Course Blog

            Giovanni’s Room was published in 1958 by Dial Press in New York and was Baldwin’s second novel, the first being Go Tell It on the Mountain. After the successful and critically acclaimed publication of his first book, Baldwin claimed that he was now stuck in a trap, “[N]ow I was a writer, a Negro writer, and I was expected to write diminishing versions of Go Tell It on the Mountain forever.  Which I refused to do.” (Wiggins, 2019). Thus, Baldwin wrote Giovanni’s Room. A work which is concerned with a love affair between two men set in Paris. This, one might note, is very different from Go Tell It on the Mountain which is based on Baldwin’s own life, and set in Harlem. One should also note that while Baldwin’s first novel is concerned with issues facing the African American community Giovanni’s Room features an all-white cast of characters as well. (Wiggins, 2019).

Upon receiving the book Baldwin’s publisher told him he should burn it. Though upon release the novel was generally well received. Long term, however, the book came to be viewed as weak and without depth. (Wiggins, 2019). This opinion has changed over time, and the novel has now become a focus of scholarly work as more people work with Queer Literature.

This evolution of the way people think about Giovanni’s Room is a critically important example of the power of Queer literary studies and its restorative abilities. Part of this area of study is proving that queer stories have always existed and that explicitly queer characters and narratives already exist. It is the restorative ability of the field which has led to the increased popularity of Giovanni’s Room, or rather, the growth of the work’s popularity. As such, the reader should consider that when scholars work specifically with Queer Stories and Queer Literature there is an element of restoration. It is as if to say, “We’ve always been here.”

Given that my primary text for my thesis is an entire TV series, I had trouble figuring out which prompt to select and what to write about. Ultimately, I decided that prompt #2 would make the most sense for me and set out to find primary sources contemporaneous to the run  of Avatar: The Last Airbender on Nickelodeon from 2005 to 2008. The most obvious place to start was to look for reviews, and while results on Jumpstart and in film databases were not bountiful, I was able to find two of interest. 

The first was a short review from Video Librarian, a resource that essentially contains reviews of tens of thousands of films and TV shows. It caught my eye because it reads like those succinct, to the point book reviews of academic monographs that sum up the work and then give a judgment on whether it’s worth the reader’s time. This review by T. Keogh was in the same fashion, giving a rating of 3.5 stars out of 4 (in between “good” and “excellent”), and ending with the glowing endorsement: “Highly recommended.” The review only covers the first DVD set of season 1, which is just a few episodes, but I found it interesting how Keogh chose to summarize the series. They focused on the fact that Aang, the protagonist, had been in an iceberg for 100 years and was tasked with restoring balance to humanity. 

There is no mention of the fact that Aang is, as the title of the show suggests, the last Airbender—the last of his people after a brutal genocide that Aang escaped by pure chance. The premise of Aang being the last of his kind is central to the show’s theme and plot—he’s not only the last airbender alive, but as the series takes place 100 years after the genocide of his people, the Air Nomads, he’s the only person alive with knowledge of their culture and customs. Since the Video Librarian is used as an academic resource as well and is not necessarily geared towards children, I found it a bit surprising that this element of the show was ignored entirely. The violence underscoring Avatar feels obvious to me, but this review makes me question how much attention people paid to the colonialist violence and genocide rather than focusing on the beautiful animation, the character arcs, or the concept of elemental bending.

The second review, from the New York Times, appeared ahead of the release of the series finale. It seems to get closer to the heart of Avatar, focusing specifically on Aang’s struggle as a pacifist who has to stop the genocidal Fire Lord. Everyone expects him to kill the Fire Lord and sees it as the only possible end to the Fire Nation’s colonial rule, but Aang was raised to be a non-violent pacifist and only uses violence in self-defense. It’s a tenet he adheres to throughout the series, but the reason why it’s so salient is that it is in direct relation with his Air Nomad culture. As the last Air Nomad and Airbender, he feels a responsibility to preserve the culture as best as possible. He refuses to let go of the teachings of the monks who raised him, a lingering connection to the life he was robbed of. 

