There can be no doubt that Toni Morrison's "Beloved" is stylistically diverse: Morrison's novel seems simple at first glance, opening with blank verse in a standard prose narrative , but over the course of the story the style varies to contain different levels of imagery and metaphors, as well as tense shifts, register shifts, free indirect speech, stream-of-consciousness narration, levels shifting language in terms of description and dialogue, and a combination of personification and repetition to solidify the characterization of an inanimate object. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay As the novel opens, before Paul D makes his entrance, we are introduced to five characters: Sethe, his living daughter Denver, the ghost of his deceased daughter Beloved, his deceased stepmother Baby Suggs, and the house they live in, 124. Morrison uses personification to give the house its own identity: “124 was mean. Full of the venom of a baby,” as if the house itself might sense malice. Morrison's use of repetition draws on this personification of the house to reinforce 124's character as well as to provide a framework structure to the three parts of the novel as a whole. “124 was noisy,” we are told at the start of the second part, and “124 was silent” at the start of the third part – so there is a progressive taming of the house which goes hand in hand with a solidification, in the flesh, of the house. the spirit of Beloved herself, from something “wicked” being “attenuated” to something “calm.” Additionally, repetition is used throughout the novel to reinforce and categorize the essence of these characters: Baby Suggs is consistently referred to as a "saint" while Paul D is "the last of the Sweet Home men", and Sweet Home he himself is embodied by almost as many characters as 124, but, unlike 124, he is not personified; where Sweet Home was a place where things happened, 124 is a place that makes things happen: 124 controls the qualities it possesses - nastiness, loudness - it throws people out of its doors, it affects strangers who enter it and he warns every stranger. person who approaches to turn away. The characterization of the humans in the story is a bit simpler, achieved through the dialogue and level of language used by each character, as well as the level of language used to describe each character, and moving from free indirect speech and d other techniques such as register shifting and stream-of-consciousness storytelling. Baby Suggs, for example, who dies before the story even begins, is characterized in the flashback almost entirely by a combination of her dialogue and how other characters remember her. She speaks in short, clipped sentences that often backtrack and repeat: “Here we are flesh; your flesh. They don't like your eyes; they would prefer to choose them. They also don't like the skin on your back. Later, in a flashback sequence in which Baby Suggs is looking for a job, she says, "Where is that slaughterhouse?" and when asked what types of shoes she can repair, she replies, “New, old, anything.” » Her short sentences reveal a self-confident, self-assured, stand-upon character who, when in the company of others, becomes almost a prophet in light of the wisdom she dispenses with such certainty and belief that the characters around her – and, by extension, ourselves – cannot help but agree with herwhen she continues: "Love your hands! Love them. Raise them and kiss them.... You have to love them!" Stylistically, Morrison chooses not to develop the character of Baby Suggs through blank prose, with a third-person narrator noting that Baby Suggs is wise, respected, passionate, or even "saintly." Rather, she uses dialogue to convey these character traits - by demonstrating them rather than spelling them out - and, furthermore, the level of language used by Baby Suggs also plays a role in this development. We can say that even if she is wise, the style of her dialogues and the words she uses are not those of a well-educated woman. Imagery and metaphor also play an important role in the novel, most often reflecting the attitudes or feelings of the characters. . Consider the scene in which Denver's tooth comes out. Beloved asks her why she is not crying. In the end, Denver cries – but, we understand, she's not crying over the lost tooth; instead, she cries because of Paul D's presence in her house and the change in her mother's character, and the relationship that was born between the two of them. And as Denver mourns, "the couple upstairs, united, did not hear a sound, but below them, outside, all around, the snow continued, piling up, sinking. Higher . Deeper." The snow imagery represents the onset of winter, cold, and isolation, and reflects Denver's tears, as well as the tears that 124 would also shed if he were a living entity. Also consider the variation in sentence length, with the first sentence consisting of half a dozen clauses and the last two sentences consisting only of fragments, to reflect the prolonged crying and sudden sharp inhalations that occur. in the act of crying, in order to represent, stylistically and through the use of rhythm and trajectory of sentences, Denver's anguish, in words. Similarly, Sethe's anguish for her lost grandmother and for the deceased Baby Suggs is represented