How Does Toni Morrison Use Trees In Beloved
Jennifer Cassano April 1, 2012
Eng 21
Tietel
Natures Power
Nature acts powerfully through the healing mechanisms of the body and mind to maintain and restore health. Toni Morrison makes no exeptions to this idea. In her novel Beloved, Toni Morrison uses trees to symbolize comfort, protection and peace. Morrison uses trees throughout Beloved to emphasize the serenity that the natural world offers. Many black characters refer to trees as offering healing and escape, therefor conveying Morrisons message that trees bring peace. Besides using the novel’s characters to convey her message, Morrison herself displays the good and calmness that …show more content…
trees represent in the tree imagery in her narraration. Maybe Morrison uses trees and the characters responses to them to show that when one lives through something as horrible as slavery, you may naturally find comfort in the simple aspects of life, such as nature, espesially trees. As the trees represent escape and peace, Morrison uses her characters refer to their serenity and soothing nature as messages that only in mature could these oppressed people find comfort and escape from their unwanted thoughts. Throughout Beloved almost all of the characters find refuge in trees and nature, especially the main characters of Sethe and Paul D. During Sethe’s time in slavery, she saw many gruesome and horrible events, such as lynching and whipping of many blacks. However Sethe chooses to remember the sights of the sycamore trees over the sight of the tourtured blacks, this proving her comfort in the trees presense. “boys hanging from the most beautiful sycamore trees in the world, it shamed her, remember the wonderful soughing trees rather than the boys. Try as she might but the sycamores deat out the children every time and she could not forgive her memory for that” (6). Although Sethe wishes she would’ve remembered the boys, she probably rationalized this thought because when she asks Paul D about about news of Halle, she pictures sycamores instead of the possibility that Halle was lynched. Sethe states “ I wouldn’t have to ask about him would I? You’d tell me if there was something to tell, wouldn’t you? Sethe looked down at her feet and saw the sycamores” (8). When schoolteacher whipps Sethe, leaving her back leathery with scars, she refers to the scar as a chokecherry tree to soothe and lower the emotional pain that the scar represents. “ But thats what she said it looked like, A chokecherry tree. Trunk. Branches and even leaves” (16). While Sethe thinks of trees to heal and calm her pain and sufferering, Paul D directly looks for physically real trees as his escape from everyday slave life. “the intimate connection, indeed the continuity, between Sethe's body and the tree suggest that they are made of the same fabric, and that what concerns the tree necessarily concerns human creatures”(Bonnent). During Paul D’s time in slavery, he chose to love trees for their comfort and calm qualities. “trees were inviting; things you could trust and be near, talk to if you wanted to as frequently as he did since way back when he took the midday meal in the feilds of Sweet Home” (21). Because of these qualities, Paul D choose one particular tree, larger and more inviting than the others, to always return too. A tree which he named “brother”, he felt as though this tree comforted him and would always be there for him when nobody else was. “Brother” represents the comforting escape which Paul D never had prior. “His choice he called brother, and sat under it, alone sometimes. Sometimes with Halle or the other Pauls” (21). After a long day in working in the feilds, Paul D would rest, often times under the comforting presence of Brother Halle, the Pauls and Sixo. “He, Sixo and both of the Pauls sat under brother pouring water from a gourd over their heads”(27). Not only do the trees represent comfort, but a place of security, place to escape from their slave life. Even beloved, the strange human, seemingly finds comfort with trees when she appears in the real world. “she barley gained the dry bank of the stream before she sat down and leaned agaisnt a mulberry tree” (50). Morrison’s characters refer to trees for comfort, escape and saftey, thus conveying Morrisons tree symbolism. While the main characters refer to the trees serenity and comfort, characters with lesser significance or lesser prominence in Beloved also refers to trees, not to themseleves though, to convey the message that nature helps provide comfort and escape.
