Dearly Beloved

The names that Toni Morrison gives to her characters always carry more meaning than originally meets the eye. Beloved's name is explained as what's engraved on her tombstone. In the beginning of the novel we are told that Sethe could only remember the phrase "Dearly beloved" from the speech the preacher gave at the burial for the crawling already baby. Sethe thought the engraving was fitting because that's the most important thing about the baby -- that she was loved.

This explanation carries a lot more weight when we learn the full story of what happened to the baby girl. Sethe was the one that killed her, but she claims to have done it out of love. The name "Beloved" is an explanation and a justification for Sethe's actions.

The name also shows that Sethe is willing to do literally anything for her children. From traveling long distances to ensure they are fed, to killing them if it means they are spared the horrors of slavery. The story of how the engraving came about is another example of Sethe's fierce love. She pays the engraver in sexual favors to ensure that her daughter has something written on her tombstone. Sethe's motherly love is her defining characteristic and all of her actions are driven by her love. Again and again Sethe commits undeniably dauntless acts for her children, although some of them are morally questionable. Paul D tells her that her love is "too thick".

The full phrase from the funeral was probably something like "Dearly beloved: we are gathered today to pay our final tribute to...". "Dearly beloved" is what the preacher uses to address the congregation. The congregation is the "dearly beloved" of the deceased. In this case, since it was a baby, it would be all those who dearly loved the baby. Beloved is actually named after everyone who attended her funeral. Sethe misunderstood the preacher and thought he was referring to the baby. I sure that this misunderstanding is an intentional detail from Toni Morrison.

Beloved is named after all of the people of the town, who are both responsible for her arrival into freedom and the reason she died. The Underground Railroad system brought the baby to Cincinnati but also refused to warn Sethe that the four horsemen were approaching, leading to her desperate actions. Fitting the recurring theme in the novel, it's possible that the past lives in Beloved's present even through her name.

School is a Joke

There is no question that The White Boy Shuffle is a funny novel. Beatty has a sense of humor that is very witty and brutally honest. A lot of the funniest scenes center around Beatty poking fun at the education system. This satire targets the hypocrisy of schools' policies when they try to be all-inclusive.

We see this from the very beginning. At his elementary school, his teacher repeats to the students over and over how they all need to be colorblind. Her favorite shirt has colors of skin crossed out and "human" written at the bottom. These methods are very idealistically progressive. In reality, they are not as effective as the teacher thinks. Gunnar is a very perceptive third-grader and calls her bluff with comments about dogs being colorblind. He notices how she pays special attention to the black, asian, and latino kids when she wears the shirt. Beatty adds even more irony when the kids are visited by some doctors and are tested for literal colorblindness. The medical professionals tell Gunnar that colorblindness is bad and when Gunnar expresses the discrepancy between their beliefs and the teacher's, the doctors explain to him that he should just pretend not to see color.

Flash forward ten years in the future and Gunnar is still experiencing this hypocritical multicultural education. At Boston University, Gunnar is fawned over by his classmates and teacher about his poetry. In his creative writing class, there's a student that claims that Gunner is her favorite poet. When Gunnar points out that her statement contradicts what she'd said before about someone else being her favorite poet, she explains that she was just ashamed before to say that her favorite poet is a black poet. These students that are supposed to be educated and open-minded are too embarrassed to associate themselves with a black man who writes poetry. However, they are incredibly proud to have Gunnar and Scoby on their basketball team because they're black.

Like Gunnar, Beatty uses his ability to be funny to grab the reader's attention and call out the education system. Unfortunately, the novel doesn't end as funny as it began. Gunnar and Scoby stop seeing the hilarious irony in the way society works and the pressure to be the funny, cool black guy becomes too much.

The White Boy Shuffle

The White Boy Shuffle is a novel about a young black man growing up on the west coast. When we started the book I was confused about the title. Why is the book called The White Boy Shuffle if the main character is African American?

"The White Boy Shuffle" is (according to Urban Dictionary) an "ungainly or comical dancing style". The name comes from the stereotype that white people are bad at dancing. Gunnar explains this near the end of Chapter 6 when he is at a club with Scoby and Psycho Loco. Gunnar does a "barely acceptable, simple side-to-side step...[He] wasn't funky but [he] was no longer disrupting the groove."

