The Theme of Anger in Beloved
Uploaded by surfchick on Dec 29, 2004
Analysis: Anger in Beloved
Anger, in all its sometimes raw, sometimes subtle, sometimes simple and sometimes sophisticated glory is an affect, which from the first line of Toni Morrison's Beloved ("124 was spiteful") takes center stage. The true multi-faceted nature of this affect often goes unrealized because we tend to recognize an emotion through its responses. Anger, in most minds is married to aggression and violence and we usually only acknowledge its presence when it is accompanied by these mates. Anger is also often obscured by specifics on the intensity, justification, and manifestation of the emotional state. For example, anger is defined as rage when we want to suggest a loss of self-control from violence of emotion; we use fury when defining an overmastering destructive rage that can verge on madness; Indignation is used to stress righteous anger at what one considers unfair, mean, or shameful and the term wrath is employed when we want to suggest a desire or intent to revenge or punish. The causes of anger such as jealousy, betrayal, indignation, and resentment are also emotions that further mask this deceptively complex affect. Under Tomkins' broad, liberating definition of anger, however, anger is both necessarily general and abstract. It both "fails to inform us of the particularities of its activator" and "is free to combine with any stimulus" so that the affect is neither limited by its causes nor its responses. Tomkins also clarifies responses to anger by distinguishing them into four broad categories. In his 'sculptor model' of anger detailed on p.212-221, he explains responses to anger as resulting from the nuclear scripts which he labels celebratory, defensive, counteractive, and reparative. Using these new tools, I hope to re-examine anger in the context of Beloved and possibly gain new insight into the characters and the affect along the way. The first instance of anger we come across in Beloved is perhaps the most clearly identifiable. It is the pure, raw fury of the 'crawling already' baby towards Sethe. It is characterized by uncontrolled violence - the breaking of mirrors and the thrashing about of furniture and dogs. This response follows a counteractive script during which an individual who has been terrorized, humiliated, or distressed attempts to terrorize, humiliate or distress the other. "The negative affects usually involved in this script are the 'masculine affects' of anger, disgust and dismell." (Tomkins, p.218). We know that the baby...