Beloved's Garden Essay

Toni Morrison filled Beloved with an abundance of imagery through symbols and motifs. The Novel builds on the usage of symbolism to explore the themes, and perspectives of different characters. Trees are frequently used and play a supporting role in Beloved. In Beloved Morrison uses trees as a symbol for the theme of freedom, and how freedom relates to life and death.

The most apparent and direct use of the symbol of trees occurs when Paul D is escaping from his imprisonment in Alfred, Georgia. Blossoming trees act as his pathway to the North, toward freedom. "That way....follow the tree flowers. Only the tree flowers. As they go, you go, You will be where you want to be when they are gone." (133) During his time at the prison camp it was a delicate tree that kept him alive. The ability to give your love is one of the defining human qualities. Paul D invested his love in this little thing, which also shows the link between freedom and love. Loving small and in secret. His little love was a tree of course, but not like Brother old, wide and beckoning. (260). It is verified that his chances of pulling himself up out of the abyss, and achieving freedom has diminished immensely since being in Sweet Home.

Early on we see how trees come into play. Boys hanging from the most beautiful sycamores in the world. It shamed her remembering the wonderful soughing trees rather than the boys.(7) It is too soon for the reader to make the connection to freedom. The beauty of the trees illustrate their hidden triumph over slavery, the hanging boys achieved the best kind of freedom on earth. As slaves a kind of mental death was inflicted upon them, but up in the trees they could break free of it. Not to mention that Sethe physically reached freedom by running through a forest, achieving her own rebirth.

Baby Suggs, the novels first character who could enjoy the sweetness of being your own master, received an epiphany; she started to preach self-love to former slaves and the patching together of their shattered lives. In the heat of every Saturday afternoon, she sat in the clearing while the people waited among the trees (102). The clearing, a cluster of trees deep inside the woods, acts as a place of healing and regeneration. Former slaves would bring all their hurt and free themselves through swapping roles, which allows them to portray different human beings, and therefore introduces them to emotions they werent possibly able to feel in the armor of a slave.

Morrison used a cut down tree as evidence of Sethes crime. Beloved first appears to Sethe on a stump, Exhausted again, she sat down on the first place handy a stump not far from the steps of 124 (60). The same afternoon the threesome discovered the fully dressed woman they attended a carnival. At the carnival the stench of rotten roses lies heavy in the air, the narrator states the following: The sawyer planted them twelve years ago to give his workplace a friendly feel something to take the sin out of slicing trees for a living (57). The remark brings out that trees have a certain sacred irreplaceable value for destroying them is a sin; it also alludes to the negativity of a sliced tree. The detail of the sawed-off tree is repeated by Denver and Paul D when talking about Beloved. When she sawed her Babys throat, she simultaneously deforested her life, i.e. butchering her newfound freedom, and exposing herself to a life that would revolve around a single lethal episode.

It is evident that the trees also illustrate freedom in a darker, fatal matter. After being caught on the run by schoolteacher and his nephews, Sixo is tied to a tree, deemed unfit to serve as a slave, and burned alive. Although it might seem like what the symbol represents is being contradicted, it was Sixos victory. By singing and acting without sanity he was able to remove himself from the group, which contained schoolteachers human property. It is his own victory, and now he can be free. Sixo went among trees at night. For dancing he said, to keep his bloodlines open he said. Privately, alone, he did it. (30). Sixo would wonder at night among the trees, which kept his blood pumping through veins, and enliven his body. Trees are both a source of life and death, but ultimately they lead to freedom.

In beloved trees are a significant symbol, which relates to each character and is crucial in determining the plot and the outcome of the story. Every time a character achieves freedom, whether its through escaping slavery or through death it has been associated with a tree.