Entry Type #3: Critical Lens Close Reading Entry

Text: Beloved by Toni Morrison

Critical Lens: Psychoanalytic Lens

“It was not a story to pass on.

So they forgot her. Like an unpleasant dream during a troubling sleep. Occasionally, however, the rustle of a skirt hushes when they wake, and the knuckles brushing a cheek in sleep seem to belong to the sleeper. Sometimes the photograph of a close friend or relative -- looked at too long -- shifts, and something more familiar than the dear face itself moves there. They can touch it if they like, but don’t, because they know things will never be the same if they do.

This is not a story to pass on.” (Morrison 324).

In this quote, the narrator is at the end of telling Beloved’s story and her downfall. Throughout his/her narration, though the narrator considers many different situations in which Beloved was forgotten, it continually returns to this is “not a story to pass on,” culminating in this passage that appears at the very end of the last chapter of the novel.

The depiction of these situations and lingering presence of Beloved communicate Morrison’s belief that history should not repeat itself. Morrison emphasizes the causes and effects of forgetting history, describing the “unpleasant dream during a troubling sleep,” “the rustle of a skirt [when it] hushes” and shifting photographs’ faces. This vivid imagery is a reflection of the effects of forgetting history faced by the United States of America as the result of slavery. Not correcting the wrongdoings made in history, rather than correcting said wrongdoings in history, only served to bring about the United States’ modern discrimination. Morrison also describes the ability to touch the shifting photographs’ faces “if they like,” symbolizing Americans’ abilities to change history by doing more than Affirmative Action.

In addition, Morrison frequently uses language and imagery that adds a ghost-like quality to the disappearance of Beloved, such as when she describes the “the rustle of a skirt [when it] hushes” and shifting photographs’ faces, adding a supernatural quality to the final scene. Ghosts linger on in this world after their physical forms have gone; they cannot move on to the next life until it is their time to leave. Beloved is dead and gone, but unlike in the first chapter, her presence does not live on in the minds of Sethe, Denver, Paul D, and so on. The characters in Beloved are not haunted by Beloved’s physical (or supernatural) presence and can move on from it. In the same way, even after Beloved’s ghost is gone, they can still feel “the knuckles brushing a cheek in sleep.” This description demonstrates that Beloved’s presence lingers, but the power and violence of it ceases. The narrator and his/her repetition of not letting history repeat itself reflects how the modern United States of America in general is still facing discrimination that relates to slavery.