The Heart as a Beacon of Freedom: Beloved by Toni Morrison
What do you call the essence of your being? Some say it’s their soul, some say their personality, or the frontal lobes of their brain, their consciousness, their spirit, their heart. We all know what it is, though we have many names for it: it’s the deepest part of the self that is terrifyingly and miraculously aware. “How and why? What is the meaning? Does this awareness remain after death? How can one reach the purest awareness of the self?” Throughout history, those who have had the privilege to ponder and debate such questions, have. However, the year is 1873 in America, and nearly 4 million enslaved people do not have the philosophical luxuries of the transcendentalists. Generations of persecution, oppression, and subjugation have maimed the self-identity and self-worth of the African-American populace. In Beloved, Toni Morrison uses the heart as a symbol of individuality and free will to illustrate how deeply the essence of the self was scarred under the dehumanizing conditions of slavery in America.
Beloved follows the story of Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman, and her 18-year-old daughter Denver, who live in a house numbered 124 in Cincinnati Ohio. Sethe is haunted by her past at Sweet Home, a plantation in Kentucky she was sold to at age 13. After a remarkable and agonizing escape from Sweet Home in 1855, Sethe arrived in Cincinnati to live with her mother-in-law Baby Suggs, and was reunited with her children. Baby Suggs was freed by her son Halle after 60 years of enslavement on various plantations. Halle, the husband of Sethe and father to their children, never escaped Sweet Home, yet his extra labor bought his mother’s freedom. When thinking of her son and her freedom, Baby Suggs reflects on Sweet Home compared to other places where she was enslaved:
“Sweet Home was a marked improvement. No question. And no matter, for the sadness was at her center, the desolated center where the self that was no self made its home. Sad as it was that she did not know where her children were buried or what they looked like if alive, fact was she knew more about them than she know about herself, having never had the map to discover what she was like”
(165).
A lifetime of enslavement steals the self and one’s identity — or prevents self-identity from forming. As Morrison wrote, Baby Suggs’ sadness was “the self that was no self” at her center. Under such repressive conditions, there is no room or time to get to know oneself.
Baby Suggs proceeds to ask a series of questions about herself, wondering if she could sing, if she was pretty, if she was a good friend, or if her mother would like her if she knew her. These pieces of information are how we define ourselves; we consider what we are and what we are not, what we like and dislike, and who we surround ourselves with. From that, we construct an identity, something to call our own. Freedom and self-identity are deeply connected. Having free will and feeling your independence as a being is crucial to finding the self. Yet for someone who has never had such an opportunity, someone whose mind and body have been imprisoned for decades, the self is buried beneath a lifetime of suppressing individuality for survival. As such, the fruits of freedom remained unsung for many who were enslaved. Baby Suggs even asked herself, “What for? What does a sixty-odd-year-old slavewoman who walks like a three-legged dog need freedom for?” (166). Yet then, she acknowledges that freedom — no longer an abstruse concept existing only in futile daydreams — held all the difference in the world. Baby Suggs had a revelation after her first breath of free air:
“Suddenly she saw her hands and thought with a clarity as simple as it was dazzling, “These hands belong to me. These my hands.” Next she felt a knocking in her chest and discovered something else new: her own heartbeat. Had it been there all along? This pounding thing? She felt like a fool and began to laugh out loud…“My heart’s beating,” she said”
(166).
Baby Suggs’ freedom allowed her to realize her own being, her own person, and find the desire to learn about herself. Morrison uses the heart to symbolize the relationship between the sense of self and freedom. In Beloved, the heart is the deepest part of one’s being and it remains locked behind the bars of enslavement.
Often, those who were enslaved entombed their hearts, a form of autonomy in an effort to survive — it is only rational to release a part of the body that has been jeopardized by a predator, especially that which is most vulnerable and empathic. Paul D, a man who was enslaved with Sethe at Sweet Home, was among those who were forced to sacrifice their hearts to survive. After arriving at 124 18 years after Sethe’s escape, the two delve into their pasts. Paul D discloses that he had “the bit” — a form of punishment for enslaved people. Yet it wasn’t the bit itself that caused him the most agony, instead, it was “the roosters.” Paul D reflects on walking past the roosters (specifically one called Mister) when he had the bit in his mouth. Morrison writes, “Mister, he looked so…free. Better than me. Stronger, tougher. Son a bitch couldn’t even get out the shell by hisself but he was still king and I was…” After a moment of silence, Paul D continues:
“Mister was allowed to be and stay what he was. But I wasn’t allowed to be and stay what I was. Even if you cooked him you’d be cooking a rooster named Mister. But wasn’t no way I’d ever be Paul D again, living or dead. Schoolteacher changed me. I was something else and that something was less than a chicken sitting in the sun on a tub”
(86).
Through one memory, this dialogue illustrates the utter dehumanizing nature of slavery. Yet Paul D had only just begun to reveal the trauma of his past. He worried that saying more would “push them both to a place they couldn’t get back from. He would keep the rest where it belonged: in that tobacco tin buried in his chest where a red heart used to be…there was no red heart bright as Mister’s comb beating in him” (86). Paul D felt less free than a rooster — his suffering and punishment stole all hope and dreaming, all dignity and self-worth, his liberty and pride, and reduced him to less than an animal. He had to surrender his heart to endure his enslavement. He had to forsake his nature and relinquish the core of his identity. Using the rooster, Mister, as a symbol of taunting freedom, and the heart, as a symbol of individuality and free will, Morrison highlights the stark difference between living free and living under bondage and tyranny. Morrison also uses irony in this scene to exemplify the tragedy in Paul D’s oppressive experience. Mister, the rooster, would have died if it weren’t for Paul D. The rooster’s egg was left behind, unhatched, until Paul D tapped it to encourage the chick out. And who would have thought that later on, Paul D would feel inferior to that same rooster whose life was owed to him? Though only a bird, Mister had more free will and individuality than Paul D contained in his red heart.
It is human nature to wonder, to question, to search for meaning. Under the right conditions, the free individual flourishes, finding and shaping their identity, and developing the principles of their hearts. Yet enslavement of a person and repression of their heart restricts the potential of one’s being — preventing the realization of their individuality. This further ensures the individual will remain confined by their enslavement, perpetuating the cycle of oppression and impeded self-actualization. In Beloved, Toni Morrison uses the heart to symbolize the destructive nature of this calculated cycle and its terrifying power to subdue and suppress the will of the individual.
