Environmental Injustice In Toni Morrison's Beloved

124’s melancholy emotional atmosphere continues throughout the novel and various characters who visit the house experience it. After being brought to 124, Beloved immediately mentions, “This place is heavy” (Morrison 65). The use of heavy could contain a doubling meaning because Beloved comes from an alternate spirit would, so she is likely referring to both earth as a whole and 124’s depressive environment. Paul D. also notes 124’s environment during his first visit to the house where he steps through “a pool of red and undulating light” that Sethe claims is “not evil, just sad” (Morrison 10). The red light creates an aura of sorrow within the house that leads Paul D. to later believe, “What she wanted for her children was exactly what was missing in 124: safety. Which was the very first …show more content…
The house is externally “gray and white” and located “on Bluestone Road,” while internally has a “red and undulating light,” “blue-and-white wallpaper,” and “discreet flecks of yellow” leading up a “white staircase” (Morrison 3, 10, 13). The house contains a spectrum of colors, though oddly black is never mentioned. The lack of black implies that it is not a desirable color to have in the house, and has thus been excluded. Baby Suggs later expounds on the absence of black in the house because she only wants harmless things in the house, such as, “Blue. That don’t hurt nobody. Yellow neither” (Morrison 211). The various colors that are either absent or represented at 124 are chosen based on the reactions the elicit, and because black can be linked to harmful things, Baby Suggs doesn’t fixate on this color. When read ecocritically, the purposeful avoidance of anything black at 124 reflects an unjust environment that promotes a ‘white washed’ house that represses the presence of blackness because of the hurt and harmful practices associated with black