Category Archives: Books

The Road to Unfreedom: Political Fiction

American Fascism, Books, Death of Truth, The Sleep of Reason, Trump, Trump the Saviour, Tyranny and Fascism, War in Ukraine (2014), War in Ukraine (2022)

 

Like most everyone I have become fascinated by what is happening in Ukraine.  What is particularly fascinating to me  is how much of what is happening now happened earlier in the Ukraine in 2014 and how much of this was presaged by what happened in Russia.  We did not learn our lessons in 2014 and now we are paying a hefty price.

In 2018 I read a very important book called The Road to Unfreedom by a historian from Yale University Timothy Snyder.  It described the road from freedom to unfreedom in Russia, Ukraine, Britain, and finally the United States.

 

According to Snyder,

“In the 2010s, much of what was happening was the deliberate creation of political fiction, outsized stories and medium-sized lies that commanded attention and colonized the space needed for contemplation.”

 

This was when people began to speak about the death of truth or decay of truth or living in a post-truth world. In American and the United Kingdom people were shocked to see political leaders who seemed uniquely incapable and unqualified but appealed to large segments of their society nonetheless. Reality was being shredded. As Snyder said,  It was “a time when factuality itself was put into question.” The road to unfreedom was being paved with lies.

 

Journalism during this time was attacked by demagogic leaders for their own nefarious purposes.  Donald Trump for example, did not want anyone to pursue him with claims of being a liar, so he usurped the notion of fake news that had referred to internet lies that crushed the truth. As we will see, this is direct from the fascist playbook.  Call out others for your own faults. That can create the illusion of innocence. Hitler did it. Putin did it.  So did Trump. Trump did that while lifting himself  into an office for which he was uniquely unsuited, but his followers did not care.  His followers wanted a wrecking ball and they got one and were entirely satisfied. Truth was  as irrelevant as morality.

Russia has already completed its road to fascism while America and Europe seem not that far behind. As Snyder said,

“What has already happened in Russia, is what might happen in America and Europe, the stabilization of massive inequality, the displacement of policy by propaganda, the shift from the politics of inevitability to the politics of eternity. Russian leaders could invite Europeans and Americans to eternity because Russia got their first. They understood American and European weaknesses, which they had first seen and exploited at home.”

 

The times were ripe for authoritarian or even worse. The times were ripe for fascism.

 

Oligarch-in-Chief: The Road to Unfreedom

Books, Capitalism, Death of Democracy, Politics & Religion, Tyranny and Fascism, War in Ukraine (2014), War in Ukraine (2022)

 

The end of the Cold War saw a slowdown in such foreign interventions.  But it did not mean the end of autocracy of the beginning of democracy around the world. There was a lot of hope that Russia would become a democracy, but it did not happen.

 

The collapse of the Soviet Union saw the country transformed from socialism into a chaotic form of capitalism, presided over by then-president, Boris Yeltsin. It had a free market economy but it never achieved democracy. It was a near anarchic state where all kinds of groups in varying states of criminality competed for dominance. It was a free market free for all.

 

In 2000, Yeltsin was replaced by Vladimir Putin a former KGB agent. His first goal was to stabilize the country, something it urgently needed.  Putin did not affirm a competitive oligarchy, but he did facilitate an oligarchy nonetheless. As Yale historian Timothy Snyder said, “it was a form of oligarchy. What some people would call autocracy.”

 

“So under President Yeltsin in the 90s, Russia was a much freer country,” says Snyder. It was by no means a liberal democracy. As Timothy Snyder said,

There was much greater freedom of press. And there were rival clans of oligarchs. What Mr. Putin has done is assert himself as the oligarch-in-chief and use the organs of the state to crowd out all the oligarchs who didn’t come to an acceptable deal with him.”

Oligarchs were acceptable provided they acknowledged the supremacy of Putin. As Snyder said,

“He’s created a semi-permanent form of oligarchy where there’s just one clan rather than competing clans and that one clan controls both politics and the economy. I would characterize it as an oligarchy with moments of Christian fascism.”

 

Ivan Ilyin was an interesting Christian fascist thinker of the first half of the twentieth century. He is no longer very known. I had never heard of him before I  read Timothy Snyder’s book, the Road to Unfreedom and listened to the CBC Ideas show “Money Rules: How capitalism is destroying democracy”. I think if you want to understand what is happening in Russia and Ukraine this book would be worth a read. I read it a couple of years ago and have recently been perusing it again. It is worth it.   Snyder argued in the 20s and 30s that Russian was going to save the world. He saw the west as a place of fragmentation exemplified by its mess pluralism and that Russia would bring it back to unity. That view, of course, was very attractive decades later to Vladimir Putin. Russia was the country that would return God to earth. Everything would become perfect and total. To me that seems like the roots of totalitarianism.

