Beloved February 2007

February 2007 book selection

The Fairfax Library Book Discussion Group will meet Thursday, February 1st at 7 p.m. in the meeting room of the Fairfax Library to discuss our February book: Beloved by Toni Morrison.

This book has won both the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and Nobel Prize in Literature. This is a book that takes you by the collar and shakes you with what it has to say. It isn’t always easy to read – both the material and writing style are challenging. But the challenge is worth the effort.

Below are the discussion questions for the book. Printed copies of the questions, author background and reviews of the book as well as refreshments will be available at the discussion group Thursday evening.

In our upcoming March 1st meeting, we will discuss The March by E.L. Doctorow, a look at Sherman’s Civil War march through Georgia and the Carolinas that led to the end of the war.

I look forward to seeing you at the Fairfax Library.

Beth Bailey-Gates

Friends of the Fairfax Library

Discussion Questions

Beloved by Toni Morrison

1. What is the reference in the epigraph, "Sixty Million and more"?
2. Why do you think the book is titled "Beloved" rather than "Sethe" or "The Ghost" or some such? What features of the book does the title emphasize?
3. What is your reaction to the first episode in Beloved?. What expectations does the opening scene raise for the work to follow? How does it function in relation to book as a whole?
4. Why does Morrison choose such a complex structure for this particular way of telling Sethe's story? What does the way the story is told suggest about Morrison's view of the human mind and its workings?
5. What judgments does Toni Morrison make on Sethe's killing of her daughter? How does Sethe's community judge her? How does Paul D. judge her? How does she judge herself? How do you judge her?
6. What does Beloved have to say about the community - its value, its demands, and the relationship of individuals to it?
7. Slave narratives, such as Frederick Douglass's autobiography, are the starting point of the African-American literary tradition. One of the biggest themes in Frederick Douglass's story is the question of his name, or his identity. How does this issue relate to Beloved? If you are familiar with slave narratives, can you find ways that Morrison refers to, uses, or reworks the slave narrative tradition in Beloved?
8. Morrison makes a point of including traditional, folkloric, non-literary African-American culture in Beloved, some of which is derived from ancient African roots. What is the effect of this inclusion?
9. Among other things, Beloved is a ghost story with many of the elements often found in ghost stories - the haunted house, the vengeful spirit, the hostile community. What distinguishes Beloved from the generic ghost story?What are the special problems for writer and reader in having a ghost featured as a main character?
10. How much of a 'person' is Beloved? Given her mysterious arrival and unexplained departure, does she have any reality other than an embodiment of other people's emotions, e.g. Sethe's guilt? Is she Sethe’s daughter brought back to life?
11. How does Beloved help Denver gain an independent identity? How might the dynamic between Beloved and Denver represent the effect of history on subsequent generations?
12. What is Sethe’s relationship with her children?
13. In what ways does Paul D stand out from the other male characters? Does the novel offer a consistent view of the relations between men and women in this period of black American history?
14. Both Stamp Paid and Baby Suggs have given themselves their own names: what is the significance of this? What does the act of renaming signify? What is the significance of the name, Beloved?
15. Give some thought to the presence of (and commentary on) white people in the novel. Why does the author make the choices she does in her presentations of whites?
16. Reflect on the detailed attention that Morrison gives to experiences that will certainly claim your attention (and will probably shock and disturb you): Paul D. on the chain gang, locked in the box; Paul's experience of the bit; the milking of Sethe; School Teacher's recording of the slaves' animal characteristics; Sixo's death. What is the effect of those experiences, on those who live them and on us as readers?
17. The novel is narrated from the perspectives of former slaves and their families. At different points we get Sethe’s, Paul D’s, Stamp Paid’s, Baby Suggs’s, Beloved’s, Lady Jones’s, and Ella’s varying points of view. Yet the climax of the novel—Sethe’s act of infanticide—is depicted according to schoolteacher’s point of view. Why does Morrison choose to disclose the circumstances of Sethe’s tragedy as they appeared to schoolteacher? How does this influence the reader’s reaction to the story?
18. The narrative of Beloved is fragmented, with point-of-view switching between characters and moments in time - yet a sense of order is very much in evidence. What other devises does Toni Morrison use to shape the novel?
19. What is your reaction to the last passage in the book? How do you feel about the ending? Why do you suppose the book concludes (or doesn't conclude) in this way?
20. Many readers wish that the book had ended before the cryptic last chapter. Can you make sense of it? Maybe it helps to contrast "rememorying" with the "disremembered" on the last page, and to think about Morrison's interest in the late 1980s in working against the "national amnesia" on the subject of slavery. Is the white world condemned completely in Beloved, as some shocked (white) critics have maintained?