Amy Denver, the whitewomen who had helped Sethe through labor only appears once in the book during Denver’s story. Although she only appears once her tree reference to Sethe’s scarred back help soothe physical and mental pain. “its a tree Lu, See here’s the trunk its red and split open, full of sap, and this here the parting for the branches. You got a might lot of branches. Tiny little cherry tree blossoms , just as white. Your back got a whole tree on it. In bloom” (79). Amy Denver uses a euphemism for Sethes scar, calling it a chokecherry tree to try to ease the pain and sadness that the scar brings. The image of a chokecherry tree brings spring, bloom, and peaceful nature instead of the shame, pain and sadness that the scar truley represents. In attempts to try to ease Sethes pain even more Amy Denver searches for spiderwebs, another product of nature to drape over Sethes tree. Paul D says “Follow the tree flowers” he said “ only the tree flowers, as they go you go. You will be where you want to be when they are gone” (112). Nature brings a certain calmness and the characters references to trees support this
idea. While Morrison relies on her characters references to trees to convey her message, she reiterates her point by using symboloic tree imagery. When she describes the path to the clearing, the trees are described as drooping trees as if they maybe represented towering guards, bringing serenity and security to one sacred place. “Old path was a track now, but still arched over with the trees drooping buckleyes onto the grass below” (89). The image of the trees draping of the branches over the path to the clearing shows the protectiveness that trees bring. To further her point Morisson implies the sin of cutting down trees. “old roses were dying. The sawyer who planted them twelve years ago to give the workplace a friendly feel- something to take the sun out of slicling trees for a living” (47). Besides representing protection, security and comfort, Morrison also implies that trees bring good things. The best thing that Sethe, Paul D and denver discover is Beloved. Beloved represents the best things in the world, a daughter and a sister as a lively human being. “Easy as walking into a room, a magical appereance on a stump, the race wiped out by sunlight” (123). The first time she is introduced it is on a tree stump. The trees in Morrisons novel have strong symbolism, representing the comfort and calmness. Not only can trees bring good things, trees also can bring people into good situations. When Paul D leaves the woods, he finds himself in Wilmington with food and a temporary home as if Morrison implies that the woods lead him straight to comfort. Paul D also follows the tree blossoms to Sethe, another sign that trees help bring good and calmness. Morrisons indirect vison of tree’s soothing nature has strong symbolism, representing the comfort and calmess to the reader. While Toni Morrison mainly uses tree imagery as a message of serenity and comfort, she uses her characters responses to trees to show that perhaps when one lives through a horrific ordeal like slavery, people find comfort in the natural world for its calmess and harmless characteristics. For Paul D, loving small things represents survival. When forced into Georgia, Paul D encounters the worse thing thats ever happened before, despite tasting that iron bit, watching Sixo burn, losin Halle and the Pauls, and facing schoolteacher’s slavery, Paul D finds comfort in a young tree in the prison camp. “Loving small in secret. His little love was a tree of course, but not like a brother. Alfred, Georgia there was an aspen too young to call a sapling. Just a shoot no taller than his waist. The kind of thing a man would cut to whip his horse”(221). For Stamp Paid, an establishing savior, he feels most comftorable when he helps others. Stamp Paids picking berries for Sethe and Denver shows his comfort towards helping people with the goodness of nature. “off with two buckets to a place near river’s edge that only he knew about where blackberries grew, tasting so good and happy that to eat them was like being in church” (136). Similar to Stamp Paid, Baby Suggs holy finds the most comfort in helping others, giving advice, passing messages, healing surrounded by trees, doing what she finds comfort and helping and preaching to others. “In the clearing, Sethe found Baby’s old preaching rock and remembered the smell of leaves simmering in the sun, thunderous feet and the shouts the ripped pods off the limbs of chestnuts. With Baby Suggs, heart in charge people let go”(94). Even Sixo, the wild man went amoung the trees at night to keep his bloodiness open. Each one of these characters has endured the horrors of slavery and faced this ordeal in different ways. but they all deal with slavery with the comforting and harmless aspect of nature, trees. “Beloved accordingly blurs the line between humankind and the natural world that it inhabits; trees resemble people, people resemble trees, and the deepest desires and fears of Morrison's characters become entangled with these metaphors.”(fulton). Morrison also adds complexity to the tree as a symbol by associating the key issues that each of her characters struggles against with a tree of some kind, and her characters even become tree-like themselves as they work through these respective issues. She uses trees to symbolize comfort, protection and peace. Morrison uses trees throughout Beloved to emphasize the serenity that the natural world offers. Although people today don’t have to live through slavery, people still have to face their own tough personal issues. Instead of having nature to soothe one’s problems, people today drown their sorrows in material possessions and controlled substances, unfortuntaty a problem taking of society. Readers can only remember a time not to long ago when the little secret hiding place in the woods or one’s special thinking rock meant a great deal more than material items, a simly healthy escape from life and its problems.
