Category Archives: Beloved

A Grieve Mother, A Lonely Soilder

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She is a mother, and her heart

   Is breaking in despair.

It has kept me hunted from the very beginning. If the shrieks piercing through the air are quite understandable because a mother undertakes a great deal of effort and pains to give birth to her baby, I lost my track when the mother “is a mother paled with fear”. Isn’t giving a birth to a human being and watching him growing up day by day one of the greatest happiness that mothers can ever ask? Yes, and no. She is a mother. She is a slave.

The poem deeply depicts the storm of agony that a slave mother is suffering when giving a birth. It is not that pain deriving from parturition, it is because she clearly understands that she does not have the ability to protect her baby. She knows that her baby, made of her flesh and bones, will be torn apart from her by these cruel people, and his life will be doomed to be a repentance of her tortuous path. Therefore, her bitter shrieks “rose” into the wild sky, it is a high-pitched piercing sound, but an expression of terror and pain. It is deadly-depressing because no one would thrust a hand to help, it is just lonely and helplessly echoing in the wild sky.

There are pairs of “sad and imploring eyes.” Every glance the mother gives to the baby is full of pain because she knows “he is not hers.” They are the mother’s imploring eyes, she begs a little bit more time to star at her baby. They wouldn’t let her. Every glance is saying hi, and goodbye. They are also the baby’s imploring eyes, he seeks his mother’s breasts and fond arms to hide, seeking mother’s caress and guidance to teach him how to survive in this world. But they wouldn’t let him.

So she “sadly clasped” her baby as a last try to protect him. He is the best gift to her sad life. ” A fountain gushing ever new, amid life’s desert wild.” The use of a metaphor yields a smart contrast which emphasizes the bond between the mother and her baby. The arrival of this newborn meant to the mother is what a fountain meant to the dead desert.

She fought, as a lonely solider. But she knew clearly what it meant to be as a slave mother. All she has left to the world is a baby that is not hers, and these bitter shrieks as the only means to tell the world her angers and agonies.

Mock- Up for Beloved

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The Full Set:

Book 1: About Beloved

  • Front cover  with title and hand drawn photo of Beloved’s tombstone
  • Table of Contents (blue/gray page to keep neutral)
  • History of the book (old looking/textured paper)
  • About the author (orange for Toni Morrison’s favorite color)
  • Why it’s great (light green to keep it positive)
  • Book’s reception/preservation over time (same pages as history of)
  • Bibliography (same blue/gray as table of contents)

Book 2: The Girls

  • Front cover with title and soon to be hand drawn photo of the girls  
  • Table of Contents (blue/gray page to keep neutral)
  • About Baby Suggs (orange pages, because it’s her favorite color)
  • About Sethe (red to represent strength)
  • About Beloved (green to represent guilt)
  • About Denver (blue to represent intelligence)
  • Bibliography (same blue/gray as table of contents)

Book 3: From Kentucky

  • Front cover with title and hand drawn photo of ink and pen, representing the ink well used by school teacher
  • Table of contents (blue/gray page to keep neutral)
  • Introduction of Sweet Home (brown for darkness)
  • Sethe’s life at Sweet Home (green for envy)
  • Her and the other slaves on Sweet Home (light green for lightness)
  • Her wedding with Halle (red for love)
  • The Garners wedding gift  (green for real)
  • School Teacher’s take over (red for danger)
  • Sethe’s experience in the barn (blue for sadness)
  • Sethe’s beating before escaping / how she got her “tree” (red for danger)
  • Sethe’s escape (yellow of liberation)
  • Bibliography (same blue/gray as table of contents)

Book 4: To Ohio

  • Front cover with title and soon to be hand drawn photo of Amy Denver
  • Table of contents (blue/gray page to keep neutral)
  • About Amy Denver (orange for her hair)
  • Sethe finally getting to Ohio / 124 (light green to keep it light / happy)
  • The moment school teacher comes to 124 and Sethe has to make a difficult decision (red for danger / blood)
  • Baby Suggs passing (orange for Baby Sugg’s favorite color)
  • The multiple hauntings in the house (red for danger)
  • Paul D comes to 124 (brown to represent healing and reliability)
  • About Paul D (brown to represent healing and reliability)
  • Paul D’s leaving and Sethe realizing whon Beloved is  (red to represent danger)
  • Bibliography (same blue/gray as table of contents)