through the use of liquid imagery. : "[Sethe's] mother and Nan had been together since the sea...A powerful wish for Baby Suggs washed over her like a surf. In the quiet after her splash, Sethe looked at the two girls sitting by the pan: she was sickly, a boarder with a shallow mind, her daughter irritable and lonely They seemed small and distant, as if they were on an island and Sethe was moving away from them, with the imagery of water replacing them. the tears she couldn't shed and the ocean between them her present life and her past. So when she finally tells the girls that "Paul D [will] be here in a minute", we know, thanks to the. images that free indirect speech once again transmits to us, that she is not really talking to them about Paul D, but rather, she is talking to herself in such a way as to divert her mind from the subject of her thoughts and to concentrate about the here and now, to avoid the anxiety that the past brings. All these techniques - free indirect speech, variations in sentence length, use of a "lower" level of language and repetition - combine in the scene. where Paul D changes his mind about Sethe, after receiving a visit from Stamp Paid. "The prickly, mean-spirited girl from Sweet Home whom he knew as Halle's daughter was obedient (like Halle), shy (like Halle), and workaholic (like Halle)." Free indirect speech allows us to see the kind of person Sethe once was. In this way, it is characterized by the use of blank prose that Morrison neglected to use in the characterization of Baby Suggs, but this free indirect speech also characterizes Paul D himself. "This, Sethe, was new" - the level of language is still atimes "weak". Yet the subject matter – the ability to distinguish between “this new Sethe here” and the Sethe he remembers – implies wisdom and insight. The language used in this passage is not of the highest standard, but the tone of the passage - which reflects Sethe's capacity for love and her affection for her children - reveals two characters, Sethe and Paul D, capable of overcoming the The gaps in their language using the reasonable sensitivities of their minds. One of the most drastic stylistic techniques used by Morrison begins subtly, with a tense change, then progresses more radically to a register change, and culminates in a complete stylistic overhaul in which blank prose is replaced by four passages of stream-of-consciousness stories, with Sethe and Denver narrating one each, while Beloved narrates the other two. As with the free indirect speech passage in which we peer into Paul D's mind, as above, these stream-of-consciousness passages serve to characterize each of the women who speak them, as well as each woman's relationship with the others characters of the novel. so as not to be affected by a third-person narrator who might favor one character over another. The tone of these passages is therefore brutally honest: not always flattering, not always direct, and sometimes what is really meant is not always what the speaking characters think - but, knowing what we do about who they are, where they come from and what they want, the contradictions and illusions in their thoughts allow us to see the real truth behind their words. The change in time occurs after Denver sees the white dress kneeling with her mother. Once again, Morrison uses free indirect speech, this time to establish the following scene by giving us a glimpse of Denver's concern for Beloved without explicitly showing us: "[Denver] was certain that Beloved was the white dress that was kneeling with her mother in the bathroom. holding space, the realistic presence of the baby who had kept her company most of her life and being looked at by her, even briefly, made her grateful for the remainder of the time she was just a mere spectator . " Then, once Denver's concerns are established, the tension shifts from the past to the present: "That day, they're outside. It's cold and the snow is hard like packed earth. The line." Events described in the present tense contrast with events in the past that have taken place up until now, and thus give them a greater sense of immediacy. This is particularly effective given the subject matter of these scenes in the present tense: that is, Denver's worry that Beloved is "crossing" over to the "other side" again: "'Don't do that,' says -she between two hard mouthfuls. t. Don't come back.'" The shift to the present tense brings Denver's despair to its emotional extremes: "It's worse than when Paul D came to 124 and she cried helplessly into the stove. Now she cries because she has no self" - as opposed to a past tense variation of this despair, which would imply that it has already been overcome. In this passage also, free indirect speech is once again more at the heart of its effectiveness But the negative emotional extremity of the passage is reversed at the end - despair becomes joy and "[Beloved] smiles again" - and in maintaining the present, that smile is more immediate and more. resonant than that of the past this same feeling of immediacy manifests itself in an abrupt change of register, in which the narrative moves from a somewhat subjective point of view to the third person who tells us "[Sethe] had not. need to worry [about wasting time]" in Sethe's mind, "busy with the things she..