This review, by Susan Stewart, touches on that to some degree, recognizing the complexity of balancing Aang’s religious and cultural practices with his duty and the expectation of violence. But, Stewart says, it’s a hard topic to broach that is “beautifully rendered” in the series finale. I’m inclined to agree. But more importantly, it seems that by the end of Avatar’s run, viewers and reviewers seemed to form a better sense of the heart of the show and the difficult, often tangentially violent topics it deals with. For me, this exercise proved to be a fascinating way of seeing not only what people thought of Avatar on a base level, but how they thought about it. Everyone consumes and analyzes media differently, so to see which themes reviewers wrote about, some of their takeaways, and interpretations of the story was helpful for me. It’s a reminder that not everyone is going to be consuming media through the same lens.

Works Cited:

Keogh, T. “Avatar: The Last Airbender–Book 1: Water, Volume 1.” Video Librarian, vol. 21, no. 3, May 2006, p. 57. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=da6a1d18-cd43-39c4-a4f6-dda3698624f1.

Stewart, Susan. “Though raised by pacifists, destined to battle for peace.” New York Times, 19 July 2008, p. B15(L). Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A181561704/AONE?u=carl22017&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=4e027d18.

As I am interested in studying the concepts of ekphrasis and the sublime particularly in romantic poetry, I will certainly be including works of famous romantic poet William Wordsworth in my research.

Wordsworth had started his poetic career early, getting into writing at a young age in grammar school in Cockermouth, England, where he recalled his education in several of his poems. He later attended Hawkshead Grammar School, where he began composing verse and his love of nature and senses become integrated into his poetry. Wordsworth also held a great appreciation for the ‘common’ man and what it meant to politically represent people of multiple social statuses through literature. To this, Wordsworth poetry famously utilized simple verse that could be of value to people with a more casual appreciation to poetry and average literacy,

The poet also adopted some strong political beliefs that stemmed from this empathy and passion towards the ‘common’ man. Wordsworth spent time on trips in Switzerland and France, adopting ideas supportive of democracy and anti-tyrannical. Particularly in France, exposure to revolutionary ardor and beautiful natural scenes of the countryside simultaneously formed a personality for Wordsworth as a poet and literary figure.

Though, the poet’s identity would change throughout the years. After having a child with a woman he was not married to, he was ultimately barred from joining any churches in his local area, mainly to save the embarrassment from his relatives in the churches. Ironically, Wordsworth had gotten into the works of atheist William Godwin anyway and had become strongly influenced by the piece.

This biographical context of Wordsworth is essential to fully understanding the poet’s use of ekphrasis and exploration of the sublime. With a love of nature, particularly scenes and images of nature, the poet transformed this love to his poetry through ekphrasis. With background on the poet’s religious beliefs, this context contributes to discourse surrounding Wordsworth’s infatuation with the sublime, given the strong atheist influence in his life.

 

Citations:

“William Wordsworth: 1170-1850”, The Poetry Foundation. Accessed October 7th, 2024. William Wordsworth | The Poetry Foundation

While combing through potential sources, I found an issue of The New York Times, featuring a review on my focal text, The Princess Bride. After reading the review I decided to page through the issue for any articles that could shed light on what was going on around the novel’s publication. For a little context, this issue was published on December 23, 1973, the same year The Princess Bride was published, and consequentially it was filled with advertisements for various Christmas gifts and holiday sales. One advertisement that caught my attention was for a Bonwit Teller swimsuit on page 5. This advertisement takes up almost the entire page and consists of a small paragraph and illustration displaying the product. The tagline of the ad reads, “The Bonwit Tank: Ready to Move Boldly into the Sun Life” (5). What stood out to me about this advertisement was that it was promoting a summer swimsuit in the middle of December, a month when it is too cold for swimming in most places. The winter solstice, which is the day that has the least amount of sunlight hours, also occurs in December. I think these aspects help encourage readers to not only buy the swimsuit, but also hint at a need to travel in order to enjoy their product and escape the cold weather. 

