What it Means to be Human: Animalistic Race Characterizations in Beloved

Julia Goldman

KP

AP Lang

4-11-13

What it Means to be Human: Animalistic Race Characterizations in Beloved

Toni Morrison uses the language in her book Beloved to transform the characters, along with racial groups as a whole, giving them animalistic qualities that paint a thin line between the human and the animal. After failing to be let into 124 Stamp Paid contemplates the voices surrounding the house and decides that they are made up of the voices of the dead blacks from the area. Considering the lives the dead had lived Stamp falls into the type of thinking he displayed while seeing how much Baby Suggs had changed after Sethe went to jail, at that time Stamp said that it was “Eighteen seventy-four and whitefolks were still on the loose.” blaming whitepeople for what had happened to Baby and all black people who had been harmed (212). Stamp first takes on an animalistic tone when talking about “whitefolks” by saying that they “were still on the loose” the word “loose” implies that they are animals to be afraid of and that need to be locked up. The implication that whitepeople are animals mirrors the belief that many whitepeople held that all blacks were animals that Stamp later references. This language describes Stamp’s feelings toward the entire white race and creates a split, straddling the line between the human and the animal. After contemplating the voices around Sethe’s house Stamp extends this line of thought into his own identity. When describing how whitepeople believed that under black skin there was a jungle with “red gums ready for their sweet white blood” Stamp Paid applies the last item in a list, that includes water, baboons, and snakes, more concretely to the black identity because he does not identify what creature the “gums” belong to.  (234). The idea that blacks possess “red gums” contrasts with the idea of “sweet white blood” almost transforming the color of blood from red to white, changing the makeup of the white, and to some extent the black, physiology. The image of the “red gums” being “ready” also creates a haunting animalistic tone as if they are waiting to pounce at any moment. After describing the jungle Stamp Paid begins to believe the characterization himself, saying that “in a way… they were right” (234), with this thought Stamp Paid characterizes the blurry line between human and animal, almost accepting that characterization is his nature, and by extension the nature of all blacks, to be not quite human. Through his thought process Stamp Paid depicts the strange idea of what it means to be human and how that changes based on race and perspective.