 

Snyder characterized the society that Putin has created in Russia this way:

“He’s created a semi-permanent form of oligarchy where there’s just one clan rather than competing clans and that one clan controls both politics and the economy. I would characterize it as an oligarchy with moments of Christian fascism.”

 

It is a society that mobilizes capitalist technology such as the television and the internet to support the authoritarian rulers. Putin became surprisingly efficient with such technology as shown in the Ukraine in 2014 and later in what one would have thought the most unlikely place, namely,  the United States in 2016. We are seeing more of it again in Ukraine in 2022. Snyder also called it “an oligarchy with moments of imperialism…and  a media centred oligarchy which has some fascist moments and which has some imperial moments.”

That is what we are seeing now Russia and Ukraine. It ain’t pretty.

 

 

Joseph Conrad and The Heart of Darkness and The Conquest of the Earth

Books, Colonialism, Exploitation, Indigenous People After Contact, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

It is time to return to the classics. The novel, The Heart of Darkness is certainly one of the best books I have ever read. I think I have now read it 3 times.   It is well worth a re-read. It is a definitely a classic. And it is a short read (unlike Moby Dick).

The book was originally serialized in Blackwood’s Magazine in England in1899 by Joseph Conrad whose original language was Polish. He only became fluent in his twenties. It always amazes me that he became such a good writer in English in such a short time.

It is a simple story. A steamboat captain Marlow, travels up the Congo River to meet Kurtz an agent of the ivory company for whom he works. There, Marlow finds Kurz living among “the savages.” He tells the story to a group of civilized Englishmen drinking and smoking cigars while sailing the river Thames in London.  The setting is important. A key question is whether or not the heart of Darkness is London or the Congo.

The novel describes a journey by Marlowe, the protagonist and narrator, to the heart of Africa.  It was a trip up the winding Congo river, (we presume). That river is described, not accidentally, as a snake. There Marlowe found a corrupt agent of the English company hunting for ivory.  The book powerfully describes the black heart at the centre of European colonialism and exploitation of the continent of Africa and other places as well. He reveals the deep dark truth hidden by the pretense of lofty moralistic goals.  Illusions he calls them. Of course, the book is more than a trip to the heart of the darkness of Africa, it is also a trip into the heart of darkness of each of us who remain behind in the safety and comfort of our homes. That darkness exists there too.  And what Marlow finds, and what we would find in the centre of our own heart of darkness, if we were brave enough and honest enough to make the journey was horror!

One of the interesting things about how the story is told, is that it is told by Marlowe to 4 or 5 others sitting on a boat in the Thames. Why there? Why is this relevant?  In my view it is important because Conrad wanted to make it clear that everyone is capable of savagery. The savage is within each of us–even civilized people in London, the centre of the world at that time. London is also in the heart of darkness!

Conrad lays bare the reality behind the ‘civilizing’ goals of the European traders. With that he lays bare the thin veneer of civilization and the thin armour around our own darkness inside of us, for none of us are pure. We are all tainted.  We all share the rapacity that engulfed the traders like Kurtz.

With Conrad’s analysis we also learn the despairing truth behind the notion of the “benevolent despot” that has so tortured Africa. It is a lie. A lie that Kurtz embodied.  Kurtz who eventually gave way to unspeakable lusts and gratifications had gone to the heart of the continent with enlightenment goals. Sentimentally, he wanted to be a humanitarian helper. So many Europeans have gone with similar lofty goals only to be thwarted. Not usually as sensationally as Kurtz, but they have been destroyed nonetheless by their own rapacity and naiveté.

As Marlow takes the trip up that river he realizes the land is a swamp and he feels the reality of the person who ventures into this dark heart on behalf of some commercial enterprise back home.  Conrad feels for the innocence of that intrepid venturer, who does not know what he is getting into.

” Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga—perhaps too much dice, you know,–coming out here in the train of  some pretext, or tax-gatherer or trader even, to mend his fortunes.  Land in a swamp, march through the woods, in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had close around him,–all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men.  There’s no initiation either into such mysteries.  He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable.  And it has a fascination, too that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination—you know, imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate. “(emphasis added)

 

Our commercial enterprises into the heart of dark continent have come cloaked in lofty goals.  But, according to Conrad, the people who came may have looked like religious zealots looking to help the poor savages, but they were the real savages.  They came with strength. It was an accidental strength based on the technological weakness of the indigenous.  There was no moral superiority that accompanied it. Conrad described those efforts this way,

“It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind—as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.  What redeems it is the idea only.  An idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea—something you can set up, and bow down before and offer sacrifice to.”

