, Sean Hemingway describes the reason for his father’s interest in war…

Hemingway appreciated the deep bonds forged in wartime among its fellow combatants, but he viewed war itself as a crime against humanity.

 

And now the movie: 1943 starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. It’s nearly 3 hours and quite faithful to the novel. I’m not a fan of Cooper, But Ingrid Bergman as Maria? I like Bergman in most things, but were there no Hispanic actresses in the 40s, or at least someone who could attempt a Spanish accent? Full on Swedish accent all the way. Baffling. But again, a faithful adaptation worth watching if you like the book.

 

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The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (novel #229)

Here was the truth, here was the life that belonged to him; and he, who fancied himself so scornful of arbitrary restraints, had been afraid to break away from his desk because of what people might think of his stealing a holiday! ~ narrative regarding Newland Archer

 

Set in late 19th Century, upper-class New York, The Age of Innocence follows the last days of bachelorhood and early married life of gentleman lawyer Newland Archer. And then, the conflict he suffers between duty and self-indulgence.

 

He’s not a bad guy, and his fiancée/wife is by all accounts a peach. But sweet May is not quite equal to Newland’s ideal of an independent minded woman. He has some progressive ideas about equality of the sexes, but…

 

There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free…

 

So, they are wed.

 

He had married (as most young men did) because he had met a perfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimless sentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust; and she had represented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of an unescapable duty.

 

But only weeks before the wedding, enter May’s cousin Countess Ellen Olenska. Ellen’s presence and behavior is scandalous to the upper-class New York society for leaving her husband and though the family harbors her from the horrible count, she is still something of an embarrassment and social liability. Newland is disdainful with all the rest, but he slowly perceives a fascinating soul, unbound by tradition and duty.

 

And as Deano sang…that’s amore!

 

Poor Newland. He must do what is right, or what he desperately wants. He concludes that in all the world, in all of time, only he and Ellen suffered such an unbearable duty.

 

Ellen Olenska was like no other woman, he was like no other man: their situation, therefore, resembled no one else’s, and they were answerable to no tribunal but that of their own judgment.

 

I was never quite sure what Wharton intended the reader to wish for:  Newland and Ellen to run away together, or for Newland to honor duty and societal codes (probably the latter). I was sympathetic to his unhappiness, but I’ll spare the spoiler as to which road he chose.

 

His wife May? Well, she is just a little bit more clever and more independent minded than is apparent to Newland or the reader.

 

The three main characters, Newland, May, and the Countess Olenska were all vivid and believable. Secondary characters were probably caricatures that Wharton fully intended to lampoon society elites of the gilded age. I thought it was masterfully done. It was a bit esoteric for me though, and I don’t feel it has aged particularly well. For that, I give it…

 

3 ½ out of 5 stars

 

 

Which I’ll remind, is a good rating.

 

This novel satisfies the “Virtue” category: (title must name a virtue: “innocence”) in the What’s in a Name 2024 challenge.

 

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Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee (novel #194)

…every man’s watchman, is his own conscience ~ Dr. John Hale Finch

 

Go Set a Watchman reads like a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, but it isn’t. Jean Louise Finch, known as Scout in childhood, lives and works in New York City. She returns to Maycomb, Alabama to visit Atticus, her aged father, who still practices law in the sleepy southern town.

 

Sounds like a sequel, right? The explanation is a bit complicated, and didn’t make sense when I first read it. Go Set a Watchman is the first draft of a novel that would be much revised, to become To Kill a Mockingbird. In the first draft, adult Jean Louise has numerous flashbacks to her childhood. The publisher apparently liked the flashbacks more than the main storyline and urged Harper Lee to include more childhood scenes, and eventually the entire novel became a long recollection of childhood, centering on a legal case and family crisis that is barely mentioned in the Watchman draft. The title was changed – and a masterpiece resulted.

 

But Go Set a Watchman, was never intended to be published. 

 

And in my opinion, it never should have been. There is a myriad of complex, legal, moral, ethical, and artistic controversies surrounding the publication. The book made a bunch of money, but the author was dead barely six months after publication. If I had it to do over, I don’t think I’d buy it. But I did, and I read it, so the rest of this is just my commentary on the literary merits of the book.

 

First, it isn’t as terrible as some reviews make it. In fact, there were times when I found it quite enjoyable – mostly those childhood flashbacks. Yay! more stories about Scout and Jem. But, there is a terrible dilemma. That’s good, novels need a conflict. The old south is coming to terms with the Supreme Court decision in Brown vs the Board of Education, ending racial segregation in schools. Not everyone in Maycomb takes this federal interference in state’s rights very well. And when Atticus and others are slow, or even reluctant to champion the cause of racial equality, Jean Louise is disillusioned and outraged. 

