Haiyan Wang, Yu Cheng, Huaifang Jin

Haiyan Wang

25 October, 2024

Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”, Dialogue, Subjectivity, Voice, Equality.

As one of the most influential novelists in contemporary American literature, Toni Morrison was awarded Nobel Prize in literature in 1993 for her “description in novels characterized by visionary forces and poetic impact” which “gives life to an essential aspect of American reality”. Beloved was her fifth novel in 1987, which astonished the literature field the minute it was published. Due to its controversy in theme, quite a few literature critics were attracted and had studied via different perspectives, like feminism, cultural factors, post-colonial or trauma, etc., however, not much research has been accomplished to highlight polyphonic style and subjectivity that are reflected again and again in their seemingly endless dialogues between Sethe, Denver and Baby Suggs throughout the entire novel. Applying dialogue from Bakhtin’s polyphony theory, the present paper examines exquisitely how dialogue works to demonstrate subjectivity in all of them; and then how truth is decoded for the former black slaves. The findings show that, after numerous dialogues between Sethe, Denver, Beloved, Baby Suggs, and even Paul D, their subjectivity has become clearer, their inner torture is shown, their voice is heard, and eventually Sethe’s life is restored to be normal. The study calls for greater attention to the embodiment of polyphonic style and dialogues in Beloved, which help to reveal the cruelty of slavery, at the same time, advocating the necessity to construct equality via dialogues among any individuals and collectiveness for the sake of a better world.

© 2024, the Authors. Published by ISCCAC

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license