Before her death Baby Suggs announces to Denver and Sethe that "there was no bad luck in the world but white people" (122). Stamp Paid remembers that after being "tired out" from the damage of the white people, Baby Suggs thought about yellow, blue, and green because they are "harmless" things. He sees this as a defeat but years later, he understands how she felt when he finds the red ribbon of a murdered black girl. The meaning of "thinking about colors" isn't straightforward to me but in the context of Stamp Paid's recollection, the color red represents the dispossessed dead and murdered. The red light Paul D encounters in 124 connects to this, as does Stamp Paid's suspicion that the voices there are those belonging to "the people of the broken necks, of fire-cooked blood and black girls who had lost their ribbons" (208-213).
While Sethe remembers how Baby Suggs was "starved for color," she notices that the orange patches on the quilt are the only bright colors that exist in the house. She then recalls that the pink in Beloved's tombstone is the last color that she remembers acknowledging, and I think part of her inability to recognize color for so many years reflects her fear of making plans for the future. The damage of her past has scarred her heavily as her question "Would it be all right to go ahead and feel?" indicates (46). The last mention of the orange patches is made in relation to Beloved, who is attracted to the bright colors on the quilt. They potentially remind her of Sethe, given her attraction to her and object related to her. After Sethe realizes who Beloved is, they create colorful clothing for themselves (with blue stripes and yellow ribbons) but start ignoring Denver. The situation in 124 deteriorates as Sethe is fired from her job and becomes immersed with taking care of Beloved, even though their relationship with each other gets worse. Then at the end of the book Sethe is "lying under a quilt of merry colors" and has not left her bed for some time (319). Considering what Denver has said of her, she is no longer the person she used to be.
The references to the orange patches stood out to me and made me think about the other references and reactions to colors but I still don't know what it all could mean. It does strike me how orange is characterized as the only color in the house at the beginning of the story, and then near the end Sethe fills the house with colorful ribbons and bouquets as she stops working. In regards to that particular context, I wonder if the blues and yellows are connected to her trauma and how she represses her memories.
I never thought about all the connections of earlier mentions of color (like Paul D standing in the red light) to Baby Suggs's obsession with color. It reminds me a bit of how Ellison plays with color in *so* many ways in Invisible Man (the coal painted "optic white").
ReplyDeleteI also found it interesting how Morrison used red to represent death. I completely disregarded that Sethe begins to make more colorful things by the end of the book; but it actually makes a lot of sense that she would start using color once she starts believing Beloved is her daughter
ReplyDeleteRed becomes a trigger color, for obvious reasons, after the carnage in the shed--it's the one color Baby Suggs can no longer tolerate. In this light, though, it's interesting to consider how pink becomes the only color Sethe can remember, and it's the pink on Beloved's gravestone. Pink is, of course, a softened form of red, but instead of violence and bloodshed it evokes tenderness and maybe even girlishness specifically. Sethe prefers to shade Beloved (and all the events surrounding her death) in pink instead of red, and this seems significant in light of Baby Suggs's retreat into pure color.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up very interesting connections about color and events that I had never thought about before. It's often overlooked, but color is incredibly important to culture and memories, similar to scents or possibly sounds. I think it is interesting that Morrison both uses red and white to represent death, which draws from two very different backgrounds. I think red is more associated with carnage in American culture, but in Asian culture, white is typically the color of death that everyone wears to funerals. Morrison's use of color to draw emotion from the reader is fascinating, and I appreciate the connections you draw in your post.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to the sad and traumatic meanings that some of the colors have, I think that one of the reasons Morrison emphasizes on color, and highlights it, is to show the beauty in color and that it shouldn't be as simple as black and white and something to be the reason of discrimination.
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