 

One of the things Conrad looks at in the book is the conquest of the earth by the men of Europe a dubious enterprise at best.  Conrad took a close look at colonialism and the sense of superiority and what he saw as the darkness at its heart. As he said, it was not always pretty.

Agent Running in the Field

Books

 

When you read a book by John le Carré you turn your life over to a master for as long as it take to read the book. Actually it is for longer than that, because the experience stays with you a long time.

John le Carré’s Agent Running in the Field  is the story of a secret agent in his homeland of England who at the age of 45 or so has already reached his best by date. This was Interesting, because the author was  nearly 90 when he wrote this book  had not yet passed that date. Not nearly.

I am a great admirer of the novels of John le Carré and recently read his second last novel.  I know there will be no more because now the writer has passed away. What a pity.  The seemingly inexhaustible supply of outstanding espionage novels is about to crash to a halt.  This novel is a dandy.

The English agent has an interesting relationship with a Russian spy.  Even though it is the age of Putin, when money is all and ethics have slowly soured into hopeless  gruel, the Russian spy surprisingly turns on England for ideological reasons.  Another English spy can’t believe this is possible.  An Englishmen who was so puritanically ethical that he would turn to Putin “who wouldn’t know an ethic if it bit him in the arse.”  How is that possible? As le Carré says, it’s “a funny sort of Puritanism.” Indeed.

The English agent sees England as falling into what Russia used to be.  Everything is lashed together and nothing works. The traitor in these circumstances is a “secret monk in search of an absolute, even if it involves absolute betrayal.”

It’s really a deep pleasure to read a book by an old master in the field. I strongly recommend this book.

 

 

A religious quest: Inspired by Ridd; Continued by Neufeld

Books, Classic Books, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

Before I commenced my religious quest, I did a google search of Professor Ridd and to my surprise tracked down an archive at the Winnipeg headquarters of the United Church of Canada where Ridd had been a theologian and sure enough I found a list of his class notes and outlines. It was amazing luck that they were there. Sadly, during the time of Covid-19 as I write, the archive is closed, but when it reopens I intend to beg permission to see the materials. I would love to see his lecture notes on the various books I would like to read. I am convinced they would reveal insights into them. But I will have to wait for those notes and this quest cannot wait any longer.

 

I have decided to start the quest. I picked my first book, Moby Dick. I was sure it must be one of the books he taught. However, both of my friends who took the course with Professor Ridd  said they did not recall that this is one of the books in the course. I doesn’t matter, I concluded. I read the book about 40 years after I graduated from Law School and could read books I wanted to read just for pleasure.  I remembered the book as being magnificent. One of the best novels ever written, but, frankly, in 40 years I forgot a lot. After all, I am quite capable of forgetting what book I read last month! And I used to have a very good memory.

 

I also I remember a promise I made myself last year. I said, I would re-read an old classic every year. At least one classic every year. Maybe more. Last year as part of that project I read Albert Camus’ The Plague. Moby Dick could serve both purposes—it is a classic of English literature, and as I recall, contained a wealth of material for my religious quest. It was as they say a win/win situation.

 

I dived into Moby Dick. Then, to my further amazement, I learned that McNally Robinson Booksellers was opening up their Community Classroom series and guess what? Lara Rae was offering to discuss Moby Dick and the classes were offered online and at no cost, thanks to support from the Manitoba government cultural program this year. With so many cultural event centres close, the government wanted to encourage some venues to deliver online learning. It was a perfect storm of knowledge opening up.

 

It took me a long time to read the first book. Moby Dick is 500 pages long and I read it intensively. I read only a few pages every day. I made notes. I went back and forth through the text. I meandered through the text. It was great fun. It took me about a month of intense reading to complete the book. I would say it was my greatest reading experience of my life.  I will tell you some of the things I learned as I commenced my quest.

I hope you will accompany me on this voyage of discovery. That is what Moby Dick was for me. A voyage of discovery.

An Ark in the Pacific

Books, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

The odd group of occupants on the boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in the book Life of Pi were like a small world.  In fact, Pi thinks of it as an ark. I don’t want to tell you everything that happens. You should read this excellent book. The story-telling is wondrous and perhaps, as one of the characters said, “it can make you believe in God.”

