Overview: Toni Morrison on the writing process and inception of
Beloved, stated, ''I was amazed by this story I came across about a woman called Margaret Garner who had escaped from Kentucky, I think, into Cincinnati with four children; and she was a kind of cause celebre among abolitionists in 1855 or '56…I found an article about her in a magazine of the period, and there was this young woman in her 20's, being interviewed - oh, a lot of people interviewed her, mostly preachers and journalists, and she was very calm, she was very serene. They kept remarking on the fact that she was not frothing at the mouth, she was not a madwoman, and she kept saying, 'No, they're not going to live like that. They will not live the way I have lived.’ A desire to invent. Now I didn't do any more research at all about that story. I did a lot of research about everything else in the book - Cincinnati, and abolitionists, and the underground railroad - but I refused to find out anything else about Margaret Garner. I really wanted to invent her life."
Directions: Read
Beloved, pages 1-33. Next, compose a blog response using the names or symbolic moments below as the catalyst for your analysis on the reading. Please use direct evidence from the text and respond to each other. Get a conversation going. I look forward to your responses.
Characters
- Sethe
- Paul D
- Baby Suggs
- Howard and Buglar
- Denver
- Beloved
- Halle
- Sixo
- Paul A and Paul F
- Amy Denver
- Mr. Garner
- Mrs. Garner
- Schoolteacher
- Sethe’s mother
Symbolic Moments
- 124
- Ten minutes for seven letters.
- Chokecherry tree.
- “They took my milk.”
- Tobaco tin.
- Brother. According to Paul D, why is it better than Sethe’s?
- Cornfield. How loose the silk….. How jailed down the juice….
