TREES?
Jina Oh
Set during 1873 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Toni Morrison’s Beloved centers on the powers of memory and history from the burdens of slavery. Sethe, a former slave, lives with her daughter Denver in “124”, a house haunted by the ghost of her first child. Although she escaped the Sweet Home eighteen years earlier, she is still not free for her recurring memories from the past. Throughout the novel, the imagery of trees repeatedly occurs in various scenes with different representations. Many black characters refer to trees as offering calm, healing, and escape, thus conveying Morrison’s’ message that trees bring peace and protection.
Sethe uses the image of trees to aestheticize her past memories of traumatizing events. As a victim of enslavement, Sethe is emotionally unstable and psychologically anguished; her mind is clouded with feelings and is overpowered by ‘rememories’. As a way to repress Sethe’s internal struggles, the beautiful trees of Sweet Home mask the true horrors of the plantation. During Sethe’s time in slavery, she has witnessed many gruesome and horrible events that blacks endure such as whipping and lynching. However, Sethe seemingly chooses to remember the sight of sycamore trees over the sight of lynched boys: “Boys hanging from the most beautiful sycamores in the world… the sycamores beat out the children every time” (Morrison 7). Although “it shamed her” (7), her memories are nevertheless shielded with tree imageries because when she asks Paul D