Pi was a student who studied Religious Studies (perhaps with Carl Ridd?) and zoology.  Could be he lived part of the time in Canada. Pi was particularly enamoured of the three-toed sloth, “because its demeanour—calm, quiet, introspective—did something to soothe my shattered self.” The sloth does little other than sleep. Pi said it survived by keeping out of harm’s way, where no predator would notice it. It lives a peaceful, vegetarian life, “in perfect harmony with its environment, with ‘A good-natured smile forever on its lips.’  ”

Pi admitted that sometimes he got his majors mixed up:

“A number of my fellow religious-studies students—muddled agnostics who didn’t know which way was up, who were in the thrall of reason, that fool’s gold for the bright—reminded me of the three-toed sloth; and the three-toed sloth, such a beautiful example of the miracle of life, reminded me of God.”

The sloth spent most of its life hanging from a tree, but knew better than the students which way was up.

Life on the little lifeboat is not idyllic. In a way the book describes a religious journey or pilgrimage, but it was a rough voyage and there was much misery among the human and animal passengers. The religious quest is never smooth nor easy. A perfect place for religion to flourish in other words. As Pi said,

“High calls low and low calls high. I tell you, if you were in such dire straits as I was, you too would elevate your thoughts. The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar. It was natural that, bereft, and desperate as I was, in the throes of unremitting suffering, I should turn to God.”

 

But the world on the boat is not always a wonder. In fact, at times, it seems like God has abandoned the travellers on the boat. Sometimes, it looks more like a journey to hell than heaven.  Nature, so often identified with the divine, is also brutal and ugly.  In one scene, the hyena was eating the zebra while it was still alive, but the hyena kept sliding inside the big gaping wound.  “The zebra was being eaten from the inside. It protested with diminishing vigour. Blood started coming out its nostrils. Once or twice, it raised its head straight up, as if appealing to heaven—the abomination of the moment was perfectly expressed.” But there was no successful appeal to heaven. It was an abomination instead.

Yet Pi still believes in God. In fact, he believes in more than one. He says, “disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier.”

Later, during a lightning storm in which the small boat is surrounded by  booming thunder,  Pi tells Richard Parker, the 450-pound Royal Bengal Tiger, “Stop your trembling. This is a miracle. This is an outbreak of divinity.”

Isn’t that what we are looking for on our quest? Is it all around us?

Next, I want to talk about another sea voyage that is clearly a quest for God. It is a very different voyage. It ends up in a very different place.  That book, of course, is Moby Dick.

 

 

 

Life of Pi

Books, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

Moby Dick was the first book I chose and read in my new spiritual journey, but I have decided to talk first about a book I read just a few years ago, long after Professor Ridd was gone. I think it sets the stage well for what I want to do. I will get to Moby Dick soon. I promise.

 

The first book I want to talk about on this religious quest was written after Ridd died. The book is Life of Pi by Yann Martel and it won the Man Booker Prize. This was a book like no other. It is a marvellous book and a pretty good movie was made of it.

The books starts off in Canada where we meet a young writer Pi Patel. It is an odd name.  His real name was Piscine Molitor Patel. He was named after a swimming pool in France. In Canada he got in trouble with his name. As so often, kids tend to twist names to tease their peers. For example, when I was young my name, in German, was Hans Erich.  My mother had a rule. When she called me I had to come home. If I said I did not hear her, she refused to accept that excuse. If I did not hear her, I was too far away. If I heard her and did not come home, I was disobedient. Also bad. This was a lose/lose situation. Either way I was in trouble. But my mother had a very loud voice. I could hear her from a great distance away. Unfortunately, so could my friends.  They twisted my second name into Earache. I was called that for a few years and no doubt suffered extreme psychological damage. I hated that name. Mainly because my friends  teased me unmercifully.

 

It was the same with Piscine Molitor Patel. His friends twisted that into ‘Pissing Patel.’  That was not cool. So, one day, he told everyone to call him Pi for short. It was a name based on the symbol Pi. He adopted the symbol (the Greek letter, π) That was more like it. It was a very cool name.

 

In a way that was his start on a religious journey. A religious quest I would call it. The family lived in India the home where many important religions were born. India is probably the most religious country in the world. It is saturated with religion. No doubt more religious quests have begun or ended in India than any other country in the world.

