Novel Study #2

Beloved, Brave New World, and A Thousand

SplendidSuns

2023

Johns/ IB Literature
Religious Allusions
• Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: the four
men on horseback that come to claim Sethe
• Baby Sugg’s miraculous feast, which alludes to
the miracle of the loaves and fishes
• The sacrifice of Beloved reflects the story of
Abraham and Isaac
• Sethe– feminine version of “Seth,” who, as the
ancestor of Noah, is recognized as the Father
of all Mankind
• Egyptian god of confusion
• African name– significant as Sethe was
the offspring of the union between her
mother and a Black man, as opposed to
rape by whites

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

• Second “death” of Beloved: 3pm on Friday–
which is the presumed time of Christ's death

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 Beloved
by Toni
Morrison
Context:
• Published in 1987, this novel concerns
the Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed This Photo by Unknown Author
slave owners to cross state lines and is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

recover any slaves that had escaped

• Margaret Garner, who escaped with
her children across the Ohio River in
1856, is the inspiration for this story;
when caught, she killed her 2-year-old
daughter rather than allowing her to
return to slavery
• The novel opens in 1873, with Sethe
living on 124 Bluestone Road (124 is
symbolic of the missing 3rd child,
Beloved)
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under
CC BY-NC-ND

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed

3 under CC BY-NC-ND
 Narrative Structures
Slave Narrative
• An account of a slave’s life, often written or orally
transmitted– from the mid-1700s to Emancipation, over
100 autobiographies of slaves or former slaves appeared
• Depicts the intensity of the slave experience, moving
from enslavement to liberation, which is often marked
by the development of a new identity, complete with a
new self-given name
• Slave narratives afforded newly liberated individuals
the opportunity to forge a new identity; they often
included dialogue, which was likely fictionalized
• Morrison reinvents the slave narrative for two
reasons:
• Emphasize the female slave experience
• Show a female slave’s agency through the dramatic and
socially taboo act of killing her children
• Medea– archetype of mothers killing children
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Narrative Voice
Points of View
• Third person omniscient, with parts of the text seeming
more like third-limited, particularly when a single
character, like Baby Suggs is the unique focus
• Provides a broader vision of the slave experience
• Provides context
• First person POV, stream of consciousness, from Sethe,
Beloved, and Denver
• Chapter 23: Chorus, amalgamation, COLLECTIVE
• Chapter 22: Beloved’s memories; the language is
impressionistic, childish, primal; death and rebirth is
presented as a voyage in a slave ship (“men without
skin”– whites)
Motifs & Symbols
• Water: symbol of death, birth, life, and the
passage between death and life (reflecting
the Middle Passage)
• River
• Amniotic fluid
• Beloved’s thirst

• Juxtapositions or contrasts: the

incorporation of paradox, contrast, or
juxtapositions reinforces the concept of
deceptive appearances or hidden truths
• “He lets me look good long as I feel bad” (7)
• [Sweet Home] “never looked as terrible as it was
and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place
too” (6)
• Home
• Short references to the home begin each section;
• See the concept of a home as tied to identity ADD A FOOTER
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 Beloved as
Symbol
• Beloved is a symbol or a manifestation of
Sethe’s guilt (pages 50-56)or the pain of all
enslaved people
• She arrives when Sethe is happy and risks
forgetting the child
• She tries to eradicate anything that might dim
Sethe’s memories of her
• She leaves only when a scene similar to her murder
is recreated but with Sethe going after Edward
Bodwin, rather than Schoolteacher going after her
• Additionally, in this scene, the Black neighbors
are here to help rather than shun: importance
of community
• Her anonymity helps represent the common
experience
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 The motif of naming
Themes reinforces these themes
• JennyBaby Suggs
• Stamp Paid
Identity is irrevocably compromised • Paul D (multiplicity of
as a result of persistent trauma. Pauls)
• Sethe
What happens when we are denied a • Beloved
self? • Amy (means “beloved”)

The references to Characters like Lady

merging identities also Jones also reinforce
reinforces these themes these ideas
1. “She said they were the
same, had the same face”
(241)
2. “I am Beloved and she is
mine” (214)