Eng 21
Tietel
Natures Power
Nature acts powerfully through the healing mechanisms of the body and mind to maintain and restore health. Toni Morrison makes no exeptions to this idea. In her novel Beloved, Toni Morrison uses trees to symbolize comfort, protection and peace. Morrison uses trees throughout Beloved to emphasize the serenity that the natural world offers. Many black characters refer to trees as offering healing and escape, therefor conveying Morrisons message that trees bring peace. Besides using the novel’s characters to convey her message, Morrison herself displays the good and calmness that …show more content…
trees represent in the tree imagery in her narraration. Maybe Morrison uses trees and the characters responses to them to show that when one lives through something as horrible as slavery, you may naturally find comfort in the simple aspects of life, such as nature, espesially trees. As the trees represent escape and peace, Morrison uses her characters refer to their serenity and soothing nature as messages that only in mature could these oppressed people find comfort and escape from their unwanted thoughts. Throughout Beloved almost all of the characters find refuge in trees and nature, especially the main characters of Sethe and Paul D. During Sethe’s time in slavery, she saw many gruesome and horrible events, such as lynching and whipping of many blacks. However Sethe chooses to remember the sights of the sycamore trees over the sight of the tourtured blacks, this proving her comfort in the trees presense. “boys hanging from the most beautiful sycamore trees in the world, it shamed her, remember the wonderful soughing trees rather than the boys. Try as she might but the sycamores deat out the children every time and she could not forgive her memory for that” (6). Although Sethe wishes she would’ve remembered the boys, she probably rationalized this thought because when she asks Paul D about about news of Halle, she pictures sycamores instead of the possibility that Halle was lynched. Sethe states “ I wouldn’t have to ask about him would I? You’d tell me if there was something to tell, wouldn’t you? Sethe looked down at her feet and saw the sycamores” (8). When schoolteacher whipps Sethe, leaving her back leathery with scars, she refers to the scar as a chokecherry tree to soothe and lower the emotional pain that the scar represents. “ But thats what she said it looked like, A chokecherry tree. Trunk. Branches and even leaves” (16). While Sethe thinks of trees to heal and calm her pain and sufferering, Paul D directly looks for physically real trees as his escape from everyday slave life. “the intimate connection, indeed the continuity, between Sethe's body and the tree suggest that they are made of the same fabric, and that what concerns the tree necessarily concerns human creatures”(Bonnent). During Paul D’s time in slavery, he chose to love trees for their comfort and calm qualities. “trees were inviting; things you could trust and be near, talk to if you wanted to as frequently as he did since way back when he took the midday meal in the feilds of Sweet Home” (21). Because of these qualities, Paul D choose one particular tree, larger and more inviting than the others, to always return too. A tree which he named “brother”, he felt as though this tree comforted him and would always be there for him when nobody else was. “Brother” represents the comforting escape which Paul D never had prior. “His choice he called brother, and sat under it, alone sometimes. Sometimes with Halle or the other Pauls” (21). After a long day in working in the feilds, Paul D would rest, often times under the comforting presence of Brother Halle, the Pauls and Sixo. “He, Sixo and both of the Pauls sat under brother pouring water from a gourd over their heads”(27). Not only do the trees represent comfort, but a place of security, place to escape from their slave life. Even beloved, the strange human, seemingly finds comfort with trees when she appears in the real world. “she barley gained the dry bank of the stream before she sat down and leaned agaisnt a mulberry tree” (50). Morrison’s characters refer to trees for comfort, escape and saftey, thus conveying Morrisons tree symbolism. While the main characters refer to the trees serenity and comfort, characters with lesser significance or lesser prominence in Beloved also refers to trees, not to themseleves though, to convey the message that nature helps provide comfort and escape.
