Comparing Beloved and Night

The two novels I am writing about are "Night" by Elie Wiesel and "Beloved," by Toni Morrison. Beloved tells about slavery and an ex-slave mother's struggle with a past which is projected as the haunting of her people. It tells the story of Sethe, a mother compelled to kill her child, rather than let the child live a life of slavery. Toni Morrison uses ghosts and the supernatural to create an enhanced acceptance of the human condition and the struggled survival of the Black American.

The novel is set in Ohio in the 1880's. The Civil War had been won, slavery had been abolished, however, the memories of slavery still remain. Although the story itself is fictional, the novel is based on real events. The events are based on the trial in Cincinnati of Margaret Garner, who with her husband, and seventeen other slaves (Kentuckian) crossed the Ohio where they supposedly found safe shelter.

When it was discovered that they had been pursued and surrounded, and her husband overpowered, Margaret knew that any hope of freedom was in vain. She refused to see her children taken back into slavery. Without delay, Margaret quickly took hold of a butcher's knife which was laid on a table and cut the throat of her young daughter. She then attempted to kill her other children as well, then herself, but she was overpowered and held back before she could follow through. She was arrested and put on trial on the grounds that the child she killed was the legal property of the owner.

In Beloved, when a new proprietor takes over Sweet Home (the slave farm), Sethe, escapes the brutal beatings she now endures in an attempt to go from Kentucky to Ohio. When the previous owner of Sweet home, Mr. Garner, had the farm, he was kind to his slaves and believed his slaves should be men and not boys. He encouraged them to use their initiative and educate themselves to become more self reliant and independent. He even encouraged them to carry guns. This encouragement and initiative ended when Mr. Garner died and the farm was taken over by a new proprietor, known as 'Schoolteacher.' The slaves were forced to adapt to a new owner who was a cruel racist and who condemned the slaves to a life of bondage and toil. This reality of what 'real' slavery was, as opposed to the life they had previously been used to, is what prompted the slaves to escape from Sweet Home.

The main characters include: Sethe, an escaped slave and a mother; Baby Suggs, her mother-in-law; Sixo, who "stopped speaking because there was no future in it"; Mister, who identifies slaves in terms of "human" and "animal."; Paul D., a fellow slave who becomes Sethe's lover; Schoolteacher, the cruel and sadistic proprietor and new owner of Sweet Home. For the characters of this novel, it is the memories of slavery, chain-gangs, lynchings and beatings which make their freedom almost unattainable. Much of the evil represented in this novel is directed towards the powerlessness and dehumanization of black women in a hierarchical society fashioned first for whites, men second, and black women last. In the novel, "Night," the powerlessness and dehumanization is directed at the Jews.

The novel explains the role of the black woman was to breed, and after giving birth, women were not allowed to keep their own breast milk. Sethe was violated by her white masters and literally held down while the breast milk was taken from her. Rape and impregnation was a common act on slave farms. Women were considered to be productive livestock whose children were regarded as valuable economic units. Sethe was unable to create a mother-child bond while on the farm because her children were not considered her own. When she escaped from slavery, the little bond she once had on the farm intensified and strengthened because she was in a position to love her children unreservedly.

The evil is evident when Sethe is unable to keep her children from enslavement, except by killing them. The act of murder, in itself, is evil. However, the good comes from the mother's heart, and the love she has for her children; a love strong enough to kill her children in a gesture of mercy, than watch them live a life of abuse and slavery. There is also good represented in the novel in how the evil-acts of the white man have shaped what black women are today, making them stronger in their quest for equal rights. However, it is difficult to find good in a book where evil surrounds all corners.

In Beloved, perilously pregnant, and on her way to Ohio, Sethe gives birth to a baby girl. When she is reunited with her other children, she (as Margaret Garner did) tries to kill her children in a gesture of mercy when the threat of recapture catches up with her. She succeeds in murdering only one child, her baby daughter. By giving herself (sexually) to the man who carves tombstones, she is only able to pay for one word, "Beloved." Unable to pay for 'Dearly Beloved,' her child's name also becomes "Beloved" (the only word which appears on the tombstone).

After Sethe murders her daughter, Sethe is haunted by her daughter's spirit when 'Beloved' (her daughter) returns as a poltergeist. It seems that throughout the story, Sethe is now haunted by the ghosts of the dead and the sins of the living. By this, I mean that the ghosts of her past are not only the ghost of her daughter Beloved, but it is the ghosts of her ancestors and her claim to a legacy which is rightfully hers, her freedom (all which was taken from her in slavery). The sins of the living are the sins of the white man who stripped the slaves of all identity and human rights; this is the price African Americans have had to pay for many generations. In the novel, the ultimate sin was created by the white man by making slavery so inhumane that a mother feels forced to kill her child in order to keep it from getting into the hands of the inhumane. Taking a human life is also a sin, but is it still considered a sin when it is done for the love of the child?

The story begins with the haunting of Beloved as she returns from the dead as a poltergeist greedy for the love and attention she was deprived of by her violent death. Later in the story, Beloved is reincarnated as a demanding eighteen-year old runaway whom Sethe shelters, and by whom Sethe also comes to be dominated. Beloved is understood as the visible manifestation of slavery, which has to be faced and exorcised. In the end, the haunted are finally freed, and the haunter (Beloved) is laid to rest.

