3.2.2 Function of the ghost in Beloved
Given the different time periods and ethnicities, the overarching purpose of each ghost is not the same. However, race and ethnicity do play an indispensable role in Beloved. Morrison uses specters to explore the history of pain and violence African Americans inherited from slavery. Regarding apparitions in ethnic works, many scholars sees them as shedding light on a past and history that has been obliterated and oppressive, allowing healing to take place and they believe that the magical realism in ethnic works springs from belief systems, stories, and even histories not found within white culture. To this effect, it is obvious that ghosts provide specific statements about race, culture, history, and tradition in multiethnic American writing, hence ghosts in the work serve multiple and varied purposes, based on the black ethnic group’s history and culture.
Yet, this emphasis on ethnicity almost always excludes white ethnicity from its discussion of specters in magical realist works. This commonly occurs because of the long-standing idea of white privilege, where preference and special treatment is given to this group based on their “superior” race. While white privilege still exists, many scholars are beginning to take note of the variances in this privilege based on socioeconomic status. As Monica McDermott and Frank L. Samson write, “poor . . . gay . . . or otherwise marginalized whites are likely to have a different experience of their privileged racial identity than are others able to see the direct payoff of white skin privilege”. Since many whites have come to view whiteness as a privilege only for upper classes, new studies have begun to focus on white racial identity. According to McDermott and Samson, “given the close association between whiteness and socioeconomic privilege, poor and working class whites are especially likely to be aware of their whiteness as well as to have a complex understanding of what it means to be white in the United States today”[11]. And, this is where Denver stands. Coming from a poor, single-mother home, she is starkly aware of the differences between herself and the privileged, even within her own black community. Given that Denver is all on the margins of the margins, the author of the paper will look specifically at hegemony and at the guiding role apparitions play in Beloved.
Denver was not able to understand or critique the past, present, or future. Therefore, the ghost represents a past that Denver has avoided. Furthermore, given her inability to address and comprehend the past, she reaches her breaking point. It is at this point that the girl becomes receptive to the ghosts’ aid, and the ghost enable the girl, for the comfort she finds in the ghost’s presence allows her to begin a healing process. Therefore, the specter becomes cultural agents, helping the girl to navigate hegemonic oppression as well as her inheritance.
3.2.2.1 Navigating hegemony
Hegemony and specters are linked: as long as hegemonic oppression occurs, the specters will come back. Thus, oppression produces the ghost.
3.2.2.1.1 Life before the appearance of Beloved
In Beloved, injustice occurs when Sethe, Denver’s mother, murders Denver’s sister, Beloved. Having finally escaped her cruel owner and fled to safety in the north with her four children, Sethe cannot escape the memories of the abuse she suffered at his nephews’ hands, the scarred tree on her back remaining as a painful reminder the rest of her life. Furthermore, her flight also costs Sethe her husband, who never makes it to his mother’s, Baby Suggs’, house where Sethe takes up residence. Settling into a calm and happy life with Baby Suggs, Sethe experiences freedom for the first time, vowing that her children will never experience slavery. However, her newfound peace is soon disrupted when she realizes that schoolteacher is nearing her home. Sethe has no time to escape, and rather than see her children enslaved, she decides it would be better to kill them. She succeeds in killing Beloved and shallowly cutting the throats of her two sons before she is stopped. And, as she learns later, the community, believing she was too proud and showy giving lavish parties at Baby Suggs, refuses to warn her in time that schoolmaster is coming. Thus, the community also aids in the injustice, while at the same time persecuting Beloved for the murder. In fact, it is Sethe’s injustice that leads to the community’s oppression of both Sethe and Denver [12]. From that point on, no one will have anything to do with Sethe. As Ella tells Stamp Paid, “‘I ain’t got no friends take a handsaw to their own children’”. It is only when Denver begins attending school that she learns the truth. At first, Denver is so pleased with her accomplishments that she didn’t even know she was being avoided by her classmates—that they made excuses and altered their pace not to walk with her. It is not until a classmate asks her about her mother, if Sethe really killed her own child, that Denver realizes how the community views her family. No one comes to their house, and all Denver has is her family. One by one, each of her family members leave. Her brothers, Howard and Buglar, sneak away in the night, and her grandmother, Baby Suggs, dies. These are serious losses for Denver, since there were no children willing to circle her in game or hang by their knees from her front porch. Consequently, Denver sees her world as limited to her home and mother, not believing there is anything outside of this realm for her, or that she has any possibilities. When Paul D arrives at their home, Denver realizes “It had been a long time since anybody . . . sat at their table. . . .For twelve long years . . . there had been no visitors of any sort and certainly no friends”. The only contact Denver has over the years is Sethe and the ghost of her dead sister. Furthermore, she has no idea how to overcome this oppression or reintegrate into the community. Thus, she retreats into her own secret world.
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