'Beloved': ideologies in conflict, improvised subjects

African American Review, Spring, 1999 by Arlene R. Keizer

Improvisation works for Sethe and Paul D as well. It allows them to express and reflect upon their experience and serves as a sign of their unique selves. Sethe composes and sings her own song to her children; when Beloved hums this song, Sethe knows for certain that the girl is the daughter she killed. While the only sure sign by which Sethe knew her own mother was the circled cross branded under her breast, a physical mark of her oppression, Sethe has been able to pass on something different to her children, a verbal and musical mark of the self that is undeniably and irrevocably her own. At the end of the novel, we know that there is hope for her return from madness because she is singing her song to herself when Paul D visits her in the keeping room.

Musical improvisation is a practice that saves Paul D from madness and death. In Alfred, Georgia, while he is forced to work and live like an animal, he and the other slaves with whom he works help each other through the ordeal by singing:

They sang it out and beat it up, garbling the words so they could not be understood; tricking the words so their syllables yielded up other meanings. They sang the women they knew; the children they had been; the animals they had tamed themselves or seen others tame. They sang of bosses and masters and misses; of mules and dogs and the shamelessness of life. They sang lovingly of graveyards and sisters long gone. Of pork in the woods, meal in the pan; cane, rain and rocking chairs . . . . Singing love songs to Mr. Death, they smashed his head. (108-09)

In Alfred, Georgia, the shout and the work song are called upon daily to get the men through. They not only sing songs they know; they transform those songs and create new ones. They are able to preserve their manhood and their humanity through communal improvisation.

Because slaves cannot speak freely to one another, the shout and the song must carry all of the expressive needs of the moment. The song changes when the expressive needs change. At 124, "the songs [Paul D] knew from Georgia were flat-headed nails for pounding and pounding and pounding. . . . They were too loud, had too much power for the little house chores he was engaged in" (40). Instead, Paul D takes a melody he knows and improvises lyrics about himself and Sethe; his composing and singing allow him to meditate on and express his experience, without being overwhelmed by it. The songs he creates are also signs of his individual self. Here again it is useful to refer to Jones's Blues People, where, in discussing the movement from field holier to work song to blues in African American culture, the author notes the identification of particular "shouts" with individuals:

Each man had his own voice and his own way of shouting - his own life to sing about. The tenders of those thousands of small farms became almost identified by their individual shouts. "That's George Jones, down in Hartsville, shoutin' like that." (61)

Hi Man, the leader of the chain gang in Alfred, Georgia, is named for his shout; through details like these, Morrison traces not only the trajectory of the characters' lives, but also the evolution of the music, in which the importance of vocal style as individual signature persisted. Paul D's "Bare feet and chamomile sap, / Took off my shoes; took off my hat" are a sign of the individual, reflective self in relation both to the tradition out of which he is singing and to Sethe and his own history. The full text of Paul D's improvised song begins the penultimate chapter of the novel, and by that point in the narrative, the song has become a factual and emotional record of the recent history of his relationship with Sethe and his encounters with Beloved, told through a combination of original lines and standard.work song/blues lines. The rhymed resolution of this piece - "Love that woman till you go stone blind. / Stone blind; stone blind. / Sweet Home gal make you lose your mind" (263) - reflects both Paul D's deep feelings for Sethe and his regret at having been unable, for a time, to see her and her dilemma clearly.