Comparing the Role of the Ghost in Morrisons Beloved and...

The Symbolic Role of the Ghost in Morrisons Beloved and Kingstons No Name Woman The eponymous ghosts which haunt Toni Morrisons Beloved and Maxine Hong Kingstons No Name Woman (excerpted from The Woman Warrior) embody the consequence of transgressing societal boundaries through adultery and murder. While the wider thematic concerns of both books differ, however both authors use the ghost figure to represent a repressed historical past that is awakened in their narrative retelling of the stories. The ghosts facilitate this retelling of stories that give voice to that which has been silenced, challenging this repression and ultimately reversing it. The patriarchal repression of Chinese women is illustrated by Kingstons†¦show more content†¦Fujita Sato asserts that the ghost of No Name Woman has given the narrator ancestral help to become a word warrior (Sato, 140). The narrator honours the ghost with paper -- not in the Chinese origamied (16) style, but through the American words and writing. This articulation itself is a betrayal by telling on [the ghost ], but in her reversal of repression, the narrator tries to negotiate between two antithetical (Sato, 139) worlds of her culture and find a newly articulated home ground (Sato, 146). Morrisons ghost, Beloved, symbolizes the repressed horrors of slavery. Sethes desire to put [her] babies where theyd be safe (164) manifests violently when she kills her daughter, Beloved, rather than have her caught by the slave-catchers. This transgression is repressed for eighteen years as Sethe is ostracized by her own community, who cannot understand her actions. The ghost of Beloved haunts 124 with a babys venom (3) but later takes the concrete form of a young girl who shows up on Sethes doorstep. Beloved establishes a debilitating relationship of guilt: Beloved was making [Sethe] pay for it . . . But there would never be an end to that (251). Anna Sonser notes that Beloved underscores her mothers alienation both from a racist society and her own community. (Sonser, 20) She is the repressed past t hat cannot be forgotten and must be confronted. It is Beloveds return, however, that prompts Sethes rememory