SE Academic Review 2023

4 ST EDWARD’S, OXFORD

“ As the narrator of the novel is not revealed, it raises the question of who it is. ”

instead just a person. As the narrator of the novel is not revealed, it raises the question of who it is. The mysterious and undisclosed nature of the narrator, mirrors that of Joe’s absent mother, Wild. Furthermore, this underlines the intertextuality of Jazz and Beloved as – like Joe – Sethe does not know her mother or if she herself has any siblings. The slave trade caused many of the enslaved to consider whether they dared to love their child, with the fear and knowledge that they might get taken away.

Characterisation In the novels Jazz and Beloved , Morrison deepens the notion of how the lasting impacts of slavery affect relationships by presenting the complex relationships of Beloved and Sethe and also the relationship Joe has with his own self as a result of his absent mother. Morrison particularly focuses on the destruction that parents cause and as this theme is expressed in both texts – Sethe’s destructive love for her child causes her to go against motherly instinct and kill her own baby, while Joe’s mother’s absence catalyses his lack of identity and consequently his lack of relationship with his own self. The dysfunctional and chaotic relationship between Sethe and Beloved highlights the destructive love slavery has caused, and this is exemplified in the way in which Sethe kills her children: ‘She simply swung the baby towards the wall planks, missed and tried to connect a second time' (p.175). Morrison’s use of ‘simply’ when describing how Sethe swings her baby conveys how she can kill her child with ease as she thinks death is better for both her and her children than slavery. Morrison uses the word ‘simply’ in contrast to the harsh reality of what Sethe is doing: defying human and motherly nature by murdering her own child. Furthermore, the word ‘connect’ implies the child is destined to be killed and a sense of disassociation comes as a result of the casual and light-hearted language and the brutal events that are occurring. As the casual language is at odds with the dark subject matter, the reader dwells on what is being described, subsequently causing the description to resonate with the reader and highlighting the harsh reality of how slavery impacted family relationships.

As well as the language Morrison uses, the actual appearance of Beloved and the way in which she appears explores how slavery directly affected familial relationships and also illustrates the experiences slaves had to endure. Beloved’s emergence forces Sethe to confront the memories of her actions and the hardships she went through whilst in slavery. The arrival of Beloved causes Sethe to initiate her ‘individual healing process’ (Krumholz, 1992, p. 395) and to try to recover from the impacts of slavery. Sethe arguably has the most to recover from as she went against human instinct to kill her child and, as a result, Beloved’s appearance affects her the most. The emotional and physical toll Beloved’s presence takes on Sethe is evident towards the end of the book: ‘It’s sitting there. Sleeps, eats and raises hell. Whipping Sethe every day’ (p. 130). Marilyn Sanders Mobley astutely states that Sethe ‘lives in a kind of psychic bondage to the task of keeping the past at bay’ (Mobley, 2005, p. 72), particularly in regards to the shame and guilt she feels as a result of murdering her child; however, Mobley does not examine the act of redemption Sethe is undergoing. Sethe undergoes this mental and physical distress as a way to repent for killing her own daughter and as a means of undoing the damage and death that she has caused as a result of the fear of slavery. Additionally, Beloved’s whipping of Sethe recalls to mind historical floggings and the millions of slaves who had to endure them. The flogging of Sethe is used by Morrison to convey the idea that the emotional impacts of slavery are inescapable. Through exploring the relationship between Sethe and Beloved, Morrison conveys how the legacy of slavery impacted relationships both directly and indirectly.