The Unquenchable Spark of Humanity

That was the summary one of my former students provided in a fledgling online reading group. The book: Toni Morrison’s Beloved.

But, first some background (which will seem to you, Dear Reader, to be utterly without interest. Bear with me for a moment.) I first picked up this book many decades ago before I really knew how to read. I don’t mean before I was literate; I mean before I knew how to read with insight and understanding. I hated the book; I quit around page 75. If you asked me about the book I would have said: It is the story of a woman named Sethe who escaped from slavery, had a baby named Beloved who died, and then years later this mysterious stranger named Beloved shows up who doesn’t act human and has supernatural powers and nobody can put two and two together and why exactly am I reading a ghost story because I don’t even like ghost stories. Like I said, I didn’t know how to read yet.

I decided to start it again after reading Morrison’s brilliant novel The Bluest Eye. Suffice it to say, it is not even remotely the book I read before I knew how to read. Indeed, even the ghost in the story is different. The book is deliberately vague about Beloved (and, as discussed below, other things). Maybe she is the ghost of Sethe’s daughter, maybe the ghost of her mother, maybe a composite of all the dead, but the possibility I like best is raised by Stamp Paid toward the end of the novel: “Huh. Was a girl locked up in the house with a whiteman over by Deer Creek. Found him dead last summer and the girl gone. Maybe that’s her. Folks say he had her in there since she was a pup.”

Why do I like that interpretation? It adds yet another piece to the question raised by this novel which intrigues me a great deal. Is human dignity something which can be eradicated from a person?

The way that sort of question is normally raised is asking whether it is possible for one person to treat another person as if the second person was something less than human. Obviously that is true; there are so many examples, it is inescapable. The capacity in humans to treat other humans like animals (or worse) is extraordinary and provides the best evidence for Original Sin that I can imagine. It is depressing to start thinking of the creative ways that humans have invented purely to torture other human beings. Human depravity is a real thing. In order to commit atrocities of this sort, it does seem psychologically necessary to dehumanize your victims. To do otherwise would be difficult, to say the least.

That, however, is not the intriguing question raised in Beloved. Yes, the novel has accounts of horrific cruelty, but so do lots of other books. Beloved flips the question around. In the face of such evil, can a person lose their own inherent dignity or their own moral balance?

There are multiple books showing the triumph of the human spirit in the face of evil. Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, for example, is a massive argument that no matter what tortures and degradations are heaped upon people, human dignity remains, the human spirit prevails. Jean Hatzfeld’s books on Rwanda show the same thing. Books like that are inspiring even though the stories, the true stories, contained in them will tear apart your soul.

So, we know that it is possible to retain human dignity in the face of evil. But, what about the other way? Is it possible to lose human dignity? Is it possible that the inhumanity of one’s oppressors can squash the last vestige of humanity in a soul? Is it possible for a person to turn into an unthinking reactionary beast because the person has been treated that way for so long?

That is the question about the characters in Beloved. The characters suffered horror, true horror, as slaves, legally considered property, not people. Even after they are free, their lives are shattered beyond repair. These are broken people. All of them are broken. They cope with that brokenness in assorted ways. It is hard to feel happy about the lives any of these characters lead, but it is not hard to admire many of them for their persistence in the face of evil. Paul D and Baby Suggs are straight out of Solzhenitsyn.

But what about Sethe? Her story is horrific, easily the most horrific story in the book. It is hard to imagine a heart so made of stone it would not break encountering Sethe’s story. Yet, it is also hard to offer her your unqualified admiration. Living in freedom, she sees her former oppressors riding her way. Afraid of what is to come, she gathers her children, kills her baby daughter, and attempts to kill her sons.

What do we make of this act of desperation? A mother killing her own baby is the sort of story that becomes one of those TV trials these days. People are horrified. People ask how any mother could do such a thing? Do we say the same thing about Sethe? Or do we understand how she could do such a thing? Does her history explain her act of infanticide? Do we pity her? Or judge her?

The question underlying all that is how we, the Readers, look at Sethe. Is she a moral agent making an immoral decision? Can we say that the act was actually moral, that she was right to kill her baby daughter? Can we say we understand why she did it, but still condemn her for doing it? Would you sentence Sethe for the crime of infanticide or excuse her from punishment because of why she did it? And, the most disturbing question of all: are you thinking that what has happened to Sethe has actually removed her from the realm in which questions of guilt or innocence are appropriate?

Beloved raises these question, but I do not think it provides an answer. That is why the question of who or what Beloved is becomes so important. If Beloved is another women who escaped from captivity and then tried to find a way to get through life, then it adds to this story of moral accountability in the face of evil. Is what Beloved did right? And the fact that the nature of the character is ambiguous, the novel raises it to a question not just about the characters in this novel but all people in all time who have suffered under true cruelty. It is possible and inspiring for people to persevere in the face of that cruelty. But, what do we say about the people who were crushed by the cruelty? If they in turn commit cruel acts, how do we judge them?