The Use of Metal as Symbol in Beloved
I chose to focus this optional journal on metal, one of the motifs Morrison uses throughout the text of Beloved. Morrison uses this common substance, metal, to illustrate her themes involving slavery and emotional repression. If you think about metal and the images that it can bring to mind, you begin to see Morrison's intent. Metal is a basic element with an abundance of characteristics that add to the emotional might of its symbolism. Metal can restrain and stifle; it is at once strong and unbreakable; its very color evokes winter themes-dreary, chilly, gray, and dark. Morrison wants readers to subtly evoke these images each time they read a word or sentence that includes some form of metal. Morrison takes particular care in surrounding the character of Paul D with this form of imagery.Through Morrison, we learn that Paul D's heart is a tobacco tin. Morrison details the "lid rusted shut" showing the bottling up of Paul Ds emotions. "By the time he got to 124 nothing could pry it open. " Morrison uses tin to describe Paul D's heart which has become a sort of metal vault, whe
Morrison reinforces the notion that metal is hard and unyielding when she writes "Days after it was taken out, goose fat was rubbed on the corners of the mouth but nothing to soothe the tongue or take the wildness out of the eye," This same purpose of restraint and degradation is served when Morrison tells us about "the wildness that shot up into the eye the moment the lips were yanked back." Sethe notices that Paul D did not have this wildness. Did Paul Ds tin heart save him from the iron bit? Paul's experiences as a prisoner are surrounded with metal imagery. Morrison chooses to detail the hand-forged chain that linked Paul D and his fellow prisoners "one thousand feet of the best hand-forged chain in Georgia." Morrison not only depicts metal's power to restrain, but further reinforces her point by detailing the chain as "hand forged"-this chain was built for a specific purpose and this purpose was sanctioned by human hands. In fact, the words "hand forged" are repeated several times; first, to show the impact of Paul's experience, and then to emphasis a point that will slowly ev
Some common words found in the essay are:
Paul D's, Beloved Morrison, Paul Ds, Sixo Mister, Georgia Morrison, Sethe Mister, , Paul Red, red heart, Georgia Sixo, paul d's, heart red heart, d's heart, red heart red, heart red, paul d's heart, paul ds, tobacco tin, didn't hear, imagery morrison, iron bit, metal imagery,
Approximate Word count = 739
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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