Toni Morrison's Ghost: The Beloved Who Is Not Beloved

When a person reads Beloved by Toni Morrison they first find it hard to read do to the fact that Toni Morrison does not always keep on one though, she tends to jump around as thoughts in her mind wonder. Morrison also tends to be unclear about certain facts and who certain characters are leaving it up to the reader to make a judgment on who the character is and what role he or she plays in the novel, this makes the reader tend to stop and rethink certain characters and who they are related to and how the come about to fit in the story.

In the article "Toni Morrison's Ghost: The Beloved Who Is Not Beloved" states that in Beloved Morrison tends to throw readers off track when she is describing one place and then all of a sudden she is somewhere else describing some other event or something else that is going on or another place that she may be. The reader would tend to agree with that statement because in Beloved this happens many times and it takes a reader a few times of this happening before catching on and understanding what is happening and that the novel tends to wonder from point to point. For instance when she is she is describing the slave ship the slaves are on and the condition of it, Morrison gives no transition or timed events as to when she is seeing and describing the slave ship which leaves the reader not knowing where they are, or what is going on, and very distracted and confused.

The article also stated that Morrison uses a lot of flashbacks. Morrison flashes back to the slave ship and the harsh conditions that were faced on it. She also flashes back to the slave ship when things trigger the Characters like Sethe, Beloved and others to think back to the slave ship and what they recall from the harsh conditions or certain things that will stick with them forever. Morrison uses phrases like "I was always crouching" which refers to how cramped the bottom of the boat was that they were in and how they could barley move. The phrase "a hot thing" which referred to the temperature of where they were stuck until they could get off the ship. Also making references to sea-colored bread which leads the reason to believe that it was old moldy bread which helped to describe the treatment and conditions on the slave ships. In part of the novel Beloved was asked by Denver to describe in detail the place she stayed before coming to 124, beloved used a lot of detail saying it was hot, you couldn't breath, also how cramped it was. She recalls heaps of people some who maybe dead. Sethe also experiences visual and auditory hallucinations which bring her back to the slave ship to recall what it was like and what she remembers such as when Beloved and Denver are in the house and Beloved goes to sit down on a pallet and leans back and she sees crack lights above and the lights shining through the roof makes her think of the slave ship looking up to the top of the ship with the light shining through to the people