Pi was raised as Hindu in his family. That was because his family was Hindu. Parents tend to do that. Just like I was raised a Christian. Inevitably, most children enter into a religion because they have been inculcated to do so by their parents. That happens in all religions

Yet at age 12, Pi was introduced to Christianity. Sort of like Christ as a young boy became a Christian (so to speak) at the age of 12.

Later Pi was also introduced to Islam. Now he knew 3 religions. What was he to do? He did something very interesting. He decided all he wanted to do was “love God.” That was when his real religious quest began in earnest. How could he do that with 3 different religions? Well, Pi found a way.

Pi’s  mother did not have strong religious views. She thought that was all right. His father was more interested in money than he was interested in religion. He tried to persuade Pi to become a secular humanist. A rationalist one might call it.

 

Pi’s family owned a private zoo. What an exotic family. The zoo had a Bengal tiger that was called Richard Parker. He became a major character in the book. When Pi was 16 years old his father decided to move his family to Canada together with his animals. They were a major asset. They booked passage on a Japanese freighter, but during a storm the ship foundered and sank. As the ship sank, Pi was tossed into a lifeboat. His family drowned. But he was joined by others. A zebra soon joined Pi in the boat and later an orangutan. A spotted hyena also was discovered on board and it killed the zebra.  Later it killed the orangutan. joined them.  Richard Parker the Bengal tiger emerges from under a tarpaulin and then things got really interesting. As you might imagine.

How could such a strange menagerie of critters together with 3 different religions manage of this strange quest to love God?

I hope your curiosity is piqued. I will tell you more on the next post.

Women Talking

Books, Mennonites, religion

 

Miriam Toews is one of Canada’s finest writers and she comes from Steinbach, my home town. I read this book after I had already heard a lot of criticism about it. Most of that criticism came from Steinbachers. Some felt that Miriam Toews was not true to Mennonite colonies. They weren’t like that some said. Others didn’t like her approach. The book was largely about women talking with each other. The women had been subjected to horrific abuse by the Mennonite men in the colony and were meeting to discuss what to do about it.

 

My view is entirely different. I loved this book. To use the approach of Northrop Frye in the book The Educated Imagination, the book is not about abuse in a Mennonite colony. It is much more than that. It is a book about women talking about their own exploitation by men and what, if anything they should do about it. It is a book about rebellion from exploitation. And I don’t think there are many more important things than that. In Aristotle’s sense it is a vital and fundamental universal theme. And I think Toews was very true to that theme. For me, she made it come alive. And that is what great books do. They make it real. Even if it did not really happen. It was still real.

 

Many things were interesting in that book. The women wanted to have the freedom to think. Again a universal theme of vital significance. Did not every child in every home and in every country want exactly that? We all want to think and must escape from the domination of our family, our church, our clique, or our friends. We all want to break free and that is never easy to do.

I remember years ago I was at the Red River Exhibition in Winnipeg. There was a circus-style show involving a trainer and some chimpanzees. During the show the trainer made a mistake in improperly chaining the chimp to his place on stage. The chimp took one look around and made a burst for freedom. It might have been entirely irrational. What was the chimp going to do in Winnipeg? But that burst for freedom was glorious. The chimp took off and the trainer ran after him. From the stage we saw them a city block away. The show was over. But the bolt for freedom was real and it lasted in my mind forever.

In the novel, the women challenge the patriarchy. Around the world women are doing that. One of the women says, “We are not revolutionaries. We are simple women. We are mothers. We are grandmothers.” Yes. But they are rebels! They are talkers. And they are thinkers.

In this novel some of the women talked about making a bolt for freedom. Should they or shouldn’t they? I found it fascinating. I think this is one of Toews’ best novels ever. I think it is a great novel. Read it and think.

Dad, God, and Me: Religion without Limits

Books, Evangelical Christianity, religion

 

 

 

Ralph Friesen has written a fine book called Dad, God, and Me. Let me say at the outset that in reviewing this book I am not neutral. The author Ralph Friesen has been a friend of mine for many years. We grew up in the same town, Steinbach, and curled together from time to time.  In fact I was a little bit younger than he was, and I and my friends considered him and his friend Patrick Friesen intellectual leaders of our generation. But I realized after reading this book that our experiences growing up in this town were very different.

 

Ralph’s upbringing as the son of a Kleine Gemeinde conservative Mennonite Church, was very different from my experience, the son of much more moderate Christians. My parents were much more liberal in the religion they doled out. I would say that Ralph’s life was soaked with evangelical religion. To me Ralph paints a picture of parents with a shockingly totalitarian view of Steinbach in which children were nearly suffocated with religion. In other words, it was religion that invaded all of life. Frankly, I found even the much more liberal theology of my parent’s  church too stifling for my taste. More conservative members of our community considered it barely religion at all. I can’t imagine how I would I would have survived his upbringing.

