Makeup Analysis: Stamp Paid Losing Hope

Matthew Browning

April 10, 2013

AP English 11, Period 5

Ms. Partridge

Makeup Analysis: Stamp Paid Losing Hope

            In this passage from Tony Morrison’s novel Beloved, Stamp Paid discusses how he has grown “tired” over the years due to the injustice he has witnessed stemming from racial oppression. Morrison changes her typical voice in this passage, using statistical data in conjunction with her distinctively poetic diction. Through this change in voice, Morrison shows how the relentless nature of racism causes Stamp Paid to give up hope. The paragraph begins with the phrase, “whitefolks were still on the loose” (212). By using the epithet “whitefolks,” Morrison dehumanizes white people by defining them by their race, much in the same way that black people were seen during the eras surrounding the Civil War. The phrase “on the loose” classifies white people as being criminals, which is reflective of the lynching and violence white people were responsible for during that time. After this, Morrison uses the statistics “eighty-seven lynchings in one year… four colored schools burned to the ground” (212). This writing is anomalous in Beloved because Morrison rarely uses data. This change in voice draws attention to the large amount of racial violence still present after the end of slavery, and may cause the reader to consider the racial violence still present when Morrison wrote Beloved in the 1980s. Later in this passage, Morrison says “grown men whipped like children; children whipped like adults” (212). The chiastic structure of this sentence emphasizes the unwarranted and brutal nature of the violence black people faced. The phrase “men whipped like children” shows the emasculating and dehumanizing effect of whipping, whereas the phrase “children whipped like adults” draws attention to the overly harsh and undeserved punishment of even children. This specific passage stands out from the rest of the novel because of it’s reflective nature of the harshness of racial violence; because of this, Morrison’s writing transcends the time period that the novel takes place in, thus drawing attention to the racism still present in modern society.