Teaching Resources
Despina Kakoudaki
Study Questions for Toni Morrison's Beloved
Comparative Literature 60AC, Fall 1996
1. How does the essay by Henry Louis Gates Jr. use, relate, explain, or complicate the following words:
race
trope
power
knowledge
storytelling
voice
literacy
reason
writing
canon
presence
absence
chain
freedom
Are there specific ways we can relate these terms to Beloved? How does the essay complicate our understanding of the novel?
2. Think about the ways that the novel represents "experience" and
-- the way that slavery and freedom from slavery are described in experiential terms (p. 114, 162)
-- personal and group experience
-- how we understand things we experience or how we try to understand them
-- what experiences bring the characters together, and what experiences seperate them
-- who collects these experiences
3. Baby Suggs has a way to transform everyday life, for example through her forest ritual celebration (86-87ff). Re-read that passage. Are there any other scenes in the novel we can discuss as the transformation of the everyday into something else? How are crowds of people represented in these scenes?
4. On pages 148-151 the recounting of the past is happening completely in the absence of names. What is the significance of this, especially in light of how names are used in the novel?
5. A lot of the novel seems to be interested in transactions, exchanges, debts and obligations. For example Stamp Paid (184-5) is considering whether he has obligations, whether he owes people or whether they owe him. Look at the following passages:
-- p.15: "paid for the ticket... it cost too much"
-- p. 196-7: buying people into and out of slavery
-- p. 43: Denver and obligation
-- Sethe and her sense of obligation to her children
6. The book is operating in a lot of ways as a secret history, of things that have not ever been told, from unheard points of view. How does the novel represent this concept of the "secret life," the "untold history"? How does that connect to Homi Bhabha's concept of the unhomely, of the invisible becoming visible? Think about the following passages:
"the Misery"(171)
"the veil"(163)
"click" (175)
"the Word" (177-81)
"casket of jewels"(176)
"your love is too thick" (164-5)
p.214 ff
the world and the house (182-3)
7. The death of Beloved is an event that gets retold many times in the novel, from the perspectives of different characters. Why? What is the effect of this retelling? (eg. 157, 163-4)