Book 5: Our Take

  • Front cover with title and hand drawn photo of a person reading a book
  • Table of contents (blue/gray page to keep neutral)
  • Abby’s close reading analysis (blue for her favorite color)
  • Danay’s close reading analysis (yellow for her favorite color)
  • Mamady’s close reading analysis (green)
  • Jelandi’s close reading analysis (red for her favorite color)
  • Abby’s definition of a great work (blue)
  • Danay’s definition of a great work (yellow)
  • Mamady’s definition of a great work (green)
  • Jelandi’s definition of a great work (red)
  • Abby’s definition of a great work connected to Beloved
  • Danay’s definition of a great work connected to Beloved
  • Mamady’s definition of a great work connected to Beloved
  • Jelandi’s definition of a great work connected to Beloved
  • Bibliography (same blue/gray as table of contents)

Below are examples of the pages and colors:
Table of contents page:


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book 1, history pages:

Each page (with the exception of the table of contents and bibliography) will have a double set of pages like this:

On the left side we will have either a quote to describe the moment, a title page, or photo.

On the right side, we will have the information we’re trying to create. This can be created with images, stickers, text, etc.

We will be adding personalized items to each page to make it feel more like a scrapbook. Some examples of this will be:

“About Baby Suggs” will have items such as crosses and photos of church to help portray her identity of a preacher.

“About Paul D” will have roosters, since he is haunted by the memory of Mister the rooster

“The Girls” book all together will have red roses to represent family

Timeline:

On going: The four of us are going to be collection quotes that can be added to add imagery, for example “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom.” (Morrison 1) can be used to describe 124. Each member is working on their opinion of what is a great work and how they are going to compare it to Beloved.

Already done: 3 out of 5 hand drawn cover photos. Each color / page is in the books. Table of contents is decided for each book.

5/10: Have the “our take” done by having all members submit their close readings and opinions.

5/13: Have all the text and photographs that will be used in the scrapbook. Glue the texts and photographs in the correct places and add on any extra decorations to make the books look and feel more like scrapbooks.  

5/15: Have all the hand drawn cover pictures done and placed in the correct place. Add finishing touches to the scrapbook, such as add on stickers or text, reglue falling items, and make sure they are ready to turn in.

5/17: Have all 5 books in the set complete. Also, if needed we will make another set.

 

Check In #2: Beloved Group

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Our group decided to make a scrapbook. We feel that it would be the most logical and creative way of expressing our ideas. One reason that we chose to create a scrapbook is that we can make it very centered around color. Color is a major theme in Beloved, that using many different colors to go into forming unique pages of a scrapbook can allow us to illustrate that. Another reason that a scrapbook would be fitting for our book Beloved is that the purpose or scrapbooks is to represent memories. The concept of “rememory” in Beloved is very significant. It is memories that you don’t just see in your mind, but rather feel and experience as if you were in that place or time again. Scrapbooks are similar to this concept, rather than just being a photo album or diary, they combine several mediums together in order to recreate memories even more vividly.

Our scrapbook will not be something you can find in a high school library or even something you can find online like cliff notes or spark notes. Our scrapbook will represent a personal item, such as a diary, that you can read and learn about specific characters and moments in their lives. You will not only get to read about the key characters in the book, but also about the members of this group and the author. We will be combining together, not as fictional characters or real people, but all as individuals who decided to scrap their thoughts into something meaningful.

Currently the main idea we have been juggling is to use all the components we have and mix it into one complex scrapbook. But recently, we have been toying with the idea of creating a set. A set as in, the first book of the set can be about the plot and history, the second book about Sethe, the third about Beloved, and forth about Denver and so on. This way, we can use the title, cover, and pages to specifically apply to the entire subject of that book that together will then create an overall collection of information for Beloved.

Our scrapbook could be stumbled upon by someone who read and wanted to understand Beloved better. We will have pages with character information and quotes. The pages will not just be plain old analysis like cliff notes, not cold hard facts like a textbook, but actually feeling and description of the moment itself. The book can help those like myself that struggled to understand the choices made in the book and give an emotional connection.

I do not believe we should have a photo on the cover. Instead we’ll have a creative scrapbook type of cover such as using magazine type to create the title and using multiple colors together. We do not want to give away too much of what you’re going to feel once you begin exploring the scrapbook, therefore keeping the cover a mystery could be exciting and useful for our audience.

We plan on using the average size of scrapbooks, where it’s not like an average piece of paper or pocket size either. We will be using a lot of texture and color as well as creating text for the pages. We will need a substantial amount of room. Also, scrap books are usually larger and cluttered, we hope to create a powerful and realistic scrapbook.