 

The narrative about the conflict is weak. It is introduced abruptly, developed unconvincingly, reaches a heartbreaking climax as Jean Louise curses her father and storms away to leave Maycomb forever. And then…all is resolved ridiculously fast in a few pages, and one shocking slap to Jean Louise’s face, by Uncle Jack. Dr. John Hale (Jack) Finch did not survive the final draft to appear in To Kill a Mockingbird. Too bad. I liked him.

 

My rating 3 out of 5 stars

This novel satisfies “a classic by a woman author”, in the Back to the Classics 2022 Challenge.

The title is taken from The Bible.

 

For thus hath the Lord said unto me,

Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth. Isaiah 21:6

 

It is the text chosen by the preacher on Jean Louise’s first Sunday back in Maycomb. It isn’t momentous at the time. But later, while admonishing his niece, Uncle Jack says:

 

Every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his own conscience. There is no such thing as a collective conscious.

 

That, and a few other words of wisdom begin to turn the tide for Jean Louise, and she is soon reconciled to her father. (too easily, too quickly)

 

My favorite of Uncle Jacks aphorisms:

 

I’ll put it in my own words: the time your friends need you is when they’re wrong, Jean Louise. They don’t need you when they’re right.

 

 

Other Excerpts:

 

She did not stand alone, but what stood behind her, the most potent moral force in her life, was the love of her father.

 

She touched yesterday cautiously, then withdrew, I don’t dare think about it now, until it goes far enough away. (this one reminds me of another southern female from literature who liked to put unpleasant thoughts off for another day)

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The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (novel #126)

"Fish" he said, "I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends."

The Old Man and the Sea is a novella by Ernest Hemingway. It tells the story of Santiago – the old man – a Cuban fisherman who has not caught a fish for 84 days.

 

Santiago, well past his prime, and impoverished by lack of success, takes to the sea each day in a dilapidated skiff.

The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.

 

But in spite of his reduced estate, he is a seasoned fisherman, with a healthy respect for the sea and his prey.

…the old man always thought of her [the sea] as feminine and as something that gave or withheld favors, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought.

 

His young apprentice, Manolin, just a boy who loves the old man, is prohibited from fishing with Santiago because the old man is considered bad luck.

 

On the 85th day of his draught, Santiago hooks an enormous Blue Marlin that will test his skill, stamina, and resolve. He battles the fish for three days and two nights. Santiago gets little sleep and must eat raw fish to maintain his strength. Although, he is not religious, Santiago prays and adds a little something to the standard Hail Mary…

Blessed Virgin, pray for the death of this fish. Wonderful though he is.

 

He considers the fish a friend or brother, even though he knows he must kill it, and he often talks to it.

“Fish” he said softly, aloud, “I’ll stay with you until I am dead.”

 

Santiago is a fan of the New York Yankees and admirer of Joe DiMaggio. He wonders if the great DiMaggio would be proud of his epic struggle. Being a Tigers fan myself, I smiled when Santiago worried about the Yankee’s chances…

I fear both the Tigers of Detroit and the Indians of Cleveland.

 

I’ll spare the spoiler – though you probably know how it ends. This is my first read of The Old Man and the Sea, though I have read several works by Hemingway. I always admire Hemingway’s writing, but I don’t always love his stories. This one however, was superb; it is now my favorite work by Hemingway. It is a tender, thoughtful story, heartbreaking and heartwarming.

 

Hemingway was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for this work in 1953, and it was cited as one of the factors for his award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. Hemingway’s friend Charles Scribner wrote:

It is a curious fact of literary history that a story which describes the loss of a gigantic prize provided the author with the greatest prize of his career.

 

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

 

 

I read this for The Classics Club spin #20.

 

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All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (86 down 14 to go)

…what we students of history always learn is that the human being is a very complicated contraption and that they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of bad and the bad out of good, and the devil take the hindmost. ~ Jack Burden

This is the first time I’ve read All the King’s Men or Robert Penn Warren. The book is a modernist novel with existential themes. It is the tale of Jack Burden and Willie Stark, because as Jack, the first-person narrator put it

...the story of Willie Stark and the story of Jack Burden are, in one sense, one story.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Before reading All the King’s Men, I didn’t know it won a Pulitzer or that the 1949 movie adaptation won the Academy Award for best picture. I’m glad I didn’t know, as that would have set expectations high. I much prefer to have no expectations.

