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Interview with Toni Morrison

The Book and the Film: A Comparison

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The Novel

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Q: In Beloved, revisiting their pasts enables the characters to go through a painful healing process. Do you think writing about slavery and bringing it to the public consciousness can have a similar effect on the nation as a whole?

A: I'm not writing to bring anything to the public consciousness per se, I'm writing because I want to talk to you. Just me and you. The only obstacle that exists in my being able to bring it to your consciousness lies in my ability to say it well. At the same time, I believe it is also a question of education, because racism is a scholarly pursuit. I am convinced that it is ubiquitous. But that's not the way that people were born to live. I'm talking more about racism that is taught or institutionalized. There is a very serious dilemma of education and leadership, but we don't have the structure for the education that we truly need. Nobody has undertaken this. Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, but not as a serious and rigorous art form.

 

Q: Do you see the character Beloved as more of a positive of negative force? In the novel she seemed to have a healing effect on the other characters that wasn’t as apparent in the film version.

 

Q: Beloved’s sleeping with Paul D seemed to have a healing effect on him, but what was her motivation for doing it? Is there an Electra complex involved, or was she just longing for love in any form?

 

Q: There seems to be a difference in the way that the male and female characters deal with strife in Beloved. The men avoid their problems by running away—Halle never returns to Sethe, Howard and Buglar run away from home, and Paul D is constantly on the move. The women tend to stay put—Sethe, Denver and Beloved do not leave the house. Is this a reflection of your perspective on how men and women deal with pain or of the mentality of the time period in which the novel is set?

A: I adamantly disagree with the notion that the men are weak and that they run away to avoid their problems. There is a kind of cultural blindness involved with this perception. If you think about it, heroes in fiction are frequently men that leave the home. For example, look at Ulysses and his abandonment of women. People tend to think that when black people leave home, they are weak, that they're leaving their children. They are not supposed to leave, but when the rest of the world leaves, an opera is made out of it. The difficult part is trying to create characters that are not easily dismissed. Sometimes, even people that you admire. In other words, people that are just like you and me. My job, is to make sure that my characters are people that are just like you and me, because I cannot think of anyone less complicated than that.

 

Q: The female characters seem to be the strongest in the novel. Do their unique living situations help to foster their strength, and would you consider Beloved to be a feminist novel in any way?

A: I would not consider it to be an "ist" novel at all. I don't write "ist" novels. I actually try to distance myself from feminism as much as possible so I can be as free as possible, in my own imagination. I've never been able to take positions that are closed. Everything that I've ever done, within the writing world, has been to expand upon articulation, rather than trying to close it. To open doors, sometimes, without even closing the book-leaving the endings open for reinterpretation and some ambiguity. I very much loathe categories. I think it's off-putting to readers, who may feel that I'm involved in writing some kind of feminist tract. I have never subscribed to patriarchy, and I also don't believe that it should be substituted with matriarchy. I think that, in the end, it's a question of equitable access and opening doors to many different things.

 

Q: Did Sethe make the right decision?

A: It's difficult for me to respond to this, mainly because it's not my place to make that judgment. My job, as the writer, is to present you with the information for you to draw your own conclusions with. It really comes down to a matter of one's own personal morals and values, since it is very much that way for Sethe.

 

 

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