Past to Present:Redefinig Ourselves

Past to Present: Redefining Ourselves

Beloved a book by Toni Morrison is thought to be a horrifying story about a house that is haunted by a baby named Beloved who was killed by her mother, Sethe, when she was barely two years old. Beneath the gory imagery and hard language there’s a heavy message that brings blacks back to their painful past and roots of slavery to heal their present generations; a message that calls for blacks to become their “[own] best thing” (322). Within this book, many of the characters are stuck with pains acquired by the lives they lived as slaves. Now free, they’re too hung up on these pains to live freely. This is a matter that black people presently face today. They are living with the pains of their ancestors in addition to those of their own lives, and struggle to live freely as well.  We as Black-African-American people have been confused about our identity from the start due to the great confusion of our origination. If we return to our roots and seek out our true beginnings, we can bring back our pride, healing, and equal existence as people.

For starters, Black people have suffered in silence for too long. They have been looked down upon, faced great ridicule for being who they believe they are and how they choose to present themselves in the world. In the book, The Rich and the Rest of Us, by Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, Martin Luther King Jr. is quoted as saying: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter” (104). This statement is true. It will always be true until someone breaks the silence and make some noise concerning this important matter. Slavery has been talked about a countless number of times but the happenings within it as well as the trauma caused by it have not yet been dealt with. In Beloved, Sethe talks to Denver about slavery, she tells Denver, “Where I was before I came here, that place is real. It’s never going away. Even if the whole farm –every tree and grass blade of it dies. The picture is still there and what’s more, if you go there –you who never was there –if you go there and stand in the place where it was, it will happen again; it will be there for you, waiting for you… Because even though it’s all over – over and done with –it’s going to always be there waiting for you” (43-44). This is in fact happening today, every day, the history and cycle of slavery is repeating itself within the lives of free black people. Some examples of the legacy of slavery being repeated are sing-mother families, men unable to commit themselves to a woman, men unable to outwardly show their emotions. Gun violence, drugs and the like and trying to not to get caught up in it is another form of slavery.

In fact, a part of the cycle of slavery is the loss of fathers. Paul D, “the last of the Sweet Home men” represents two things. He represents the lost father and what a lot of young men presently experience. His presence in Beloved sheds light on the fact that real men and fathers still exist. They exist within their hearts “tobacco tin[s]” (86) of struggling young men. In slavery when families were sold apart, husbands separated from their wives, fathers separated from their children, these men became in a sense inferior to women. Where they were once the head of a household a father to a child, they are nothing. “Wanting to live out his life with a whole woman was new, and losing the feeling of it made him want to cry and think deep thoughts that struck on nothing solid”(261). "Deep thoughts that struck on nothing solid" Shows that Paul D is struggling with the next step in his life after achieving freedom. Their feelings, which were once strong, and knowing that all they wanted in life was to care and provide for their wives and children are no more. They are unsure of themselves and their place in life. Having been moved many times since first being sold they begin to hold back their emotions so to make moving easier and less painful. “The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit; everything, just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you’d have a little love left over for the next one”(55). Paul D keeps mementos of the things he cares about locked away in his tin tobacco box to preserve his love in the course of being moved throughout slavery. He does this to keep that love close but more so that it will hurt less when he moves and has to leave it behind physically. It is because of this that men begin to feel inferior to women. Displaced and uncertain as to where they rank amongst the women they want to attempt to have a life with. “Let me tell you something. A man ain’t a goddamn ax. Chopping, hacking, busting every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can’t chop down because they’re inside” (81). Although, men are strong and appear to be unbreakable they can be broken too. They can be broken on the inside.

Furthermore, with the loss of fathers women had to take on the role of mother and father when able to stay with their children. Sethe represents this role and the role of present mother as single-parent mothers. Sethe’s a pregnant mother who takes on the role of a single-mother when her husband Halle and she make plans to escape Sweet Home. Sethe sends three of her four children ahead to Cincinnati to her mother-in-law Baby Suggs. Meanwhile, she makes a last attempt to find her husband before making the trip alone. Unable to find her husband Sethe makes the trip alone, along the way she gives birth to her fourth child Denver. Once Sethe and Denver arrive safely in Cincinnati, each day that passes, she shifts further into the role of a single mother.  Playing both parts, women take on and develop a double dose of care, love, and being a provider. With this, they may also develop a sense of resilience, selflessness and a bolder strength. This may be why some mothers tend to be viewed as overbearing, overprotective and controlling.  Inclining them to “love…too thick” (193). Sethe’s love is determined to be too thick by Paul D, eighteen years after she killed her daughter, Beloved, in an effort to keep her four children safe from slavery. Although, they’ve escaped slavery she fears she’ll be captured and returned to slavery along with her kids.  Inclined to love stronger with every given second knowing that what you love could be taken away without a moment’s notice. In slavery it was not a bullet, drugs or alcohol that a mother worried about taking the life of her child, it was a sales slip, a noose, or being burned alive.

Presently, mothers still have and express “too thick” love for their children. Just as in Beloved, we face too thick love, but because it is presented differently, it is viewed differently; however, it holds the same worry. Presently a mother’s worry is that a bullet, a drug, alcohol and violence will take the life of her child, further separating the mother and child. Presently, a mother cannot act in the same manner as Sethe, killing their child to keep them from danger or locking their child up in the house. When certain lines are crossed, it becomes criminal just like in Beloved but instead of a short jail sentence, it is a life sentence. In the setting of Beloved, during slavery, a mother’s expression of her deep love for her children could be viewed as her just being a mother. However, for present mothers it goes much deeper than putting a thought of action to work, more than a little neighboring disapproval or a haunted house. It becomes a fight for not only her child’s but also her own. They are constantly being “watched” by the public, anyone and everyone is watching a stranger, a close enemy, teachers, parents, etc. and it is the fear or struggle of being different or to be different that keeps them from being free. In slavery actions, like when a mother's love was overwhelmingly excessive were more justified and understood because how gruesome slavery and its penalties were but now, there are limits, because of laws and the commentary of the public. Presently people are not as likely to be quiet and hold on to their own faults and guilt. Regardless of their wrongs, they will speak out against someone else’s. Certain acts are easier to stomach when it comes to slavery just not reality. Every female has a motherly trait, because at some point, every woman cares about something or someone for whatever reason it makes her want to help. It could be because in the connecting circumstance no one helped them when they needed help so that pain, that urgency for help turns into a need to help. That in turn becomes an emotional and or mental form of slavery. In order to free themselves they must free someone else.

However, the vicious cycle of slavery can only end by connecting to our roots. The reason this puts an end to the cycle is that we are able to accept the past and lay it all down in order to become our own best thing. Baby Suggs, Sethe's mother-in-law tells her to lay all her worries down. Though she struggles with it for the majority of the book, she eventually lays it all down and is forgiven by the spirit of her dead daughter giving way to a free and painless life where she is her own best thing. In the present day, we continuously bring the past into the present instead of laying it down. When we do this, it makes it harder to let go and forgive or be forgiven. As an example, although racism still exists presently in the lives of black people, we do not have to let it continue to hold on to us. By looking at our roots and seeing who we are and why we are who we are, we will find confidence and security with ourselves not the burdens of who others attempt to make us. Laying it all down past and present, this is ultimately, how black people become their own best thing.