Jack Burden is a history researcher and aide to Governor Willie Stark – the popular and powerful governor of an unnamed Southern State in the 1930s (unnamed but most likely Louisiana). Jack is a crafty cynic, and worldly wise Jack-of-all-Trades for the governor.

In a flashback, the two meet when Willie is a petty county bureaucrat. Willie attempts to expose a crooked construction deal for a new school, but the old political machine is untouchable, until an inferior fire escape at the school gives way during a fire drill and kills several students and cripples others.

According to Jack:

It was a piece of luck for Willie.

(cynic…I told you)

It launches Willie’s political career, and he runs for governor, or again as Jack put it…

he was running for Governor. Or rather, he was running in the Democratic primary, which in our state is the same us running for Governor.

In his initial campaign, Willie is naïve and politically inept. He is also initially a man of honesty and integrity, until he learns he is a stooge of the political machine, trying to split the support of another candidate.

Willie does not win that primary, but he does eventually become governor. He is wildly popular with the people, despised by political opponents, and feared by his stooges. His staff all call him Boss. Jack calls him boss, but is no stooge. Jack’s job included many things, such as digging up dirt on people that needed persuading.

Jack had other, less sordid, duties. He said: 

I was supposed to do a lot of different things, and one of them was to lift up fifteen-year-old, hundred-and-thirty-five-pound hairy white dogs on summer afternoons and paint an expression of unutterable bliss upon their faithful features as they gaze deep, deep into the Boss’s eyes.[photo-op at the old family farm]

The tale is about Willie’s growing political savviness – and slow corruption, and simultaneously about Jack’s philosophizing of the entire saga. I couldn’t and wouldn’t attempt to recapitulate Jack’s philosophy. The quotation at the top of this post is one example, and here are a couple more:

The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can’t know. He can’t know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can’t know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn’t got and which if he had it, would save him. There’s the cold in your stomach, but you open the envelope, you have to open the envelope, for the end of man is to know.

And…

If the human race didn’t remember anything it would be perfectly happy. I was a student of history once in a university and if I learned anything from studying history that was what I learned. Or to be more exact, that was what I thought I had learned.

As Jack implies, there are definite parallels between his story and Willie’s. Both are pragmatic and have no qualms with the seedier aspects of politics. Jack is able to justify his role because as a historical researcher – he loved truth. If it was the truth he dug up – so be it. The Boss did the dirty work with it. And even the Boss’ dirty work – well, they told themselves they were doing it for the greater good.

Several distinct but related violent events shake both Willie and Jack to the core of their beliefs. It comes too late for one, and perhaps just in time for the other.

I really enjoyed this novel. First, for the philosophical dilemmas, or moral ambiguity, or conflicted consciences, or situational ethics, or well you see – the complex business of life.

But secondly, Robert Penn Warren uses fabulous dialogue and narrative that is simply a lot of fun and entirely believable for his characters (examples in the excerpts at the end). Jack in particular likes to string together a half-dozen or more adverbs or adjectives in describing people and events.

There are several great tragedies in this novel – more than several, but in spite of them, there is a very satisfying ending.

Once more, in Jack’s words: 

This has been the story of Willie Stark, but it is my story too. For I have a story. It is the story of a man who lived in the world and to him the world looked one way for a long time and then it looked another and very different way.

Have you read All the King’s Men? What did you think?

Excerpts:

There’s a reference to Moby Dick as Jack describes the alluring look a love interest gives him. [she]

…sunk her harpoon deeper than ever Queequeg sunk it…

Then the boss spied a fellow, a tall gaunt-shanked, malarial, leather-faced side of jerked venison, wearing jean pants and a brace of mustaches hanging off the kind of face you see in photographs of General Forrest’s cavalrymen…

My god, you talk like Byram was human! He’s a thing! You don’t prosecute an adding machine if a spring goes bust and makes a mistake. You fix it. Well, I fixed Byram. I fixed him so his unborn great-grandchildren will wet their pants on this anniversary and not know why. Boy, it will be the shock in the genes. Hell, Byram is just something you use, and he’ll sure be useful from now on. ~ The Governor discussing how to deal with a corrupt bureaucrat

He learned that the world is like an enormous spider web and if you touch it, however lightly, at any point, the vibration ripples to the remotest perimeter and the drowsy spider feels the tingle and is drowsy no more but springs out to fling the gossamer coils about you who have touched the web and then inject the black, numbing poison under your hide.

