Color frequently appears throughout Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, giving the characters comfort, joy, and satisfaction. Scenes filled with hope, despair, love, and other powerful emotions are associated with the color red. Yet, the color red represents something more significant and painful than other colors. As the characters of Beloved continually illustrate their painful memories and face the present, red represents their emotions, hopes, and loves. The color red reflects the sufferings of the characters and connects them to their damaging past. Symbolizing Paul D’s repressed emotions and Sethe’s motherly love, the color red acts as a bridge between the characters and their past, which highlights that remembrance and confrontation of the past are necessary to move forward in one’s life.
Paul D avoids intense emotions due to his experiences as a slave. He attempts to overlook his previous life as a slave by securing his emotions in an imaginary tobacco tin “that tobacco tin buried in his chest where a red heart used to be.” (Morrison 86).
He refers to his hardened heart as a box, hidden away from the world.
By symbolically securing his memories in the tobacco tin, Paul D …show more content…
The color red represents feelings suppressed or formerly suppressed in the characters of the novel, further portrayed in the form of a child’s blood and headstone and a symbolic red heart. Paul D represses his ability to feel while Sethe represses her love for her children. Emotionally broken through the oppressiveness of slavery, the characters ability to face their emotions, either minimally or passionately, is echoed through the strength of the red symbols. Linking the characters to their remembrances they fiercely stifle, the color red constructs a bond between the depressing present and the painful past. The characters are only able to move on once they freely remember and confront the
Paul D avoids intense emotions due to his experiences as a slave. He attempts to overlook his previous life as a slave by securing his emotions in an imaginary tobacco tin “that tobacco tin buried in his chest where a red heart used to be.” (Morrison 86).
He refers to his hardened heart as a box, hidden away from the world.
By symbolically securing his memories in the tobacco tin, Paul D …show more content…
The color red represents feelings suppressed or formerly suppressed in the characters of the novel, further portrayed in the form of a child’s blood and headstone and a symbolic red heart. Paul D represses his ability to feel while Sethe represses her love for her children. Emotionally broken through the oppressiveness of slavery, the characters ability to face their emotions, either minimally or passionately, is echoed through the strength of the red symbols. Linking the characters to their remembrances they fiercely stifle, the color red constructs a bond between the depressing present and the painful past. The characters are only able to move on once they freely remember and confront the