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 Background and
Context
• This novel takes place over the span of approx.
40 years, from the early 1970s to around 2003,
when Laila is settled with her family in Kabul
• When the story opens, Afghanistan has recently
undergone a bloodless coup in 1973.
• In 1978, there is a Communist counter-coup,
and the Soviet Union invades in 1979.
• After battles with the Mujahideen, or Islamic
fighters supported by the United States, the
Soviet Union finally withdraws its last troops in
1989 and the Mujahideen take over.
• Eventually, the Taliban seize control and
establish peace but also an extremely strict
Shari’a law. Finally, the book ends during the
American occupation of Afghanistan following
the events of September 11, 2001.
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NarrativeStruc • The novel opens with Part I, which is a third-
person perspective of Mariam, an illegitimate

tures
child, known as a harami
• Part II follows the perspective of Laila
• Part III is told in alternating chapters ,
Third-person limited POV reflecting the experience of Mariam and Laila
both, symbolically signifying their merging of
lives and spirits
• Part IV is told from Laila’s perspective as she
rebuilds her life and memorializes Mariam
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Motifs/Symbols • Fantasy vs. Reality
• Hollywood: Jalil owned a cinema full of
luxuries
• “The children of strangers get ice cream.
What do you get, Mariam? Stories of ice
cream” (6)
• “American film playing at the cinema”
(25)
• Clouds (dark/gray vs. white)
• Jalil’s “hollow, false assurances” (38)
• Veils (52) (77); burqa (70)
• Rasheed’s “performances” (213),
mimicking Jalil’s (38)
• “spectacle” of violence (281)
• Titanic film (302) in contrast to misery
• Deformity (in contrast to “glamour” and
to highlight it)
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• Nana, “rotting front tooth” (14)

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Additional Motifs
• Gender inequalities
• One skill: “to endure” (18)
• Aziza vs. Zalmai
• Sacrifice vs Betrayal
• Betrayal of Jalil and Nana
• Betrayal of man at bus station
• Betrayal of Mariam’s body with
miscarriages
• Sacrifice of Mariam
• “Mariam now saw the sacrifices a mother
made. Decency was but one” (287)
• Culminating in the sacrifice of Mariam for
Laila
• Language
• By continually referencing the language and
dialect of the region, Hosseini is elevating its This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

importance
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 Narrative Patterns:
Palimpsest
• Parallel in violence in Kabul and
in home, with increasing
intensity
• Reinforced via sounds:
thumps (268) and rockets
(271)
• Blowing up Buddhas in
Bamiyan (2,000 year old
national treasures)
• Increased hunger and drought
and economic privation parallel
violence outside home
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 Narrative
Patterns: Cycles
• Cycle of ineffectual mother/daughter
relationships
• Laila and Mammy
• Depression, neglect and favoritism
• Mariam and Nana
• Cynicism and suicide

• Cycle of hope and disappointment

• Hope: a treacherous illusion
(256)

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 Narrative
Patterns: Cycles
• Parallels of harami: Mariam and Aziza

• Cycle of death and loss (210) “Now

another stranger bringing news of
another death”

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 Themes
An inclusive culture
is worthy of
A society will fail preservation if its It is through community
women are oppressed and friendship that we
eyelids that saggedsurvive
• “Laila examined Mariam’s drooping cheeks, the
• “A society has no chance of success if its in tired folds, the deep lines that
women are educated, Laila…” (Chapter 16) framed her mouth—she saw these things as though
• “It’s our lot in life, Mariam. Women like us, she too were looking at someone for the first time.
And, for the first time, it was not an adversary’s face
we endure.” (Chapter 3) Laila saw but a face of grievances unspoken, burdens
• “It wasn’t easy tolerating him talking this gone unprotested, a destiny submitted to and
endured.” (Chapter 34)
way to her, to bear his scorn, his ridicule, his
insults, his walking past her like she was • “She thought of her entry into this world,
the harami daughter of a lowly villager, an
nothing but a house cat” (Chapter 15) unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A
weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a
woman who had loved and been loved back.”
(Chapter 47)
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 Brave New
World
Background and Context