That is what all of us historical researchers believe. And we love truth.

For West is where we all plan to go some day. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-filed pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: Flee, all is discovered. It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire. It is where you go when you hear that thar’s gold in them-thar hills. It is where you go to grow up with the country. It is where you go to spend your old age. Or it is just where you go.

The second day I was in Texas. I was traveling through the part where the flat-footed, bilious frog-sticker-toting Baptist biscuit-eaters live. Then I was traveling through the part where the crook-legged, high-heeled, gun-wearing, spick-killing, callous-rumped sons of the range live and crowd the drugstore on Saturday night and then all go round the corner to see episode three of “Vengeance on Vinegar Creek,” starring Gene Autry as Borax Pete.

I had seen three hangings and one electrocution, but they are different. In a hanging you do not change a man’s personality. You just change the length of his neck and give him a quizzical expression, and in an electrocution you just cook some bouncing meat in a wholesale lot.

I tried to tell her how if you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other, and how if you could accept the past you might hope for the future, for only out of the past can you make the future.

Film Rendition:  There is a 2006 version but it didn’t receive great reviews so I passed. The 1949 version however won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Actor (Broderick Crawford), and Best Actress in Supporting Role (Mercedes McCambridge). It also received four other nominations. So, it should go without saying it’s very good.

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American Pastoral by Philip Roth (63 down 37 to go)

You’re craving depths that don’t exist. This guy is the embodiment of nothing. I was wrong. Never more mistaken about anyone in my life. ~ Nathan Zuckerman’s thoughts regarding Seymour “Swede” Levov 

This is the first time I’ve read American Pastoral or Philip Roth. American Pastoral is a post-modern novel, one of the more contemporary on my list, published in 1997, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. It is the story of an all American boy and the American dream.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

 

This novel satisfies square O1 of 2015 Classics BINGO: Literary Prize of My Country

The story begins in 1995 with Nathan Zuckerman attending his 45 year high school reunion. Zuckerman appears in several of Roth’s novels and is an apparent alter-ego, as Zuckerman is also a published author. Zuckerman, the Swede’s brother Jerry Levov, and other classmates naturally reminisce and through them the reader learns of the legend of Seymour “Swede” Levov and his mystique. The high school and community in Newark, New Jersey, is predominantly Jewish, including The Swede who earned the nickname by his uncharacteristic blonde hair.

Seymour Levov, known as Swede to his friends and neighbors, is a three sport hero in high school, destined for greatness. He is admired by everyone and seems on a fast track to the American dream, or quiet, comfortable, American Pastoral until his only child commits the unimaginable and plunges Swede into the indigenous American berserk.

Swede is quiet and unassuming. He is a pro-prospect in baseball, but shortly after graduating in 1945, he eagerly does his duty by joining the Marine Corps. This is the Swede’s life. He does the right thing, the admirable thing, the expected thing, and continues to win everyone’s respect and admiration. The respectable life seems to be the one driving force in Seymour’s life.

After Zuckerman frames the story at the reunion, Roth switches to an omniscient narrator and flashes back to narrate the Swede’s life, also using a good deal of stream of consciousness by Swede and other characters. After his stint in the Marines, the Swede enters his father’s successful glove manufacturing business. The business thrives, Swede becomes rich, marries Miss New Jersey, buys a stone house in the country, has a daughter, and is living a perfect pastoral life.

But then a few threads in the exquisite tapestry begin to unravel. His daughter Merry develops a stutter and grows obese. A bit inconsistent with the façade, but nothing the unassailable Swede feels will not be overcome. And then, Merry becomes increasing belligerent, rebellious, and even hostile in her disgust with American involvement in Vietnam. Again, exasperating to the Swede, but likely just a phase.

And then – she does the unimaginable, something there is no dismissing, something there is no recovering from. Considering his and his wife’s parenting Swede wonders:   

How could their innocent foibles add up to this human being?

The daughter who transports him out of the longed for American pastoral and into everything that is its antithesis and its enemy, into the fury, the violence, and the desperation of the counterpastoral – into the

...indigenous American berserk.

I felt bad for the poor guy. I’m rather a straight and narrow sort myself and could sympathize when it all unraveled. He kept looking for answers, what he did wrong, what his wife did wrong – and for the most part coming up with nothing.

And – in my opinion – nothing did explain it. They weren’t perfect parents, but they did the best they knew. At some point, kids will make their own life, for good or for bad.

