This project explores the motif of anger in Toni Morrison's Beloved -- specifically, the character of Beloved as representative of African American anger, the justification of African-American anger, and the ways it manifests in today's world. There are no colors present except for black, white, and red, so as to highlight the importance of red as symbolic of rage, fury, and intense emotion.
"My response to racism is anger. I have lived with that anger, ignoring it, feeding upon it, learning to use it before it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life. Once I did it in silence, afraid of the weight. My fear of anger taught me nothing. Your fear of that anger will teach you nothing, also." - Audre Lorde
The character of Beloved is a malevolent spirit that, at a surface level, is angry at her mother for prematurely stripping her of life. Beloved's anger manifests in different ways throughout the novel, from injuring the family dog to throwing objects. Ultimately, after Beloved's spirit enters a corporeal body, she uses her physical form to inflict both physical and emotional harm on Sethe.
"And when the baby's spirit picked up Here Boy and slammed him into the wall hard enough to break two of his legs and dislocate his eye, so hard he went into convulsions and chewed up his tongue..." (14).
"It took him a while to realize that his legs were not shaking because of worry, but because the floorboards were and the grinding, shoving floor was only part of it. The house itself was pitching" (21).
"Harder, harder, the fingers moved slowly around toward her windpipe, making little circles on the way. Sethe was actually more surprised than frightened to find that she was being strangled. Or so it seemed. In any case, Baby Suggs' fingers had a grip on her that would not let her breathe" (113).
“So, in spite of his exhausted marrow, he kept on through the voices and tried once more to knock at the door of 124. This time, although he couldn’t cipher but one word, he believed he knew who spoke them. The people of the broken necks, of fire-cooked blood and black girls who had lost their ribbons. What a roaring” (213).
The malevolent spirit of Beloved is not merely the singular voice of a slain toddler, but the supernatural manifestation of years of African-American rage and fury at the injustices they have been subject to for thousands of years at the hands of white people. Beloved is the voice of slain children whose parents took their lives out of love rather than to see them experience slavery; Beloved is the voice of black men and women who have been lynched for merely existing; Beloved is the voice of runaway slaves who were burned to death in retribution; Beloved is the voice of young black girls whose innocence has been ripped away from them. Beloved's story and Beloved's anger is not the story of one, but of millions. Beloved serves as a reminder of black anger and how loud and justified it truly is. What a roaring.
"The more colored people spent their strength trying to convince them how gentle they were, how clever and loving, how human, the more they used themselves up to persuade whites of something Negroes believed could not be questioned, the deeper and more tangled the jungle grew inside. But it wasn't the jungle blacks brought with them to this place from the other (livable) place. It was the jungle whitefolks planted in them. And it grew. It spread" (234).
When Morrison speaks of a metaphorical "jungle" on page 234, she is speaking directly to the anger and rage that has been instilled in African-Americans due to the injustices white people have subjected them to. White people planted the "jungle", or the rage, in African-Americans by enslaving and murdering millions of their people. It is crucial to note that this jungle is not innate, but has been "planted", or instilled, in millions of people. This anger is justified, too, for those that have been subjected to thousands of years of subhuman treatment at the hands of their oppressors have every right to be spiteful about it.
"We are talking about justifiable outrage. Outrage over the unjust taking of the lives of people who look like us." - Brittney Cooper, Salon
Though slavery was officially eradicated at the end of the Civil War with the Emancipation Proclamation, the justifiably-angry voices of thousands of African-Americans continue to percolate into historical narratives and mainstream culture. Now, anger is directed in response to injustices such as Jim Crow laws and an increase in the exposure of police brutality in the 21st century.
Perhaps the most notable example of a justifiably-angry response to injustice in the 21st century is the formation of the Black Lives Matter movement. Black Lives Matter formed as a direct response to an increase in the exposure of police brutality, due in part to an uptick in media attention and the use of social media. Black Lives Matter has found itself the center of many a political firestorm and was a hot-button issue for politicians during the 2016 Presidential election.
"They telling me get over it’s old / That stuff don’t exist no more / But that don’t ring true when I look in these streets / So it’s real when I feel like it coulda been me" - Trip Lee, "Coulda Been Me"
The African-American experience in America has long been the focal point of discussions about injustice. However, far too often, actual black voices are often drowned out amidst a roaring of white debate about whether or not their anger is justified, about whether or not they are right to take to the streets or take to their knees in protest. In conclusion, black anger is real. Black anger is justified. Black anger is revolutionary. As readers of novels like Beloved that highlight these injustices and the reverberating effects of trauma, we have a responsibility to give a voice to the thousands that have been drowned out. We have a responsibility to listen. We have a responsibility not to let questions of whether or not anger is justified overpower the reasons for the anger themselves. We have a responsibility to the people of broken necks, of fire-cooked blood, and young girls who've lost their ribbons.
Credits:
Created with images by spDuchamp - "Red Curtain" • K. Kendall - "Audre Lorde" • WikiImages - "man african american black" • Abode of Chaos - "Angela Davis, painted portrait IMG_6929004" • WenPhotos - "sector fingers anger" • missy & the universe - "Zanzibar: Memory of Slaves"