Beloved: The Symbolism Of Trees
Nature often times represent a unique calmness. Toni Morrison doesn't make any exceptions 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, and some white and Native American characters, refer to trees as offering calm, healing and escape, thus conveying Morrison's message that trees bring peace. Besides using the novel's characters to convey her message, Morrison herself displays and shows the good and calmness that trees represent in the tree imagery in her narration. Perhaps Toni Morrison uses trees and ...
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in trees and nature, especially the main characters such as Sethe and Paul D. During Sethe's time in slavery, she has witnessed many gruesome and horrible events that blacks endure such as whippings and lynchings. However, Sethe seemingly chooses to remember the sight of sycamore trees over the sight of lynched boys, thus revealing her comfort in a tree's presence: "Boys hanging from the most beautiful sycamores in the world. It shamed her- remembering the wonderful soughing trees rather than the boys. Try as she might to make it otherwise, the sycamores beat out the children every time and she could not forgive her memory for that" (6). Although Sethe wishes she would've remembered the boys instead, she probably rationalized this thought because when she asks Paul D about news of Halle, she pictures the sycamores instead of the possibility that Halle has been lynched: "'I wouldn't have to ask about him would I? You'd tell me if there was anything to tell, wouldn't you?' ...
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day working in the fields, Paul D would rest, often times under the towering but comforting presence of Brother with 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 trees represent comfort, they also represent a place of security, a place for escape from slave life. When Sixo visits the Thirty-Mile Woman, he escapes into the secure woods before her master could catch him:
"But Sixo had already melted into the woods before the lash could unfurl itself on his indigo behind" (25). While Paul D sits under Brother to find comfort, Sixo enters the woods at night to dance, escape slave life and ...
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"Beloved: The Symbolism Of Trees." Essayworld.com. October 14, 2004. Accessed April 25, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Beloved-The-Symbolism-Of-Trees/15876.
"Beloved: The Symbolism Of Trees." Essayworld.com. October 14, 2004. Accessed April 25, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Beloved-The-Symbolism-Of-Trees/15876.
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