The Importance of Color in Toni Morrisons Beloved Essay

The Importance of Color in Toni Morrisons Beloved Toni Morrisons Beloved - a novel that addresses the cruelties that result from slavery. Morrison depicts the African Americans quest for a new life while showing the difficult task of escaping the past. The African American simply wants to claim freedom and create a sense of community. In Beloved, the characters suffer not from slavery itself, but as a result of slavery - that is to say the pain occurs as they reconstruct themselves, their families, and their communities only after the devastation of slavery (Kubitschek 115). Throughout the novel, Morrison utilizes color as a symbolic tool to represent a free, safe, happy life as well as involvement in community and†¦show more content†¦In his journey North, Paul D would scan the horizon for a flash of pink or white...[or] blossoming plums (Morrison 113). By having Paul D search for colorful flowers, Morrison illustrates Paul Ds desire for a life full of safety, enjoyment, and freedom. Just as Paul D desires a better life after slavery, so does Baby Suggs. As a slave, Suggs was suppressed and did not experience the type of life she desired. Morrison indirectly demonstrates this by purposely leaving out any descriptions of color in Suggss life when she was a slave. Morrison uses this absence of color to express that Suggs had lived the life which she had longed for. She did not experience independence, freedom, safety nor a sense of community when she was a slave. However, after she was sold, she searched for color, or the life that she had wanted. For, she had never had time to see, let alone enjoy it before (Morrison 201). Enjoying every color that she could, trying to compensate for the time wasted as a slave, Suggs retreated to her room and concentrated on color. It took her a long time to finish with blue, then yellow then green (Morrison 201). Making explicit the absence of color while Suggs was a slave and then describing the way she relished t he colors of her newly acquired freedom, Morrison conveys Suggss fulfillment of the life she had longed to have when she was a slave. Finally, as her life ended, Suggs was happy with the freedom, sense ofShow MoreRelatedRacism And Discrimination On African Americans1210 Words   |  5 Pagesthan a simple eye color. They are beauty. They are power. They are whiteness. They are the end to all of her problems. To Pecola, having blue eyes would rid her of her ugliness and painful life. The symbolism found in blue eyes also reveals the considerable amount of sadness that Pecola feels. Her desire to have the bluest eyes is symbolic of the fact that Pecola has the saddest eyes, and the saddest life, of any other character in the novel (â€Å"Bluest† Shmoop). Likewise, the importance and descriptionsRead More Toni Morrisons Beloved: Not a Story to be Passed On Essay example5432 Words   |  22 PagesToni Morrisons Beloved: Not a Story to be Passed On Beloved, Toni Morrisons Nobel Prize winning novel, is a masterfully written book in which the characters must deal with a past that perpetually haunts them.   This haunting, in the form of a twenty year old ghost named Beloved, not only stalks them in the spirit, but also in the flesh.   Beloved, both in story and in character hides the truth in simple ways and convinces those involved that the past never leaves, it only becomes part of whoRead MoreToni Morrison s Life And Accomplishments2003 Words   |  9 PagesToni Morrison was born â€Å"Chloe Ardelia Wofford† on February 18th, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio. Chloe earned her nickname â€Å"Toni† in college and took Morrison as her married name. She was born in an predominantly African American town, to a poor family, which was like most of Lorain’s residents. Her parents always emphasized the importance of education. â€Å"The world back then didn’t expect much from a little black girl, but my father and mother certainly did.† In 1949 she attended college at the Howard UniversityRead MoreHow Slavery Can Affect The Mother s Mind And Threaten Motherhood3396 Words   |  14 Pagesthe property of others? Considering the description of servitude, it is interesting to see how the severe elements of slavery can potentially affect the mother’s mind and threaten motherhood. This is seen and heavily stressed through Toni Morrison’s Gothic Fiction Beloved— an historical novel based on pregnant runaway slave, Margaret Garner — which is a slave narrative that follows the lives of the main characters: Sethe, a former and runaway slave from a plantation called Sweet Home, Denver, her daughterRead MoreEssay on The Song of Solomon2983 Words   |  12 Pages Book Title Song of Solomon Author Toni Morrison Summary The first black boy ever born in Mercy Hospital in a town in Michigan comes into the world the day after an insurance agent named Robert Smith kills himself by trying to â€Å"fly† from the roof of the hospital across Lake Superior. The boys mother, Ruth, nurses him until he is eight or nine years old, thus earning him the ridiculous nickname Milkman. Milkman befriends an older boy named Guitar, visits his Aunt Pilate, and falls in love with