Another thing I noticed was the plethora of pieces on various crises overseas, and on the fuel crisis in the US. One piece in particular was a message from Roots. The message starts with “Winter 1973 hasn’t been all bad” (39) and then continues to list various current issues and good aspects of them, including an “energy crisis,” “foreign conflicts,” “our uncertain economy,” and “Disturbing political incidents have caused us to individually examine our own motives and actions, which can only result in good.” The list created by the message depicts various problems taking place at the time, and consequently, the effect these have on the population. I had wondered why Goldman decided to not only write a fairytale aimed at all ages, but also to interact with the text with his personal perspective and notes; now I think I have a theory. At the time of this New Yorker issue there is a lot happening; people are stressed and struggling and in need of an escape. Maybe The Princess Bride was an escape for Goldman, and by interacting with the text, he felt like he was more of a part of the story.

Works Cited

“Display Ad 11 — no Title.” New York Times (1923-), Dec 23, 1973, pp. 5. ProQuest, https://dickinson.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/display-ad-11-no-title/docview/119732018/se-2. 

“Display Ad 86 — no Title.” New York Times (1923-), Dec 23, 1973, pp. 39. ProQuest, https://dickinson.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/display-ad-86-no-title/docview/119733760/se-2. 

Though I have a series of focal texts on my reading list—and all tie back to the central issue of Partition—I don’t think I’ve ever taken a moment to look at the primary evidence that announced the division of the British Raj.

I’ve chosen a brief article from The Times titled “Broadcast by Viceroy.” It’s simply a printing of Lord Mountbatten’s radio broadcast made the day before announcing the plans for Partition (the broadcast aired on June 3rd, 1947 and the speech was reprinted on June 4th, 1947). This is likely one of the first times this announcement appeared in print, so I’m counting it as a primary source. Lord Mountbatten, Viceroy of India, planned the Partition of India and Pakistan; in this speech, he explains the original plans, the final decision, and how he hopes the Indian people will react to the news of the transfer of power.

It is this final section, here subtitled “Indian States,” that is of particular interest to me. Lord Mountbatten consistently stresses the need for this transfer of power to occur “in a peaceful and orderly manner,” and he states that “every single one of us must bend all his efforts to the task;” these choices of wording suggest that the responsibility for the prevention of violence is a communal task passed onto the now-citizens of the newborn nation. Though Mountbatten is attempting to generate a sense of responsibility, it comes off as a transfer of blame.

In the rest of the speech, his tone is extremely patronizing: “This is no time for bickering, much less for the continuation in any shape or form of the disorders and lawlessness of the past few months” (“Broadcast by Viceroy”). “Bickering” carries connotations of petulant schoolchildren, and his references to “the disorders and lawlessness of the past few months” carefully covers up British complicity in inciting said lawlessness.

It’s the last three lines that feels especially condescending: “Do not forget what a narrow margin of food we are all working on. We cannot afford any toleration of violence. All of us are agreed on that” (“Broadcast by Viceroy”). Lord Mountbatten, from his position of food security, likely refers to the Bengal Famine of 1943. It’s essential to note that famines are engineered—it’s not the absence of available food, it’s a withholding of available food.

If anything, looking into colonial documents makes me question tone and word choice—it’s also important to note that these declarations are first broadcast in English, a language only accessible to the colonial elite and a South Asian ruling class with an Anglophone education. These are the kinds of official documents women writers are responding to, and this inherently accusatory tone fits with the same kinds of “victim-blaming” enacted upon fictional women by the men in their lives.

Works Cited

Mountbatten, Lord Louis. “Broadcast by Viceroy.” The Times, London, 4 June 1947, https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/indian-independence/mountbatten-radio-broadcast/.

(***After writing all of this, I realize now that the blog post prompt is not nearly as limiting as I first perceived—but I hope that this contains enough substance regardless!)

Author and professor Peter Dendle has produced a high volume of works surrounding the zombie and its history, including a chapter of Monsters and the Monstrous titled “The zombie as barometer of cultural anxiety.” It considers the varied significance of the zombie in media, depending on location and time: and depending on what widespread cultural fears are present. Dendle possesses an extensive body of work on the zombie beyond this individual chapter, however, and demonstrates such variety that NPR has featured his work on zombies. I recently read it, so it was on the brain as a portion of my reading list I wanted to explore; though I struggled to find reviews on the author’s work or biographies of the author, I wanted to evaluate some of the range of his work and how his previous writings form a sort of “biography” of his study of the zombie.