At the very end of the novel, the Swede and his wife host a dinner party, still trying to reclaim the pastoral.  The guests include Swede's parents and several friends. It falls on the very day Swede encounters his fugitive daughter for the first time in years. She is living in squalor, but a life of her own choosing. He tells no one at the party, puts on a respectable façade, and learns of yet more human folly in his loved ones. He wonders: 

What kind of mask is everyone wearing?

He had been cracking up in the only way he knew how, which is not really cracking up at all but sinking, all evening long being unmade by steadily sinking under the weight. A man who never goes full out and explodes, who only sinks…

This is a complex novel with numerous themes: The American Dream, the Jewish-American pathos, blended families (Jewish and Catholic in this case), anti-war activism, respectability, and the “sub-stratum of the mind”. It’s a bit depressing, but also a keen insight.

There are a few pages that would be rated R, though most of the book is PG-13.

Other excerpts:

Perhaps by definition a neighborhood is the place to which a child spontaneously gives undivided attention…

One price you pay for being taken for a god is the unabated dreaminess of your acolytes.

He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach – that it makes no sense.

References to other classic literature:  Zuckerman quotes Tolstoy and The Brothers Karamazov, and later the narrative refers to a minor character as having escaped his Dostoyevskian family.  I guess Roth likes the Russian authors.

One last excerpt that particularly amused me, and came with an odd experience of synchronicity.

At the dinner party, Swede’s father, who is outspoken and opinionated, possibly a bit senile, and who usually turns every discussion to the glove manufacturing trade, describes Jackie Kennedy:  

Thank God in 1960 Jackie Kennedy walked out there with a little glove to the wrist, and a glove to the elbow, and a pillbox hat, and all of a sudden gloves were in style again. First Lady of the glove industry. Wore a size six and a half. People in the glove industry were praying to that lady.

At the very instant I was reading this, I was on a treadmill at the gym. The treadmills have TVs, but I wasn’t watching, obviously because I was reading. But when I glanced up briefly to turn the page, who was on the TV but the exquisite Jackie Kennedy. I had the sound muted, so I don’t know what was said, but it was a news channel, and the story was definitely more about Jackie than President Kennedy, and I’m fairly certain it had something to do with her impeccable taste. She wore gloves in the news footage.

Film Rendition: 2016 with starring Ewan MacGregor is pretty good, and pretty faithful. It didn't do well at the box office though.

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Beloved by Toni Morrison (54 down 46 to go)

Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another. ~ Sethe

This is the first time I’ve read Beloved or Toni Morrison. Beloved is the third-person narrative about former slave Sethe and her daughter Denver who was born during Sethe's flight of freedom. Most of the story takes place in 1870s Ohio, but there are flashbacks to earlier periods during days of slavery, the flight to freedom, or early days in Ohio. It must also be considered a ghost story, though I wouldn’t categorize it as horror.

My rating: 4 of 5 Stars

 

This novel satisfies square O5 of 2015 Classics Bingo: Prize Winning Female Author

I had no knowledge or expectations of this novel, but even without expectations, I was in for a big surprise. I’ve already hinted it is a bit difficult to categorize. Primarily, I’d say it is a story about the struggle for freedom from the misery and villainy of slavery. And though that story has been told before, Morrison certainly takes a singular approach with Beloved. I thought it was excellent.

The novel begins at 124 Bluestone Road, Cincinnati, Ohio 1873.  The narrative says 

124 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of a baby’s venom. 

In other words, it was haunted. It was once the home of Baby Suggs, holy. That needs a bit of an explanation. Baby Suggs was no baby, but rather the aged mother-in-law of Sethe. The adjective holy, was nearly inseparable from her name, a title of respect as the lay preacher and spiritual guide to the former slaves in the community. By 1873 Baby Suggs had died, and Sethe’s two boys, Howard and Buglar had run off, leaving only Sethe and Denver. The reader eventually learns that Sethe had another daughter, a bit older than Denver, who was murdered before her first birthday.

You might be able to guess who was haunting 124.

Another former slave, Paul D, shows up at Sethe’s house. The two were both slaves in Kentucky and reminisce on the porch about days at the farm they refer to as Sweet Home. When Paul D enters the house he is aware of the presence and exclaims, 

What kind of evil you got in here? 

Sethe replies, 

It’s not evil, just sad. 

A bit later Paul D and the ghost have a violent confrontation. Paul D wins and the ghost seems to depart forever. Shortly thereafter however, another mysterious presence manifests itself clearly intent on staying.