What and why? The Beloved group

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THE WHAT

Our group has decided to create a physical book for the classroom presentation of Beloved. We all agreed that a physical book could help us create the feelings needed in order to understand the background of each character. Our book will be average size, thinking about 4 x 5 inch paper, few pages long. The cover page is still in the works but the context will (more or less) go as follows:

  1. Why is this text great? – a description of our opinions and experience reading the book; light colors and standard text to be aesthetically pleasing to the reader.
  2. History of the book – a detailed description of how the book and material came together. How and why the book gained popularity; using paper with old texture and style to stimulate history and the time the book was written (after the civil war)
  3. How has this work been persevered over time? – connecting to the reasoning of “why is this text great?” we can use the context in why we and how we think this book has been persevered. How we plan to do that? – create a page for the characters we feel had the most impact and influence in the text; each page will be personalized to each character’s personality and characteristics. We’ll include a strong quote that stood out to us and why we chose that character.
  4. Close reading analysis – using our papers, we’ll combine our analysis and create unique pages for each; to describe the close reading quote or phrase chosen, we’ll use colors, attach certain textures and use specific font types as well.
  5. How does this work connect with the authors other works? – There are a number of works by Toni Morrison in which we can compare Beloved An obvious comparison we can make is the consistent cover pages and fonts she uses for her books. She also has many novels written in the same time period as Beloved which we can compare.
  6. Creative Response – we are either going to create a graphic adaptation or a poem
  7. How does a text become great? – As a group, we will discuss and put together our own opinions on how a text can become great. We will give each other our own page to describe what we believe is great and then compare our opinions.
  8. Bibliography – same text used in “why is this text great?” to keep the appeal.

 

THE WHY

The reason our group chose to do a physical book is because of the event at the Center for Books Art called “History of Art Series, Panel 3: Paper as Haptic Experience.” The event described many different books that used creative paper and textures to make the reader really feel what was happening. Beloved is a book filled with strong emotional moments where we feel that can only fully be portrayed through color and texture.

The book goes back and forth from the present and the past. The character Beloved represents the past as well. In order to reflect that in our book, we will be using paper that appears to be older mixed together with paper that is newer. We have not completely agreed on a cover page, but Toni Morrison has a collection of books with the same font as Beloved on the cover. We think using that same font will be a good comparison for us to use later on in our book.

In the third section (listed in the what) we want to create pages for the characters and moments we feel were the strongest and that made the book great. With this, we want to use colors, textures, fonts, and more to give a better feeling of the moment and/or the character’s background. An example of this would be when Sethe chooses to try and murder her children rather than letting school teacher take them. Although we can put that moment into words, a page with red to represent blood, rips to represent the beatings she took during slavery, and wet spots for tears (from the pain she’s haunted by), is more powerful than words.

For the close reading, we are going to put our papers together and pick two or three of the strongest quotes or phrases to further elaborate on. Each close reading will have its own page with a unique background to fit the feelings portrayed in the text. In the seventh section (listed in the what) we also will be putting our thoughts together and give each other our own page to describe what we believe is great. We think this is an effective way to actually come to a definition, because “what is great” is subjective. At the end, we will put together a page with our similar opinions with the conclusion of what we think makes a work great.

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“And if she thought anything, it was No. No. Nono. Nonono. Simple. She just flew. Collected every bit of life she had made, all the parts of her that were precious and fine and beautiful, and carried, pushed, dragged them through the veil, out, away, over there where no one could hurt them. Over there. Outside this place, where they would be safe.” (Morrison 192)

The concept that stood out to me the most in Beloved was the idea that Sethe “protected” her children by murdering them. My comic strip is my interpretation. I chose this quote, because I wanted to make sense of it for myself. Many characters such as Baby Suggs don’t agree with Sethe’s way, however, Sethe would be considered a character with strong motherly instincts. I was hoping that through a visual representation, I would understand more why she made these choices.

The comic strip begins with Sethe holding her new born child. As she looks at the child, she goes from joy to fear. Remembering what kind of world it is for her children. She imagined her child returning to Sweet Home and having the physical and emotional abuse that she once experienced.

Drawing the scene was difficult. I thought, how could I portray slavery? But I decided to draw them outside the Sweet Home. The path goes from orange to red, with darker green as the grass so represent the fear and danger Sweet Home holds.

After Sethe’s thought of her daughter being taken to the Sweet Home with the school teacher, Sethe realized she needed to give her daughter something better. She didn’t want to let her children live that awfully painful life.

I take you from the thought bubble to Sethe back in bed with her infant. She then takes the opportunity to give her a better life by sending her “outside of this place.” She murders the child in hopes it will live a better life.

My comic takes the child from the murder scene, out of her mothers hands into the hands of God in heaven. Now she is safe.