Included in his works is “The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia,” an overview and analysis of over 200 zombie movies from 16 countries—Amazon’s description lists the book as the “first exhaustive historical overview of zombie films” (“Amazon”). Some similar material from this book is (rightfully) included in “The zombie as a barometer of cultural anxiety,” including in-depth analyses of a number of Western zombie films. The film “White Zombie,” for instance, is discussed in detail as not only the first “zombie movie,” but for its connections to the West African folklore that majorly shaped the composing of our contemporary concept of the zombie. Dendle highlights the use of the zombie as a laborer forcibly robbed of their soul and free will, specifically to work in a sugar cane factory (46). He moves in chronological order, additionally exploring Depression-era, wartime, Cold War, consumerist, and even September 11th 2001-adjacent zombie films. He does not assign solely one metaphor or symbol that the zombie stands for to each time period, instead exploring (as the films have) multiple avenues by which the zombie stands in for relevant cultural anxieties: for example, the movie Ouanga contains themes of labor as well as themes of race and slavery, both of which are explored by Dendle (47).

Considering Dendle cites his book The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia within “The zombie as a barometer of cultural anxiety,” their structural similarities make perfect sense. In both, Dendle uses chronological order of historical events, and his respective analyses of prominent anxieties that incorporate a number of secondary sources, to explain the popularity of selected zombie films and argue for the zombie as a method of exploring forms of dehumanization and the loss of individuality. In “The zombie as a barometer for cultural anxiety,” he instead narrows his focus to Western zombie films, especially those that became particularly popular, explaining their popularity by relating “cultural anxiety” to the films’ times of composition and release. The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia features a compilation of movies with objective information, such as the director, cast, and release date, then followed by Dendle’s impressions and review of the film. His book chapter seems to condense the summary portion of these films, and perhaps expand upon the review and analysis portion—a fitting choice in getting across his claim of the zombie as reflective of societal fears, for which an author must expand upon a multitude of analyses of a film.

Peter Dendle’s book and article even focus on similar time frames: around 1930 to 2000. The main difference in terms of chronology is that “barometer of cultural anxiety” goes beyond the year 2000 into the most recent resurgences of zombie media, even briefly mentioning videogame franchises and their prominent role in the larger collection of zombie media. Reviews of The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia mention confusion regarding the exclusion of these more recent films or franchises from the book (“Goodreads”), leading me to wonder if there is some sort of connection between that exclusion and the following inclusion of 2000s-era zombie films in “Zombies as a barometer of cultural anxiety.” This “outdatedness” is the most common complaint among reviewers, while the most common compliment is in favor of Dendle’s personal analyses of each film, and his lengthy introductory criticism and overview of zombie-history. This strength is what forms the basis of “a barometer of cultural anxiety,” allowing Dendle to expand upon selected films. 

I don’t want to reduce the book chapter to simply an offshoot of or response to the book, considering their multitude of differences and Dendle’s extensive experience writing about zombies (and a large number of other popular “monsters”). I am interested in the connections between these two works and how these connections speak to what each work aims to do: the book as a general overview linked closer with film-specific study, and the book chapter as a direct argument for the importance of the evolution of the “zombie.”

“Amazon.Com: Peter Dendle: Books.” Amazon.Com, www.amazon.com/Books-Peter-Dendle/s?rh=n:283155,p_27:Peter+Dendle. 

Dendle, Peter. “The zombie as barometer of cultural anxiety.” Monsters and the Monstrous. Brill, 2007. 45-557.

Dendle, Peter. The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia. McFarland & Co., 2001.

“The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia.” Goodreads.Com, Goodreads, www.goodreads.com/book/show/903305.The_Zombie_Movie_Encyclopedia.

Since my primary text (The Aeneid) is from literally centuries ago, I struggled a bit for this blog post to construct an author biography. Very little survives aside from Virgil’s published works — his biography has to be constructed through allusions by his contemporaries, ancient lost biographies, and popular legend. Publius Vergilius Maro, or as we know him, Virgil, (~70 BCE – 19 BCE) was born to a farming family in northern Italy; though little is known about his family, they must have been relatively well-off because they provided him with an education that eventually led him to Rome. According to a lost biography by Servius, he was a relatively shy, closed-off man, who devoted himself to studying philosophy and writing poetry. 

