I'm not sure if I'm the only one who has noticed this, but there has been a surprising lack of color in the book Beloved, by Toni Morrison. While Invisible Man was loaded with references to black and white, Morrison's novel is more subtle as to when it mentions color. This leads me to believe that when Morrison uses color, she does so very deliberately.
Perhaps the most described color in Beloved is the color red. One of the first descriptions we get of 124 Bluestone is the "red and undulating light" that Paul D finds when he steps into the house. The red light here seems to represent the spirit of the dead baby which isn't evil, but 'sad,' according to Sethe (although the emotions of the baby can be disputed). "Red baby blood," the dying roses at the carnival, and Sixo's fiery red tongue are other examples of color imagery that, like the spirit of the dead baby, evokes images of the past, death, and of things lost. Red is also used to describe Amy Denver's velvet. The carmine velvet sounds rich and luxuriant but I can't help but wonder if this vision of velvet is only a dream that Amy will never realize. Morrison also uses red to symbolize white supremacy and brutality, by using it to talk about Mister's red comb and Sethe's red chokecherry tree. Overall, the color red that Morrison uses seems to symbolize death and suffering, or longing and the past
There are a few other colors that seem to hold some significance in the novel. Orange, for example, is noted as being "wild." The quilt with the orange patches gives life to Beloved when she's sick and gives comfort to Baby Suggs before she dies. However, I think that orange too is tied to the suffering in the house because the blanket is for the bodies of the sick and dying. Pink is also an important color because it is described as being "the last color Sethe remembered." This is because pink is the color of Beloved's headstone, and thus the color becomes yet another to be associated with death. Orange and pink are quite similar in shade to red, and so maybe that's why Morrison uses them all in a morbid way.
I think it is interesting that white and black are not more commonly used in the novel. It's clear that Baby Suggs, at least, hates whites but there are no sections of Beloved that are like the paint factory scene in Invisible Man. Rather Morrison depicts black and white as "absences" of color and instead tries to point out the importance of other colors that aren't so closely linked to slavery.
I've definitely been paying a lot of attention to the colors as well. The book itself feels very misty, like a gray, cloudy day, with dim, pale colors. It makes me feel at home -- which may be an odd thing to say, as many others describe the setting and the general feel of the book to be very unwelcoming, but I suppose it's a personal opinion. Some colors in books make me feel at home, and others don't. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, I felt like the colors in Eatonville were vibrant and yet rather dry, like sand underneath a blue sky, and I didn't like it at all. Yet, a cloudy day on the outskirts of Cincinnati is fine by me. In any case, as you mention, the vibrant colors that are emphasized here and there do seem to be associated with suffering and morbidity and the like, and the colors, more than the gray backdrop, give me a far greater sense of foreboding -- They seem almost too lurid, unreal.
ReplyDeletePersonally I think that Morrison's choice of red, pink, and orange as opposed to black and white changes to tone of the narrative to be more humanistic and down-to-earth, rather than the stark, accusatory tone of black-and-white that is used solely to point out difference and separation, rather than the actual emotions that go on inside a person's mind and the emotions they feel throughout their lives and in their memories, and this is what I think the pink, red, and orange bring out. They bring out the souls of the people that the imagery is applied to rather than just classifying them into one cultural category or the other, each with their own baggage that ends up being imposed on the characters. In the other books we've read everything we see and know about the characters is surrounded by the black-white dichotomy that imposes notions, a lot of which are preconceived based on pure and simple general history. The history represented by the characters in Beloved is much more personal.
ReplyDeleteAnd now that we've read further, you can add the red ribbon Stamp Paid finds (attached to a lock of hair) in the river, which he carries around as a kind of talisman, a reminder of the violence that whitepeople are capable of.
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