I'm trying to figure out why Beatty chose this phrase as the title to his novel. Maybe he thinks it's representative of Gunnar's life. The novel so far has covered Gunnar's experiences growing up as a black kid and how his life contrasts between Santa Monica and Los Angeles. The transition to the "hood" was extremely awkward to say the least, much like the dance Gunnar was doing. Even the word "shuffle" invokes a sense of discomfort. Gunnar got made fun of and beaten up for acting so much like an outsider to the West LA culture. He was too much of a "white boy" to be accepted immediately.

It was definitely a shock to go from being the '"cool black guy" to being the butt of every joke. In Santa Monica he was the blackest kid and in his new neighborhood he's the whitest. "Shuffle" could also refer to this change in location, like when you shuffle cards. Although, when you shuffle cards, the goal is to end up with a random order of the cards. There's no longer a logical order and it's out of your control. Maybe not totally yet, but Gunnar is starting to adopt an attitude where he just leaves everything up to fate. He became a basketball player because someone told him to. He's in a gang even though he doesn't support their violence.

In order to fit in, Gunnar had to learn to keep his head low for a while until he learned the rules, like no crying in public. His friendship with Scoby and his affiliation with the Gun Totin' Hooligans boosts his image a bit and even though he's not cool, he's "acceptable". People still notice that he's weird sometimes, because he doesn't dance or likes to read poetry, but he doesn't get in the way. He's not "funky" but he doesn't "disrupt the groove".

I think that this lack of agency is what is going to land him where he is the the prologue of the novel -- a radical leader without any real intention of being one. His awkwardness and his habit of just going with the flow is going to lead him to suggest that there is no solution to racism, everyone should just kill themselves. Right now the book is too happy. I'm scared of what awaits Gunnar.

Finding Your Voice

Like in Invisible Man, the opening chapter in Their Eyes Were Watching God is a glimpse of the end of the story. Janie begins telling her story and it launches us into the rest of the novel. The novel recounts Janie's life and the relationships that she has been in. She was married three times, with at least two of them ending very unhappily. Janie leaves her first husband, Logan, because she never wanted to marry him anyway. She was forced to marry him because her grandmother thought it would be a good, safe match. One day she meets Jody, who promises her attention as the wife of a wealthy mayor. She runs off with him but soon realizes that not everything is as great as it seemed. Jody is very concerned about his image as a mayor and uses Janie as more of an accessory than a wife. He refuses to let her speak to other people and hides her away when she isn't convenient to him. By the time Jody dies, Janie is very lonely and resents him tremendously. That's why when Tea Cake comes along she is so drawn to him. He asks her to play checkers with him, he teaches her to shoot, and in general treats her like an actual person. Even the other people of Eatonville comment on how different a person Janie becomes with Tea Cake.

Dialogue is very important in Hurston's novel. She depicts the Southern African American dialect of her characters, making the novel come to life. There is also symbolism in the way she uses dialogue to tell Janie's story. When Janie is married to Jody, she had very little agency because Jody was so controlling. The way those chapters are narrated reflect the imbalance of their relationship. There is very little back-and-forth dialogue between Janie and Jody. Most of the dialogue is Jody giving instructions or commands to Janie. When Hurston finally gives Janie a voice, it is when Janie is standing up to Jody. Janie has dialogue in the scene in the store where she calls Jody out on his hypocrisy and vanity. The next time she speaks to Jody is on his deathbed. In that scene she is also defiant and apologetic.

The first scene where we meet Tea Cake contrasts starkly with the scenes between Jody and Janie. They have a long and drawn-out conversation with even banter. Hurston gives the reader pages of just dialogue between Tea Cake and Janie. The other members of Eatonville are jealous of how Tea Cake and Janie are always laughing and having a good time. Hurston uses dialogue to show how much happier Janie is with Tea Cake than with Jody. In this relationship, Janie literally has a voice that she didn't have before. These back-and-forth conversations are a lot closer to her ideal relationship of the pear tree and the bees that are mutually beneficial.With Tea Cake, Janie has found her voice and the same confidence that she has when she returns to Eatonville wearing those overalls.

Rogue Agent

In class, we were talking about whether or not the narrator was still part of the Brotherhood. He still receives paychecks from them, lives in the apartment they gave him, and works in their offices. But he no longer agrees with their ideals and wants to discover the real motivation behind the committee's sketchy behavior. In summary, he is still part of the Brotherhood but is following his own agenda. He is determined to "agree and grin the Brotherhood to death" to keep them from suspecting his treachery. This follows his grandfather's philosophy of seeming meek on the surface but on the inside knowing he is at war. This rogue agent dynamic is the most solid identity the narrator has had so far.