Virgil lived through a particularly unsteady period in Roman history: he saw both the first and second civil war, the murder of Julius Caesar, the death of the Republic, and the beginning of what we know as the Roman empire. During this period of mass upheaval, he wrote the Eclogues and Georgics, pastoral poems about the beauty of Italy and the proper life of a farmer. However, he pivots from pastoral poetry to The Aeneid, an epic poem that set out to reflect the foundation of Rome, its connection to the new emperor (Octavian/Augustus), and to unite a divided Rome. Begun around 29 BCE, The Aeneid has its foundations in the period when Augustus took power and became the princeps of Rome (aka the emperor). One of Virgil’s contemporaries, Sextus Propertius, says Augustus himself commissioned Virgil to write the epic, and common legend says he was the only poet Augustus saw as up to the task. It’s hard to completely believe this story however, since so much of our evidence is contradictory and our modern conceptions of his biography are largely based on hearsay and legends. 

For this blog post, I want to focus on the pressure placed on Virgil to present the perfect epic. If it’s true that he was the poet chosen out of many famous and talented poets at the time (figures such as Ovid, Horace, and Catullus), would this work be expected to be proof that he was ‘the best’? Maybe that’s why, according to tradition, he only wrote three lines of the poem a day — reworking and perfecting each word and phrase. Virgil spent over ten years on the epic, and died before he was finished with it. Legend says he was largely unsatisfied with it, and it was awaiting many revisions; apparently, Virgil wanted the epic to be burned after his death, and only by the grace of Caesar Augustus was it saved and published. If Virgil struggled that much with this work — with the words, the message, the impact — how do we approach what survives?

I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume Virgil was under a lot of pressure — he had the emperor looking to him, his fellow poets, and, presumably, the entire Roman nation who had begun to see him as a national poet. His contemporary, Sextus Propertius, wrote “Make way, ye Roman writers, make way, ye Greeks! Something greater than the Iliad is coming to birth” (Elegies, II.34.64-65). Everyone waited to see what Virgil would come up with; it’s almost as if the entire weight of the nation was on his shoulders. When Virgil did share his work, either through letters to fellow poets or an alleged reading of a few books to the imperial family, he prompted excessive emotion and praise. Yet, Virgil didn’t seem very satisfied with what he had, continually revising his work and apparently calling for its destruction on his deathbed. 

I think this history, whether it be real or mythological itself, provides an interesting lens through which to read The Aeneid — from its inception, this work had a imperially-sanctioned message: to construct the foundation of the empire and help shape its values going forward. Virgil knew the weight this work held, for him as an artist and for the country. The way in which he chose to present empire and imperial values — what I will explore in my thesis — was deeply intentional. He also had a specific audience he was writing for: the emperor and those looking to define what Rome would become after all that upheaval.

 

Works Cited:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/virgil

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Virgil

Propertius. Elegies. Edited and translated by G. P. Goold. Loeb Classical Library 18. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.

In 1993, the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Toni Morrison, whose “novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, [gave] life to an essential aspect of American reality” (The Nobel Prize in Literature). In her acceptance speech, Morrison frames language and writing through a fable of a blind woman being presented with a bird by a group of young strangers, who ask her if she believes the bird to be dead or alive. Morrison understands the fable through the woman as “practiced writer” and the bird as language itself. She thinks of dead language similarly to the prone body of a frail bird, “certainly imperiled and salvageable only by an effort of will” (Morrison 2). Only when the young strangers express belief in language and narrative as alive and radical, “creating us at the very moment it is being created” (7), does the blind woman say: 

“Finally,” she says, “I trust you now. I trust you with the bird that is not in your hands because you have truly caught it. Look. How lovely it is, this thing we have done – together” (7). 