• This novel was published in 1932, and is the often

overlooked “grandfather” of the dystopian genre
that gave rise to novels like 1984
• Huxley, a British man, was the grandson of noted
biologists that were contemporaries of Darwin,
and who promoted the Theory of Evolution; he
himself wanted to be a scientist or a doctor, but
had significant problems with his eyesight
• Huxley was a pacifist that eventually moved to
California with his family, but he wrote Brave
New World in response to WWI and the rise of
totalitarian nations around him

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Motifs: Economics,
“Ford,”Production
• References to American industrialist Henry Ford (1863-1947), the inventor of
the assembly line technique of mass production, symbolizes industrialization
and its effects on society. Parallel to Ford’s production of standardized
consumables, like cars, Huxley’s novel features the production of
standardized humans.
• “’…in the vast majority of cases, fertility is merely a nuisance’” (13)
• Ford is deified
• “’…only twenty-three years after Our Ford’s first T-Model was put on the market.’ (Here the
Director made a sign of the T on his stomach and all the students reverently followed suit)” (25).
• “cleanliness is next to Fordliness” (110)
• Caste system: Alphas, Betas…Epsilons, reinforced by color/job
• “’But in Epsilons,’ said Mr. Foster very justly, ‘we don’t need human intelligence’” (15)
• “’The lower the caste…the shorter the oxygen’” (14)

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Motif: Fate vs Free Will
• “’That is the secret of
happiness and virtue—liking
what you’ve got to do. All
conditioning aims at that:
making people like their
unescapable social destiny’”
(16)

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 Additional Motifs
Practicality/ Sexuality & Drugs
Artificiality vs.
Aesthetics • “’We had Elementary Sex for the first forty
• “Primroses and landscapes…have one grave defect:
they are gratuitous. A love of nature keeps no minutes’” (27)
factories busy” (22-23)
• “’And I had six girls last week…One on
/Meaning
• “’You know what Polish is, I suppose?’ ‘A dead
language’” (23)
• “’Wonderfully pneumatic. I’m surprised you haven’t
Monday, two on Tuesday…’” (156)
• “The holiday it [soma] gave was perfect”
had her’” (44) (154)
• References to Shakespeare and other literature and
art, from which the novel gets its title
• Irony: Mustapha Mond is a reader of
Shakespeare
• “’I thought I should never see a piece of real, acetate
silk again’” (119)
• “purple eyes…glaze of lupus…unsmiling crimson
mouth” (186) 19
 Patterns of
Allusion
Names
• Mustapha (The Chosen One) Mond (World)
• Polly Trotsky
• Bernard Marx (wherein Bernard does not fit in
his caste)
• Lenina (Lenin) Crowne (top of the caste: Beta)
• Helmholtz Watson (names of famous scientists
and behaviorists—allusions to his intelligence)
• John the Savage– John the Baptist

ADD A FOOTER
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 Narrative Structures
Novel Style
Reflects Narrative Shift
• Mid-way, the novel shifts from a focus on
Conditioning
• Pages 51-55 consist of short quips that
reflect the persistence of the conditioning Bernard to John– where as Bernard’s moral
that the children/adults hear– the constant justness deteriorates, John’s increases, and
reiteration makes the phrases meaningless ultimately he replaces Bernard as the moral
and yet invasive center of the novel

Narrative Point of
View
The novel is told in 3rd-person omniscient, which affords us the
ability to compare and contrast the inner lives of Bernard and
John, the two counterpoints of the story; the Moment of Truth is
the realization of the sensitivity and humanity of John the
Savage, whose devoted efforts to resist the system show the
feeble resistance of Bernard
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 Connects to motifs of
artificiality/production/
economics Themes
Connects to motifs that • Relationships and
emphasize
production/drugs and purpose are what
sexuality/collectivism and create genuine
mindlessness happiness.
• The human animal is
compromised if
Also connects to motifs of
fate vs. free will robbed of identity and
individuality.
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