George Wolfe Beloved Museum Analysis

Beloved & The Colored Museum

Kimberly Austin-Baker
ENGL & AAAS 469: Contemporary African American Literature
University of Michigan-Dearborn

The Colored Museum by George C. Wolfe and Beloved by Toni Morrison are two very different literary masterworks. Although these works seem to be so very different, they share several parallels between their authors, within their themes and even their characters when examined closely that prove otherwise. The authors share a perspective gained through life experience, time frame in which their texts were shared with the world, as well as, motifs. These two narratives share themes of a mother’s love, rebellion and crimes of passion. Characters from both pieces share semblances in their motives
Sethe, the main character, shows immense love for her children through her actions to save them from the life she had known all of hers, as a slave. That same immense love is portrayed and expressed in the exhibit “Permutations” in The Colored Museum. Norma Jean, the main character of the exhibit, lays and egg and like Sethe would let no one take what was hers. At the end of the scene, Norma Jean says “- ‘cause it’s not everyday a bunch of babies break outta white egg and start to live. And nobody better not try to hurt my babies ‘cause if they do, they gonna have to deal with me” (The Colored Museum, 49). This statement is exemplary of a mother’s love concerning her children’s subjection to a white world, much like Sethe’s. Although this particular theme is exposed to the audience very early in Beloved, it is visited in The Colored Museum at nearly the end, they both send a powerful
Some of the character’s from each exhibit the same ways of thinking like the feelings of liberation from both Sethe and the African-American soldier when they made up their minds to spare their loved ones from a dreadful and grim future. Resemblances in the character’s Paul D from Beloved and Walter-Lee-Beau-Willie-Jones from “The Last Mama-on-the-Couch Play” scene of The Colored Museum, display actions that elude you to the fact that they are damaged goods as a result of a hard life courtesy of “The Man”. Other character’s that display a common likeness are Norma Jean and Sethe, as explained above because of their love for their children, the capability of protecting them, by all means and their resilience to carry on after being degraded, isolated and thrown away. Character similarities in these two literary works are another way in which they are correlated and analogous.
George C. Wolfe’s, The Colored Museum and Toni Morrison’s, Beloved are works that at first glance couldn’t be more different, but upon close examination are filled with similarities. Lots of those similarities are tied up in the many themes and characters of the stories as detailed above. These books encompass the impact slavery and white America has had on the Black race and culture and although very different, gives you an account of the struggle of the African-American