The reader might, be tempted to get caught up in the ghost story, but I don’t believe it is the major theme of Beloved. As I’ve said, it is the tale of the horrors of slavery. For myself, it is easy to be indignant in the macro sense at the outrage of slavery, but it is less easy, for me, to feel it personally. However, Morrison recounts outrages against characters, people I am now invested in, and makes it personal. My heart broke when Sethe recalled not knowing her mother among the female slaves at Sweet Home. My soul wept at the indignity when Paul D with shackles and a bit in his mouth, was ashamed in the presence of a rooster, because he felt the rooster’s contempt.  Paul D recounted, 

I was something else and that something was less than a chicken sitting in the sun on a tub.

But worst of all, was the dreadful measures Sethe was driven to. In her first month of freedom, fugitive hunters find her and intend to take her and the children back to Sweet Home, something Sethe will not allow at any cost.

Let me be clear: Toni Morrison only gave me a glimpse of the horror. I don’t pretend to know the half. Maybe this is a horror story after all. It is an important one, and I am glad to have read it.

Morrison dedicated the novel to Sixty Million and more: African casualties in the slave trade. The epigraph is Romans 9:25 – 

I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved which was not beloved.

The title, Beloved, refers to the name of Sethe’s murdered child. Sethe could only pay the stonecutter enough for one word and chose a word the preacher began the funeral with. The child became known as Beloved.

Although Sethe is the main character, Denver was my favorite – but not immediately. In the beginning, Denver is angry, rude, and scared. Who can blame her, though she isn’t scared of the ghost. In fact, she seems to be on fairly good terms with it. She is scared of humanity, and barely able or willing to leave the house. By the end though, she rises above her fear and is the heroine.

Spoiler Alert: The following contains a spoiler.

When Morrison decided to write a story about the struggles of slaves, she wrote: The idea was riveting, but the canvas overwhelmed me. Then she recalled the true story of a runaway slave that killed one of her own children rather than let her return to slavery.

It’s very grim, and desperately sad – but told as beautifully as something so ugly can be told.

Excerpts:

Winter in Ohio was especially rough if you had an appetite for color. Sky provided the only drama, and counting on a Cincinnati horizon for life’s principal joy was reckless indeed.

Almost by myself. Not all by myself. A whitegirl helped me. ~ Sethe

Then she helped herself too, God bless her. ~ Paul D.

One night and they were talking like a couple. They had skipped love and promise and went directly to “You saying it’s all right to scramble here?”

During, before and after the War he had seen Negroes so stunned, or hungry, or tired or bereft it was a wonder they recalled or said anything. Who, like him, had hidden in caves and fought owls for food; who, like him, stole from pigs; who, like him, slept in trees in the day and walked by night; who, like him, had buried themselves in slop and jumped in wells to avoid regulators, raiders, paterollers, veterans, hill men, posses and merrymakers. ~ Paul D.

She began to sweat from a fever she thanked God for since it would certainly keep her baby warm. ~ Sethe

Spring sauntered north, but he had to run like hell to keep it as his traveling companion.

So Baby Suggs, holy, having devoted her freed life to harmony, was buried amid a regular dance of pride, fear, condemnation and spite.

Death is a skipped meal compared to this. ~ Denver

Something sweet lives in the air that time of year, and if the breeze is right, it’s hard to stay indoors.

The job she started out with, protecting Beloved from Sethe, changed to protecting her mother from Beloved. ~ Denver

Denver looked up at her. She did not know it then, but it was the word “baby,” said softly and with such kindness, that inaugurated her life in the world as a woman.

…the women had arrived at a doomsday truce designed by the devil.

Denver thought she understood the connection between her mother and Beloved: Sethe was trying to make up for the handsaw; Beloved was making her pay for it.

All he did was smile and say, “Take care of yourself, Denver.” But she heard it as though it were what language was made for.

Wanderer's Commentary:  It IS what language was made for.

Film Rendition: 1998 starring Oprah Winfrey as Sethe and Danny Glover as Paul D. I thought this was a superb and faithful rendition. I’ve seen many screenwriters and/or directors ruin a film by trying to improve upon the author’s story, but this was perhaps the most faithful portrayal I’ve seen. I thought it was well cast and acted. Kimberly Elise as Denver was particularly good. She affected body language and expression that perfectly portrayed the change in Denver I mentioned in the book. In the beginning Elise, as Denver, always wears a scowl and suspicious eyes. At the end I thought she was quite beautiful. Read the book first. 

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