The Imagery Of Beloved Trees

Toni Morrison makes use of tree imagery throughout her novel “Beloved”. For most of the characters in the novel, trees bring each good and negative recollections of their lives. Trees symbolize the power from which the characters acquire comfort and freedom, yet they also convey the past traumatic memories of the characters. Morrison frequently uses trees as a hyperlink it to her ultimate message: the characters’ intractable struggle to cope with their past despite the fact that they are now free of charge from slavery.

Morrison describes the beauty of trees, which ironically reminds the characters of their loss and traumas. In the early starting of the novel, Sethe recalls the sights of lynching at the trees: “Boys hanging from the most stunning sycamores in the world” (7). By juxtaposing the beauty and her bitter memory, Morrison shows how Sethe, as a former slave, feels denied of the opportunity to completely get pleasure from the all-natural scene. To strengthen this idea, Morrison shows the irony again in “Sweet Property had much more fairly trees than any farm around” (25). In spite of the pleasant and peaceful landscape of the plantation, Sethe, Paul D and other characters endure a very tough life at Sweet Home.

Making use of the “chokecherry tree” symbol for the scars on Sethe’s back, Morrison helps the reader realize and empathize with Sethe’s psychological scars. Amy metaphorically named the scars on Sethe’s back as the chokecherry tree: “It’s a tree, Lu. A chokecherry tree. Your back got a whole tree on it. In bloom” (93). Reading how Amy compares the scars as the trunk, branches and leaves of the chokecherry, we can vividly envision how the scars appear like. From that imagination, we can not help but grimace understanding how agonized Sethe have to have felt when the schoolteacher beat her as though she is an animal. Also, getting the chokecherry tree on Sethe’s back signifies that her previous miseries stick to Sethe everywhere she goes. Moreover, the knowledge that the chokecherry has bitter fruits conveys how she can not psychologically escape from traumas of her previous. In addition, for Amy who is full of hope and energy striving for velvet, she can see one thing exquisite in such a horrible shocking sight of scars. Even so, Sethe fails to see the scars as the way Amy does: “That’s what she referred to as it. I’ve never observed it and never will” (18). In the same way, Paul D disagrees with Amy’s opinion: “in truth a revolting clump of scars. Not a tree as she said. Maybe shaped like one, but nothing at all like any tree he knew due to the fact trees had been inviting” (25). Unlike Amy, Sethe and Paul D, who have repressed hope in their present lives, can not see the scars as anything aesthetic.

An additional important use of trees seems when Morrison employs the metaphor “jungle” to represent the slavery method (234). A jungle, comprised of trees, is a residence for the wilderness and has connotations of ferment and danger. With this word “jungle,” Morrison depicts how the slavery technique impacts its victims and its captors as effectively. Both the slaves and its owners agree that “a jungle” resides inside the slaves. Nonetheless, the way they perceive the jungle differs. White men and women, the slave owners, believe that the jungle represents the havoc, deceit and evil in black folks: “Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums prepared for their sweet white blood” (234). From the black people’s point of view, the white individuals seeded that jungle in them: “It was the jungle whitefolks planted in them. And it grew. It spread” (234). For the slaves, the jungle signifies the emotional pain they undergo which is bred from the slavery system. The far more time passes, the much more their pain intensifies and starts to consume them. The jungle expands bigger and bigger that it even entangles its creators: “It invaded the whites who had produced it. Changed and altered them. Made them bloody, silly, worse than even they wanted to be” (234). This description emphasizes how the slavery method negatively impacts the whole human society. Not only the program traumatizes its victims, but also it causes its controllers to grow to be more cruel and inhuman. The complete society suffers the degradation of compassion and humanity.

Morrison also paradoxically portrays trees as the source of comfort and safety for Denver. Nevertheless, this constructive connotation still reminds Denver of her want to seek for comfort: her feeling of desolation. Denver chooses the round empty spot surrounded by 5 boxwood bushes and names it “emerald closet” where she goes and contemplates anytime she feels sad, lonely and isolated (45): “First a playroom, then a refuge, soon the spot became the point. In that bower, closed off from the hurt of the hurt world, Denver’s imagination made its personal hunger and its own food” (35). Denver holds on to 3 issues in most components of the novel: the infant ghost, Beloved and the emerald closet. When Paul D comes to 124 and chases the child ghost out of the property, Denver has only a single issue left to hold on to: “But it was gone now. Whooshed away in the blast of a hazelnut man’s shout, leaving Denver’s world flat, mainly, with the exception of an emerald closet” (45). After the infant ghost is forced out of Denver’s life, the emerald closet becomes even much more crucial to her as the only companion and reliance she has now. When the infant ghost returns as Beloved, Denver reclaims what she possessed ahead of and becomes extremely obsessed with Beloved. Nonetheless, when Beloved does not appreciate Denver’s love, Denver returns to her emerald closet to console herself: “She had not been in the tree room as soon as given that Beloved sat on their stump right after the carnival, and had not remembered that she hadn’t gone there until this extremely desperate moment” (90).

Additionally, Morrison conveys the trees as the pathway to freedom for Sethe and Paul D. From Denver’s account to Beloved, we discover how Sethe escapes from Sweet Home: “there is this nineteen-year-old slavegirl – a year older than herself – walking via the dark woods to get to her youngsters who are far away” (91). Morrison purposefully areas the woods for how Sethe arrives to 124 and reunites with her family members in order to symbolize the trees as the pathway to escape from slavery. Likewise, Paul D obtains aid from the trees to escape from Alfred, Georgia: “Only the tree flowers. As they go, you go. You will be exactly where you want to be when they are gone” (133). By describing how the tree flowers guide Paul D to escape, Morrison reinforces the concept that trees serve as the way to freedom. Nevertheless, the good connotation of freedom once again reminds Sethe and Paul D of their require to run which triggers their painful memories.

To conclude, Morrison strategically expresses trees as having both good and damaging connotations for her characters. By describing this contrast in the motif of the trees, Morrison assists the reader greater realize the larger paradox in the novel: the free of charge slaves becoming tied in the past and unable to free themselves psychologically. Through this complex paradoxical portrayal, the reader can far better empathize with the characters: what it is like to be a former slave.