Water cleanses and water refreshes, thirst is quenched and sparkling diamonds dance brilliantly in its reflection, but particularly obvious is Morrison’s use of water as being representative of freedom—either in life, or by death.
Waters of Slavery; Waters of Liberation
From an overall, general perspective, one can look at water as having been the evil medium by which Africans were transported to American slavery. The storm-tossed Middle Passage was only the beginning of the miseries suffered by Sethe’s ancestors; many tears and streams of Black blood added to the Atlantic’s brine throughout the journey from the African Gold Coast to Caribbean and American slave-auction blocks.
Far inland, offering fresh and less-turbulent waters, a new water-crossing beckons Sethe’s contemporaries. Flowing tranquilly along, the Ohio River unknowingly signifies freedom for slaves. Although the Fugitive Slave Act is still enforceable, it does not dampen a runaway slave’s respective feelings of hope and success at having first reached, then forded, the river.
Many miles south of the Ohio, ostensible potential freedom of an entire population, such as the river affords, is microcosmically represented by a rainwater-abetted escape from a Georgia chain-gang prison. Told in retrospect after Paul D’s arrival at 124, the reader learns that he and 45 other inmates were able to escape their earthen “cells” when a weeklong deluge of rain – which at first had threatened to drown them in their holes -- so softened the ground that they were able to tunnel their way through the muck.
On a far more intimate level, also told in retrospect, when the pregnant Sethe’s water broke within sight of that freedom-significant Ohio waterway, Denver was soon to be released from the womb. As though in double-affirmation of water’s penchant for liberation, the birth itself actually occurred in a small, leaky boat as the Mississippi-bound Ohio currents swirled around.
Waters Run Afoul
When the story returns to the present, Sethe experiences another such “water-breakage” – this time (rather ominously) in the form of urine – when Beloved, having pulled herself up out of the Ohio, makes her mysterious waterlogged appearance at 124. Beloved’s appearance is heralded by a sudden, gushing stream that seems puzzling, yet eerily reminiscent, to Sethe.
Paradoxically, the unexpected bladder-voiding is also foretelling. Much as the bitter Atlantic Ocean, the urine’s acidity portends unhappiness and ill fortune; its seemingly endless duration is representative of the infinite plight of slaves. Sethe of course can not be expected to extrapolate such universal meaning into the occurrence; her concern is of a much more personal nature as she recalls the water-break of giving birth.
Waters Give Life, and Death
What adds to this symbolic occurrence is that Beloved is (presumably) the rebirth/resurrection of one of Sethe’s other children, who had been drowned. Sethe herself had been responsible for that infant girl’s drowning . . . a maternal-love act that was committed out of Sethe’s fierce determination that neither she nor any of her children might ever be taken back into slavery.
Through this last, most somber example, there’s strong inference that even when, or perhaps most especially when, water takes away life, it liberates one’s soul and provides the ultimate freedom by giving release one from the miseries of this world. From the perspective of those to whose lives she’s about to wreak havoc, those who have lived to see misery and pain and sorrow, Beloved just may have been better off staying down in that watery grave.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved, Penguin Books, NY, 1988. 290 pages.
ISBN: 0-452-26446-4
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