 

The religion of the Kleine Gemeinde (little congregation) was, to echo of phrase of Albert Camus, religion without limits, making it as unpalatable as politics without limits. I thank Ralph for giving me a peek into his world. It was a fascinating look. Now I know how lucky I was not to be raised in that environment.

Not that Ralph’s family was not loving. They were certainly loving. The parents, the father in particular, just wanted to determine everything about his son’s faith. Nothing else would do. As Bob Dylan said, the parents were “Making you feel that you gotta be just like them.” Every book, every piece of music, every sporting event, every relationship was viewed through an evangelical lens. Nothing was off limits. That is what religion without limits is all about.

Before his father got saved or born again, thanks in part to an itinerant evangelical minister, Ralph’s father enjoyed life outside the church. In particular he loved movies. The theatre in Steinbach was driven out of town as some Mennonites, like the Kleine Gemeinde became ever more evangelical. I remember as a youth how sad I was at that. I loved going to movies and my parents did not discourage me from doing that. I remember one day I had gone to see the movie Heidi about a young Swiss girl. I loved the film. It was a joyful experience. But when I walked home all alone on a Friday night I was approached by 2 old crones who stopped me and asked me what I was doing out this late on a Friday night. I exuberantly told them about his wonderful movie I had just seen. The women were shocked. This was awful. Did I not realize I was bound for hell if I did things like that? I was totally mystified. What could be wrong with seeing a film about Heidi. I could not understand. In time I did of course but to a young lad this was a scary experience. These were the evangelicals of our town.

As Ralph explains in the book,

“The Mennonites mistrusted the arts, and all individual creativity, as belonging to the sinful world, distracting the Christian from the serious worship of God. Dad fell into line with that view after his conversion. If he was to express himself creatively, he would contain that expression within religious boundaries, as in composing sermons, or leading choirs, or signing hymns.”

 

Does that not sound totalitarian? Religion intended to dominate all of life. Some Mennonites, thank goodness, saw things differently. But to the Kleine Gemeinde religion was that absolute. It was everything.

Ralph describes that milieu with precision, but with compassion. He clearly loves his family, but did not allow them to choke him. Ralph, unlike most Mennonite youth in such circumstances managed to bolt for freedom.

I would suggest that no matter whether you are a Mennonite or not, Christian or not, you can enjoy this book. It is well worth the trip.

Toni Morrison’s Beloved

Books, racism

 

 

Toni Morrison returned to the subject of self-hatred and racism in her profound novel about slavery—Beloved. This is surely one of the classic novels of the twentieth century. It is also one of the most shocking novels you will ever read.

I want to give a warning here as I will spoil the ending for those who want to read it. I find that unavoidable. In that book a mother—Sethe—escaped from slavery with her two daughters Denver and Beloved. But when the slavers who were tracking them found them, Sethe did the unthinkable—she tried to kill her daughters. She took Beloved to the shed and cut her throat with a saw to save her from slavery, by killing her. Here is Morrison’s incredibly powerful description of that scene:

“Denver thought she understood the connection between her mother and Beloved: Sethe was trying to make up for the handsaw; Beloved was making her pay for it…Sethe’s greatest fear was the same one Denver had in the beginning—that Beloved might leave. That before Seth could make her understand what it meant—what it took to drag the teeth of that saw under the little chin; to feel the baby blood pump like oil in her hands; to hold her face so her head would stay on; to squeeze her so she could absorb, still, the death spasms that shot through that adored body, plump and sweet with life—Beloved might leave. Leave before Sethe could make her realize that worse than that—far worse—was what Baby Suggs died of, what Ella knew, what Stamp saw and what made Paul D tremble. That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty so bad you couldn’t like yourself anymore. Dirty so bad you forgot who you were and couldn’t think it up. And though she and others lived through and got over it, she could never let it happen to her own. The best thing she was, was her children. Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thing—the part of her that was clean. No undreamable dream about whether the headless, feetless torso hanging in the tree with a sign on it was her husband or Paul A; whether the bubbling-hot girls in the colored-school fire set by patriots included her daughter; whether a gang of whites invaded her daughter’s private parts, soiled the daughter’s thighs and threw her daughter out the wagon. She might have to work the slaughterhouse yard, but not her daughter.”

These are things that a system of racism can accomplish. No individual acts of racism could do this.