The background of the novel, Beloved, focuses largely on the burden carried by black women who had no control over their husbands, children, or even their own bodies. Despoliation began at the moment women were captured. Rape and dehumanization began with the forced tearing apart of maternal bonds, and the horror of knowing that you are now a piece of merchandise to be sold as property to the highest bidder. The Jews, as well, were victims of such dehumanization. In the novel, "Night," by Elie Wiesel, the focus is on the Holocaust and the dehumanization in concentration camps. However, this time, as opposed to the slaves in "Beloved," it is the Germans who are killing the Jews by order of Hitler. Both books have to do with the reality of two ethnic groups where history has been one of repression, if not genocide; Genocide for the Jews, and repression for the African Americans. "Night" is a terrifying account of the Nazi death camp, and the horror of how a young Jewish boy (Elie) must witness his father, mother, and younger sister's death at the hands of the Nazi's. Elie also faced the grim reality of the annihilation of six-million Jews, as well.

The novel awakens the memories of evil with the unforgettable message that this type of execution and mass murder should never be allowed to repeat itself. "Beloved" and "Night" both serve as a paradigm of how people behave when they are given absolute power over other people. In Beloved, the white slave owners had absolute power over the slaves, stripping them of all identity, and forcing them to take the identity of their owners. In "Night" Hitler had absolute power over the Germans stripping them of their identity as Jews.

One death, in particular, and also the death which may have taken his faith in God as well, was when Elie was forced to watch the hanging of a young boy. The boy did not die instantly by the snap of his neck. Instead, the boy took nearly half an hour to finally choke to death, struggling between life and death. That night Elie commented "... that night the soup tasted like corpses."

Although Elie was not easily willing to retreat into atheism, his faith was still consumed in the flames of death which surrounded him. Eli could not believe that his God would allow this to happen. There was another time when the Jews are being forced into the crematory by the Nazi's and many Jews are reciting the Kaddish (the Jewish prayer for the dead), and Elie comments: " For the first time, I felt a revolt rise up in me. Why should I bless his name? The Eternal Lord of the Universe, the all powerful and terrible, was silent. What had I to thank him for?" As Elie slowly watched as millions died, so died his faith in God.

It is difficult to achieve self-love when slavery has associated blackness with every form of evil and ugliness, and the power of the white man in determining that the black man's soul is not equal to that of the white man, or the German determining that the Jewish soul is not equal to that of the German. The only way that reconstruction can be achieved is by rejecting all that has destroyed these people, and discarding the labels imposed by the white man.

In today's world, where people often identify themselves with their racial heritage and gender, it is often forgotten that beneath the color of one's skin, sex, or birth origin, we are all human beings. The Germans hated the Jews because they did not have the same beliefs as the Germans, therefore, they were 'different.' The white man hated the African because their skin was a different color. To be recognized as sub-human is an attitude still seen today, one hundred years later, and sadly enough, it is not limited to Africans and Jews.

The Germans, Africans, American Indians, and the Japanese, along with several other races have faced the evils of the white man. The Germans have the Holocaust and annihilation of six-million Jews. Even the Slavs, Eastern Europeans, gypsies, and homosexuals were similarly engulfed in the Holocaust. While many settlers came to this country in boats to live in the land of the free, the Africans came to this country by way of kidnaping and chained to boats, doomed to live a life of slavery. The American Indian and the 500 nations which once inhabited North America, had their land taken from them by the Europeans, and yet, centuries later are still battling to reclaim what was rightfully theirs. The Japanese have Hiroshima and the atomic bomb, killing 80,000, wounding 100,000, and leveling 98% of the city's buildings.

What I am trying to get across by using these examples, is that, the Human Race will always have people (evil) who want to enslave other people, and there will always be people who want to help and change the world (good). So, here we have the good and the evil, and we will 'always' have good and evil. Every race, every culture, will always have their story to tell. We need to listen to these stories and learn. We should not judge who suffered the most; pain cannot be measured.

We are a human race who separates color, religion, and creed. This is the same human race who kills their own and are considered to be the most intelligent species on earth. Animals, even the wildest of animals, do not kill their own. Animals will fight for territorial rights, or other rights, but never to the death. The difference between man and animal? Animals kill for survival. Humans kill for sport. What's wrong with this picture?

There is a lot of truth to "History repeats itself." As humans, when traumatic experiences occur, it is normal to want to forget it ever happened and put it behind us. However, the remedy is not to forget. We need to remember these traumatic experiences. We need to remember the barbaric acts of our forefathers. We need to remember the past, in order to prevent it from happening again in the future. Mankind needs to learn from the lessons history has presented us. If we do not learn from these lessons, then we are condemning mankind to the recurring mistakes of our forefathers.

Whenever the Holocaust, or Hiroshima, or even African's and slavery come up in conversation, it is human nature to hate all those involved. Disasters such as these promote anger, and anger promotes hate. It is human nature to hate anything related to evil. However, if we open up our minds and dissect these historical events, there is also "good" in these events as well. What I mean is, a lot of good people took part in these events from both sides. Many soldiers who took part in the holocaust had no other choice. They had families to take care of and home lives just like the rest of us. For example, I believe that many of the soldiers who took part in the Holocaust were forced through military responsibility or face treason or death. These soldiers have to live with themselves knowing they killed millions of innocent people. When an order is given, an order must be carried out. Many soldiers had no choice, but to kill, or be killed.

We are all human beings. We all have feelings, and families whom we love. Sometimes the force behind the brutality is too powerful to disobey, and people (soldiers, the white man, the Americans and Hiroshima, etc., etc.) have no choice but to obey, or face the consequences. In the military you don't question an order; you just do it (as in Othello and Billy Budd).