“This thing we have done – together” encapsulates the communal effort to preserve the move toward a productive use of language in changing the trajectory of history, and of recognizing the systematic use of language that allows the transpiration of stagnant, oppressive perspectives. Morrison questions the Tower of Babel itself, stating that “the weight of many languages precipitated the tower’s failed architecture,” and one monolithic language would have saved the building and heaven could have been reached. Morrison reflects back to the blind woman, asking “Whose heaven? […] And what kind?” (4). The paradise that Babbel would have brought was one version of paradise for one group of people, and the dead languages left in its wake would still linger in the rubble of the fall. Their lingering presence still persists in the present moment, where statist systems of language that protect the interests of oppressors and polices the power of the oppressed must be “rejected, altered, and exposed” (3) in order for language to become generative and alive once again. 

Beloved’s publication and themes of lingering trauma related to American systems were highly influential to Morrison’s reception of the Nobel Prize, and in the novel she herself contributes to the resurrection of a dead language in the resurrection of Beloved herself. Beloved is a ghost of a child killed in a desperate act of mercy, but she also encompasses the trauma of America’s history of slavery and racism that lingers just the same as systems continuing to effect because they have not been rejected, altered, and exposed. Only then can those systems of language and history be broken, and only then can Beloved and everything she represents be freed from the purgatory she has risen from.          

At the end of the fable, the blind woman only trusts the young strangers with the bird, or language, when they assert they understand its ever changing nature and how they must question its meaning in order to take care of it. Whether it be language and the purpose of its uses or the ghost of a dead child, Morrison uses the power of narrative and confrontation to change the ways in which we operate within our surrounding systems.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

 

Morrison, Toni. “Nobel Lecture.” Nobel Prize for Literature, 7 December 1993, Stockholm, Sweden, Speech. https://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/?id=1502 (Transcript: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/morrison/lecture/) 

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1993. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/summary/

I want to talk about J.R.R. Tolkien’s experience with war and loss and how those experiences have influenced The Lord of the Rings. At the age of 12, Tolkien was orphaned with his father dying in 1846 with rheumatic fever and his mother dying eight years later from complications due to her diabetes (Whitt). Twelve years after the death of his mother, Toklien joined the first world war fighting in the trenches on the front lines and simultaneously losing four of his five closest friends in the war (Whitt, Imperial War Museums). Reflected in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien creates “The Fellowship” consisting of nine members, four of which are hobbits, Frodo, the protagonist, Samwise (Sam), Peregrin (Pippin), and Meriadoc (Merry). 

The character of Frodo shares many similarities to Tolkien. Frodo lost both of his parents quite young and went on a quest that cost the lives of his friends and, if failed, would plunge the world into eternal darkness. Throughout the three novels, there is a constant question of sides. Whenever the fellowship, either together or broken up, encounters another person, they almost always begin their line of questioning with asking whose side they are on. This question mirrors Tolkien’s experience in the Great War, a heavily sided war with the side Tolkien was fighting against, the Central Powers, going down in history as the bad side. The long journey brought Frodo and the rest of the Fellowship to lands unknown to them, just as Tolkien was sent into battle in countries that he had never been in. 

The death of Boromir in the beginning of The Two Towers, the second novel in the trilogy, is what really drew me to looking into Tolkien’s history with war. Frodo was unaware of Boromir’s death when he runs from the group, but he runs knowing that death is on the horizon. He has seen a vision of death and does not want those around him to be hurt. Tolkien’s loss of his closest friends in the war deeply impacted him and his writing of Frodo of going on the journey to Mordor alone in order to save his friends lives could be what Tolkien wished he could have done. Of the Fellowship, only Gandalf and Boromir are killed, but Gandalf is later resurrected. Tolkien saving Frodo’s companions and friends are the complete opposite of what happened to Tolkien during the war, and most likely what he wished had actually occurred.

 

Sources:

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. New York, Del Rey, 2018.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. New York City, New York, Del Rey, 2018.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. New York City, New York, Del Rey, 2018.

“Second Lieutenant J R R Tolkien.” Imperial War Museums, www.iwm.org.uk/history/second-lieutenant-j-r-r-tolkien. Accessed 6 Oct. 2024. 

Whitt, Jeremy. “Understanding J.R.R. Tolkien through a Christian Perspective.” Celebrating J.R.R. Tolkien – Library News | Pepperdine Libraries, Caruso School of Law – Pepperdine University, 18 Sept. 2023, library.pepperdine.edu/news/posts/2020-01-jrr-tolkien.htm#:~:text=After%20their%20return%20to%20England,Morgan%20of%20the%20Birmingham%20Oratory.