In an almost James Bond-like way the narrator truly believes in what the Brotherhood says their ideals are but suspects corruption and decides to do things his own way. He keeps them off his trail by feeding the Brotherhood false information like the amount of new members they have gained since their policies changes. He even tries his hand at womanizing even though he is kind of unsuccessful because Sybil refuses to cooperate. The Brotherhood also seems to fully trust him. He is granted almost 00 status as one of their best speakers and when the riots break  out in Harlem, he is the one that receives the frantic call.  Although the narrator runs uptown to see what's going on, he is no longer just running because he was called, he is running toward something where he knows he has agency and can make a difference. He is no longer being kept running, but is actively running out of his own accord. 

In the past, the Brotherhood was limiting the narrator's identity by literally telling him he was not hired to think and that he was supposed to blindly accept their cult-like beliefs. Once he, again, wakes up and rejects their lack of individual thought he finds that ability to express himself which he has been craving the entire novel. However, this identity comes with a catch. He can be an individual if he is not detected by the oppressing powers of the Brotherhood. He is a spy and all good spies learn to be invisible. And one more time, Ellison's genius introduces the paradox of the narrator's identity being the uniqueness of lacking one. 

Racial Baggage

In our latest reading of Invisible Man, the part that especially stood out to me was the section where the narrator accidentally breaks a bank at Mary's house and then desperately tries to  get rid of the pieces with no success. I thought the passage was really odd so naturally, because this is Ellison, there must be an underlying meaning. 

When the narrator first breaks the bank, Mary is just outside the door and he's frantically trying to hide the pieces without her noticing that he's shattered the thing. He decides that the best way to get rid of them is to wrap them up in a napkin, hide the bundle in his coat pocket, and throw it out once he's outside. The first bin that he throws it in belongs to a white woman who flips out when she sees. She makes him pull it out, all the while yelling racist things and threatening to call the police. The narrator then decides to leave it on the street but a man notices and tries to hand it back to him. When the narrator denies that it belongs to him, the man assumes it's drugs and that the narrator is trying to frame him. After all of the lack of success, the narrator decides to just keep it in his briefcase and throw it out later.

The significance of this scene is unclear but it might represent the baggage the narrator can't seem to get rid of even as he moves on with his life. He is moving out of Mary's and getting a new apartment but he has to take something broken with him and hide it. The narrator tries to get rid of it but the white people won't let him. This could be an allegory for how, even in the North, white people won't let the narrator forget that he is black. They won't let him just throw it away and move on with his life because racial prejudices are still an important part of society. The next man the narrator meets is convinced that the narrator is destined for trouble. He assumes he is selling drugs or is concealing a gun, both stereotypes of black people. He says he hopes he ends up in jail. The narrator is surprised by the reactions of both the lady and the man but he accepts their opinions of him and keeps the bundle with him. When he gets to his new apartment, he leaves the bundle in his briefcase. A symbol of how his blackness will continue to affect his career. 

The Blind and the Crazy

The latest chapter we read was the scene at The Golden Day. After all of the chaos downstairs ensues, a supposedly doctor-veteran takes the narrator and Mr. Norton upstairs. The veteran remarks on how blind they both are. He says to them, 

"Poor stumblers, neither of you can see the other. To you he is a mark on the scorecard of your achievement, [...] a black amorphous thing. And you, for all your power, are not a man to him, but a God, a force."

The veteran's social critique is very similar to what the narrator says in the prologue: "I am invisible, simply because people refuse to see me." Mr. Norton and the narrator are not real people to each other, instead they are just symbols of something they want to achieve. They are not invisible because of their lack of substance, but due to the other's blindness.

This lack of identity happens often when people are grouped together and generalized. Several times, the narrator is told he will bring credit to "his people" or has to make "his people" look good. This distinction of "my people" and "your people" separates two groups and creates for Mr. Norton that "black amorphous thing" which he only sees as an opportunity to be a humanitarian.

Typically it is the white people who refer to the black people as "your people" but at The Golden Day, Mr. Norton becomes a "white amorphous thing". When he arrives the veteran all call him something different: General Pershing, Thomas Jefferson, John D. Rockefeller, and even the Messiah. All of these names are ideas of power that reflect the way the veterans see the entire white population.

The doctor-veteran points out that white Mr. Norton and the black narrator are equally guilty of being blind. Neither of them take kindly to being called out and dismiss him as crazy. Ellison's social critique is extremely ironic because he has the character that has made the most sense so far be someone who is mentally unstable. Because of this, the doctor-veteran isn't given any credit for his insights. In a way, he too, is invisible.