 

Become more Afraid of Living

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I am in the group 6 project, therefore in this graphic narrative assignment I chose the beloved by stretching this graphic from the story I will  do my own interpretation. in the first panel, 124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For years, each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims. In the second panel the grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen years old as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered it (that was the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny hand prints appeared in the cake (that was it for Howard). Neither boy waited to see more; another kettleful of chickpeas smoking in a heap on the floor; soda crackers crumbled and strewn in a line next to the door sill. Or did they wait for one of the relief periods:

the weeks, months even, when nothing was disturbed. No. Each one fled at once the moment the house committed what was for him the one insult not to be borne or witnessed a second time. Within two months, in the dead of winter, leaving their grandmother, Baby Suggs; Sethe, their mother; and their little sister, Denver, all by themselves in the gray and white house on Bluestone Road. It didn’t have a number then, because Cincinnati didn’t stretch that far. In fact, Ohio had been calling itself a state only seventy years when first one brother and then the next stuffed quilt packing into his hat, snatched up his shoes, and crept away from the lively spite the house felt for them.

Baby Suggs didn’t even raise her head. From her sickbed, she heard them go but that wasn’t the reason she lay still. It was a wonder to her that her grandsons had taken so long to realize that every house wasn’t like the one on Bluestone Road. Suspended between the dozes of life and the meanness of the dead, she couldn’t get interested in leaving life or living it, let alone the fright of two creeping-off boys. Her past had been like her present intolerable since she knew death was anything but forgetfulness, she used the little energy left her for pondering color. “Bring a little lavender in, if you got any. Pink, if you don’t.” And Sethe would oblige her with anything from fabric to her own tongue.

 

Graphic Narrative Assignment Due 4/12 (Plus Examples from Past Students)

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Hey Everyone.

Remember your graphic narratives are due, Wednesday April 12th by 5 pm.  Your narrative should add or revise some aspect of your final project book. Think about it like fan fiction.  You can add a deleted scene, or a piece of back story, or a memory, or add a minor character, or change an ending, etc.  Just make sure you have some reason for your choice and some main objective that you hope to accomplish by way of the choices you make for this revision.

Please upload your picture as a compressed, jpeg file to the site.  Remember to check all appropriate category boxes.  If you feel extremely shy about your graphic narrative, you may email it directly to me.  Please know that being a perfect or super-skilled artist isn’t necessary.   What I’m looking for is thoughtfulness about all your choices from  panel size and layout, to color, to inking, and dialogue.  I am also looking to see that the product looks complete and finished.  While it’s not required that you ink, inking does help give the graphic a sense of completion, so you should consider inking, or at least inking the panel frames.

Don’t be afraid to do more than one draft!

Click Here: We Monsters to see examples of students’ finished graphic narratives.   Please note in the past the graphic narrative workshop was part of my Young Adult Literature course (ENG 3045) and not Great Works, so their assignment was different.  Instead of creating a graphic related to their final project book, their assignment was to make a graphic that engaged the ideas of adolescence and monstrosity.    All the same, I hope these examples  give you a sense of the range of possibilities.

 

What Did I Do To Be So Blue?

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Ralph Ellison’s first-person narrative in monologue form reveals the pains black people were suffering in American society over half a century ago.

When I finished absorbing the last sentence of this article, there was a voice ringing in my head as though hearing a sorrow tune in the distance… “What did I do to be so black and blue…” A deep sense of compassion overwhelmed me and I quickly flipped back to the first page and restart from the very beginning.
Ellison first introduces the main character in the first-person, who laments his invisibility to the white “sleep-walkers” of society. He tells a tale about how he almost killed a “sleep-walking” man on the street after the man blindly cursed him, even after being severely beaten. The narrator uses the metaphor of invisibility stating that this maltreatment towards black people is not because they are born invisible, it’s because they are born into a society that chooses not to see them.

As Ellison portrays in his work, what triggered this almost-murder is the insults the “tall blond man” shot at the invisible man. The white man was blind to the harm he did to the invisible man and kept cursing at him, although a simple solution would have been a sincere apology. Synonymous words to “invisible” repeatedly appeared in this passage, including the blind, unseen, and formless. These words emphasized the discrimination black people were subjected to and the extreme illness of a society at that point. Through the vivid depiction of the invisible man’s thoughts after the incident, readers finally understood the significance of “blue” in his sorrowful song. “I was both disgusted and ashamed. I was like a drunken man myself…Then I was amused.” Beating someone within an inch of his life and the yet absolute refusal of the sleepwalker to apologize hit the invisible man with a stark reality: “Would he have awakened at the point of death?” He would forever remain invisible.