How Does Toni Morrison Use Color In Beloved

Human nature is a complicated subject that has been approached by multiple angles by a large number of people; one of them being Toni Morrison. In Beloved, Morrison utilizes color to explore her characters and to reveal their underlying emotions and feelings that cannot be easily represented with words alone; which reflects how the emotions of real people are hard to explain and further chips away at the popular question of what it means to be human. Three of the characters that she applies this concept to are Baby Suggs, Denver, and Sethe. Morrison uses colors to communicate that Baby Suggs is depressed during the later part of her life when she moves with Sethe and her children into 124. To cope with her depression, Baby takes note of every color in her environment, like when she was in 124 she only sees the walls of the room to be, “slate-colored, the floor earth-brown, the wooden dresser the color of itself, curtains white, and the dominating feature, the quilt over …show more content…
Morrison gets this message across to the reader by using the color green to describe Denver’s secret room. When she needs to, Denver recedes to the woods near 124 to find a small space that is enclosed in vegetation that is, “veiled and protected by the live green walls, she felt ripe and clear, and salvation was as easy as a wish” (Morrison 35). Green symbolizes safety and refuge in that Denver seeks her room out to escape, “the hurt of the hurt world” (Morrison 35). Having dealt with the loneliness inflicted by her brothers’ abandonment, Baby Suggs’ death, and Sethe’s neglect of her presence after Paul D arrives, Denver finds herself needing her room more than ever to hide from the pain of her loneliness. Green also represents nature and its exile from civilization, symbolizing Denver’s separation from the rest of the world and isolated lifestyle. In concurrence, her longing for companionship is expressed through