That Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' is stylistically different cannot be doubted: Morrison's novel appears simple at first glance, opening with blank verse in a standard prose narrative , but throughout the story the style varies to contain different levels of imagery and metaphor, as well as shifts in tense, shifts in register, free indirect speech, stream-of-consciousness narration, changing levels of language in terms of description and dialogue, and a combination of personification and repetition to solidify the characterization of an inanimate object. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay As the novel opens, before Paul D makes his entrance, we are introduced to five characters: Sethe, her living daughter Denver, the ghost of her deceased daughter Beloved, her deceased mother-in-law Baby Suggs, and the house where they live, 124. Morrison uses personification to give the house its own identity: "124 it was spiteful. Full of a child's venom", as if the house itself could feel contempt. Morrison's use of repetition builds on this personification of the house to strengthen the character of 124 and to provide a framework structure for the three parts of the novel as a whole. “124 was loud,” we are told at the start of part two, and “124 was quiet” at the start of part three – so there is a gradual domestication of the house proceeding in parallel with a solidification, in the flesh, of the spirit of the Beloved herself, from something "mischievous" "attenuated" to something "peaceful". Furthermore, repetition is used throughout the novel to reinforce and categorize the essence of these characters: Baby Suggs is constantly referred to as "saint" while Paul D is "the last of the Sweet Home men", and Sweet Home itself it is embodied with almost as much character as 124, but, unlike 124, it is not personified; where Sweet Home was a place where things happened, 124 is a place that makes things happen: 124 controls the qualities it possesses - contempt, loudness - throws people out, strikes strangers who enter and warns anyone who is not a familiar person who approaches to turn away. The characterization of humans in the story is a little simpler, achieved through dialogue and the level of language used by each character, as well as the level of language used to describe each character, and in ways of free indirect speech and other techniques such as register switching and stream-of-consciousness narration. Baby Suggs, for example, having died before the story even begins, is characterized in flashbacks almost entirely through a combination of her dialogue and through how the other characters remember her. He speaks in short, concise sentences that are often repeated and repeated: "In this place, we flesh; flesh crying, laughing; flesh dancing barefoot in the grass. I love it. I love it intensely. They don't love your flesh down there They despise it. They don't like your eyes; they'd rather tear them out, and they don't even like the skin on your back. Later, in a flashback sequence where Baby Suggs is looking for work, he says, "Where is this slaughterhouse?" when asked what kind of shoes he can repair, he replies: "New, old, anything". His short sentences reveal a confident, self-controlled character, which, when in the company of others, becomes almost prophet in light of the wisdom she dispenses with such confidence and conviction that the characters around her – and, by extension, ourselves – cannot help but agree with her when she continues: “Love your hands! Love them. Lift them up and kiss them... You have to love them!"Stylistically, Morrison chooses not to develop the character of Baby Suggs through empty prose, with a third-person narrator noting that Baby Suggs is wise, or respected, or passionate, or even "holy." Instead, she uses dialogue to convey these character traits - demonstrating them rather than stating them - and, furthermore, the level of language used by Baby Suggs also plays a role in this development. We can say that, although she is wise, the style of her dialogues and the words she uses are not those of an educated woman. Imagery and metaphor also play an important role in the novel, most often reflecting the characters' attitudes or feelings. . Consider the scene where Denver's tooth comes out. The beloved asks her why she doesn't cry. In the end, Denver cries, but, we understand, he's not crying over the lost tooth; instead she cries for the presence of Paul D in her house and for the change in character on her mother's part, and for the relationship that has been created between the two of them. And as Denver cries, "the couple upstairs, together, didn't hear a sound, but below them, outside, all around the snow went on and on. Piling up, burying itself. Higher. Deeper." The image of snow represents the onset of winter, cold, and isolation, and reflects Denver's tears, as well as the tears that 124 would also shed if he were a living entity. Consider also the variation in sentence length, with the first sentence consisting of half a dozen clauses, and the last two sentences consisting of only fragments, to reflect the prolonged crying and sudden gasps that occur in the act of crying, in way to represent, stylistically and through the use of rhythm and trajectory of sentences, Denver's anguish, in words. Similarly, Sethe's anguish over her missing grandmother and the deceased Baby Suggs is represented through the use of liquid imagery: "[Sethe's] mother and grandmother were together by the sea.... A strong longing for Baby Suggs washed over her like the surf. In the quiet that followed its splash, Sethe looked at the two girls sitting by the stove: she sickly, Shallow Boarder, her irritable and lonely daughter. They seemed small and distant," as if they were on an island and Sethe was walking away from them, with the image of water instead of the tears she can't shed and the ocean in between. his present life and his past. So when he finally tells the girls that "Paul D [will be] here in a minute," we know, from the image conveyed to us once again by free indirect speech, that he is not actually talking to them about Paul D, but rather, talking to herself in such a way as to distract her mind from the object of her thoughts and focus on the here and now, to avoid the anguish that the past brings with it. All these techniques - free indirect speech, variations in sentence length, use of a "lower" level of language, and repetition - combine in the scene where Paul D changes his mind about Sethe, after receiving a visit from Stamp Paid. “The prickly, mean-eyed Sweet Home girl he knew as Halle's girlfriend was obedient (like Halle), shy (like Halle), and work-crazy (like Halle).” Free indirect discourse allows us to see what kind of person Sethe once was. In this way she is characterized by the use of empty prose that Morrison neglected to use in the characterization of Baby Suggs, but this free indirect speech also characterizes Paul D himself. "This Sethe was new" - the level of language is again "Bass". Yet his argument – ​​the ability to distinguish between “this new Sethe” and the Sethe he remembers – involves wisdom and insight. The language used in this piece is not top notch, but the tone of the piece - which reflects the ability toSethe's love and her affection for her children - reveals two characters, Sethe and Paul D, who manage to overcome the difficulties and defects of their language using the reasonable sensitivity of their minds. One of the most drastic stylistic techniques used by Morrison originates subtly, with a change in tempo, then progresses more dramatically to a change in register and culminates in a complete stylistic overhaul in which the empty prose is replaced with four passages of the flow of consciousness, with Sethe and Denver telling one each, while Beloved tells the remaining two. As in the free indirect speech passage in which we peer into Paul D's mind, as above, these stream-of-consciousness passages serve to characterize each of the women who speak them, as well as each woman's relationship to the other characters in the novel, in so as not to be influenced by a third-person narrator who may favor one character over another. The tone of these passages, then, is brutally honest: not always complimentary, not always candid, and sometimes what's really meant isn't always what the characters who are speaking think - but, knowing what we do about who they are, from where they come and what they want, the contradictions and illusions in their thoughts allow us to see the real truth behind their words. The time change comes after Denver sees the white dress kneeling with her mother. Once again, Morrison uses free indirect speech, this time to establish the following scene by allowing us to glimpse Denver's concern for Beloved without explicitly showing it to us: "[Denver] was certain that Beloved was the white suit who knelt with her mother in the room, holding space, the lifelike presence of the child who had kept her company for most of her life and being looked at by her, even if briefly, kept her grateful for the rest of the time when she was simply the one watching. " Then, once Denver's concerns are established, the tense changes from the past to the present: "Today I'm outside. It's cold and the snow is as hard as compacted dirt.... Beloved holds her arms still as Denver undoes her underwear. and frozen towels from the line." Events described in the present tense contrast with past events that have taken place up to this point and consequently gain a greater sense of immediacy. This is especially effective when considering the subject matter of these scenes of current tension: namely, Denver's worry that Beloved will "return" to the "other side": "'Don't do it,' he's saying between harsh swallows." Don't. Don't go back.'" The transition to the present tense brings Denver's desperation to its emotional extremes: "This is worse than when Paul D came to 124 and she cried helplessly in the stove herself has a self" – as opposed to a past tense variation of that despair, which would imply that it has already been overcome. Even in this passage the free indirect discourse is once again at the center of its effectiveness. But the negative emotional end of the passage is reversed at the end—despair becomes joy and "[Beloved] smiles again"—and by keeping the present tense, that smile is more immediate and more resonant than the one in the past. Later, this same sense of immediacy comes from an abrupt change of register, in which the narrative shifts from a somewhat subjective third-person point of view that tells us "[Sethe] didn't need to worry [about wasting time]" according to Sethe's mind, "busy with things she might forget." Sethe's thoughts are presented not exactly through free indirect speech (because she is clearly not a third-person narrator conveying them to us as if we were in Sethe's shoes) but.