Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Beloved Spoilers coming right up!(an aside- I think I might make all my links to books links to indie book stores now. It would be a good way to support them. Also, I have been to this bookstore, and think it is swell) Anyway, I think naming has a lot of power in this novel. For example Baby Suggs name. For a long time, Ms Garner(slaveowner) doesn't know her name, keeps calling her Jenny which is a name that Ms Garner saw on her bill of sale. Basically it's a random name given to her by some white people. Anyway, Baby Suggs gives her own self her name. Of course there is the centrality of the unnamedness of the baby(crawling already!) in life, but her namedness in death...but I don't have anything intelligent to say, so here is a quote from the novel I think is good.

"Made them bloody, silly worse than than even they wanted to be, so scared were they of the jungle they had made. The screaming baboon lived under their own white skin, the red gums were their own' Beloved, Toni Morrison

Of course it makes no sense just out there, on page 208, you should find the whole passage. I just didn't want to type.

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