“’Love is or ain’t.…It ain’t my job to know what’s worse [than Sweet Home]. It’s my job to know what is and to keep them away from what I know is terrible. I did that.” (Morrison 195).

Sethe, as an enslaved young woman, already was born to and lives in a nightmare in which she has no power nor protection from threats. Sethe as an enslaved mother leads an even more nightmarish existence: despite the fundamental “jobs” of motherhood is to protect your vulnerable from harm. But how can the powerless protect anything, however much they love and care for their child? And so, when caught by slavecatchers who threaten to take her and her children back to such a nightmare, she does her job- and keeps Beloved away from Sweet Home by killing her (Morrison 191-195). Whether or not this was “right,” as Paul D challenges her, Sethe’s love for her children cannot be denied, and only its expression potentially disputed (Morrison 195). More importantly, through quotes like this and by making Sethe the main character of the novel, we come to understand her and the hellish reality she faced. As a result, the reader may not agree, but we can understand.

For Sethe is not an abstraction: her feelings and choices are drawn from real histories, namely that of Margert Garner (Morrison, xvii). Also with four children, Maragret escaped slavery and was resting at a relative’s house when the slavecatchers came (Carroll, “Margaret”). Like Sethe, she only managed to “slit the throat of her 2-year-old daughter,” and intended to kill the others before stopped and arrested for destruction of “property.” (Carroll, “Margaret”). Like Sethe, this violence was likely done out of desperation, for even contemporary newspapers reported at the trial she appeared in “extreme sadness,” and held her youngest even while testifying, not focusing on the baby except “’only once, when it put its hand to her mouth, [they] observed her smile upon it, and playfully bite its little fingers with her lips.’” (Carroll, “Margaret”) Beloved helps recover the emotions of desperation to protect in impossible circumstances- the smile, sadness, and playfulness indicate this was a mother who loved her children. This understanding is important when considering narratives like below:

The above 1867- and thus post-war and post-slavery- “The Modern Medea” image offers none of the humanization started in the newspaper article and transformed totally in Beloved, and implicitly assures the necessity for Beloved as a text.  The lack of humanization to Margaret appears in the title itself- the mythological Medea kills her children in revenge for being cast aside, making the fatal decision one of pride. Sethe and Margaret killed their child to save them from pain, no matter wrongly or rightly, because enslavement is that terrible. The title obscures the motivation for the action itself, creating a false equivalency that subtly withholds sympathy for Margaret in rooting her decisions based on anger rather than systemic desperation and pain. The Margaret of the image conforms to this in glaring at the slavecatchers at the expense of her living and dead children- her remaining children cling to her, but she pays them no mind, unlike the real woman even at her trial. Though we cannot say for sure what Margaret felt in that fateful moment, this depiction does not afford her any dimensions beyond Medea-like fury. She shows (righteous) anger to the men, sure, but what does she feel intrapersonally? This image gives no indication, diminshing Margaret’s likely three-dimensional pain.

Most troublingly of all, the muted depiction of the slavecatchers obstructs of the reasons for Margaret’s anguished act: their invasion, and the slaveholding system they represent. In some way, their horrified expressions and physical recoil in their leg stance credit them with the most “human” reaction to the murder of a child, despite them being the problem. Indeed, one would need context to know these are slavecatchers- they carry no visible weapons, and thus do not appear to pose a threat in the image, not reality. Instead, the pointed hands of both the slavecatchers and Margaret point to the deceased children, emphasizing the horror in the infanticide rather than the cause of the slaveholders. If the portrait had wanted to connect the cause and the result, Margaret’s image might point at the slavecatchers and the children and thus link them. Instead, in emphasizing the horror of the action, “The Modern Medea” hides why this tragedy happened, and the real, impossible pain for a mother trying to save her children from infinite earthly misery. Sethe loves her children, and from what little we can tell of Margaret Garner, she loved her children, too. Images like these prove why Beloved has such power and urgency; whether the action was “right” or not, it was done in great desperation and pain, and whatever opinion on morality, we at least owe it to the “sixty million and more” from Morrison’s dedication to understand (Morrison, xiii).

 

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