How Does Morrison Use Metaphors In Beloved

Trees do so many things, like provide oxygen so people can survive, they can block the wind, and are just pretty to look at. These might be some of the reasons that Tony Morrison likes to use trees as symbols in her novel Beloved. Trees become a metaphor for her in this novel. She connects people with different trees, intertwines the natural world and humankind, and she gives Sethe a strange tree scar on her back. What does this all mean? Why would Morrison want to include something such as trees in a book? Tony Morrison is someone who likes to put interesting metaphors in her novels. Morrison likes to use many symbols in her novels, however, she tends to lean towards using natural symbols. Morrison was quoted in an interview stressing the importance she puts with her metaphors
In language all you have are those 26 letters, some punctuation and some paper. So you have to do everything with just that. A metaphor is a way of seeing something, either familiar or unfamiliar, in a way that you can grasp it. If I get the right one, then I'm all right. But I can't just leap in with the words, I have to get a hook.
Many critics have tried to solve the underlying meaning of her usage of nature and the natural world. Michele Bonnet took things a little differently when she tried to solve the mystery. Bonnet focuses on a line in Beloved that explains how …show more content…
There are so many different ways to interpret what the tree means on her back or in the case of the characters, what it looks likes. According to Fulton, since there are so many different ways to interpret this tree it proves that as a metaphor is supports dualistic or contradictory interpretations. Characters have a hard time agreeing what the scar is and what it means. Amy Denver sees the scare as a “chokecherry tree” (Beloved 79). Paul D. describes the scare as “… the decorative work of an ironsmith” and as a “revolting clump of scars” (Beloved 17,