Amy Denver, the whitewomen who had helped Sethe through labor only appears once in the book during Denver’s story. Although she only appears once her tree reference to Sethe’s scarred back help soothe physical and mental pain. “its a tree Lu, See here’s the trunk its red and split open, full of sap, and this here the parting for the branches. You got a might lot of branches. Tiny little cherry tree blossoms , just as white. Your back got a whole tree on it. In bloom” (79). Amy Denver uses a euphemism for Sethes scar, calling it a chokecherry tree to try to ease the pain and sadness that the scar brings. The image of a chokecherry tree brings spring, bloom, and peaceful nature instead of the shame, pain and sadness that the scar truley represents. In attempts to try to ease Sethes pain even more Amy Denver searches for spiderwebs, another product of nature to drape over Sethes tree. Paul D says “Follow the tree flowers” he said “ only the tree flowers, as they go you go. You will be where you want to be when they are gone” (112). Nature brings a certain calmness and the characters references to trees support this
idea. While Morrison relies on her characters references to trees to convey her message, she reiterates her point by using symboloic tree imagery. When she describes the path to the clearing, the trees are described as drooping trees as if they maybe represented towering guards, bringing serenity and security to one sacred place. “Old path was a track now, but still arched over with the trees drooping buckleyes onto the grass below” (89). The image of the trees draping of the branches over the path to the clearing shows the protectiveness that trees bring. To further her point Morisson implies the sin of cutting down trees. “old roses were dying. The sawyer who planted them twelve years ago to give the workplace a friendly feel- something to take the sun out of slicling trees for a living” (47). Besides representing protection, security and comfort, Morrison also implies that trees bring good things. The best thing that Sethe, Paul D and denver discover is Beloved. Beloved represents the best things in the world, a daughter and a sister as a lively human being. “Easy as walking into a room, a magical appereance on a stump, the race wiped out by sunlight” (123). The first time she is introduced it is on a tree stump. The trees in Morrisons novel have strong symbolism, representing the comfort and calmness. Not only can trees bring good things, trees also can bring people into good situations. When Paul D leaves the woods, he finds himself in Wilmington with food and a temporary home as if Morrison implies that the woods lead him straight to comfort. Paul D also follows the tree blossoms to Sethe, another sign that trees help bring good and calmness. Morrisons indirect vison of tree’s soothing nature has strong symbolism, representing the comfort and calmess to the reader. While Toni Morrison mainly uses tree imagery as a message of serenity and comfort, she uses her characters responses to trees to show that perhaps when one lives through a horrific ordeal like slavery, people find comfort in the natural world for its calmess and harmless characteristics. For Paul D, loving small things represents survival. When forced into Georgia, Paul D encounters the worse thing thats ever happened before, despite tasting that iron bit, watching Sixo burn, losin Halle and the Pauls, and facing schoolteacher’s slavery, Paul D finds comfort in a young tree in the prison camp. “Loving small in secret. His little love was a tree of course, but not like a brother. Alfred, Georgia there was an aspen too young to call a sapling. Just a shoot no taller than his waist. The kind of thing a man would cut to whip his horse”(221). For Stamp Paid, an establishing savior, he feels most comftorable when he helps others. Stamp Paids picking berries for Sethe and Denver shows his comfort towards helping people with the goodness of nature. “off with two buckets to a place near river’s edge that only he knew about where blackberries grew, tasting so good and happy that to eat them was like being in church” (136). Similar to Stamp Paid, Baby Suggs holy finds the most comfort in helping others, giving advice, passing messages, healing surrounded by trees, doing what she finds comfort and helping and preaching to others. “In the clearing, Sethe found Baby’s old preaching rock and remembered the smell of leaves simmering in the sun, thunderous feet and the shouts the ripped pods off the limbs of chestnuts. With Baby Suggs, heart in charge people let go”(94). Even Sixo, the wild man went amoung the trees at night to keep his bloodiness open. Each one of these characters has endured the horrors of slavery and faced this ordeal in different ways. but they all deal with slavery with the comforting and harmless aspect of nature, trees. “Beloved accordingly blurs the line between humankind and the natural world that it inhabits; trees resemble people, people resemble trees, and the deepest desires and fears of Morrison's characters become entangled with these metaphors.”(fulton). Morrison also adds complexity to the tree as a symbol by associating the key issues that each of her characters struggles against with a tree of some kind, and her characters even become tree-like themselves as they work through these respective issues. She uses trees to symbolize comfort, protection and peace. Morrison uses trees throughout Beloved to emphasize the serenity that the natural world offers. Although people today don’t have to live through slavery, people still have to face their own tough personal issues. Instead of having nature to soothe one’s problems, people today drown their sorrows in material possessions and controlled substances, unfortuntaty a problem taking of society. Readers can only remember a time not to long ago when the little secret hiding place in the woods or one’s special thinking rock meant a great deal more than material items, a simly healthy escape from life and its problems.