Sula and Beloved
Images of Cain in the Novels of Toni Morrison
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4970556 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Carolyn M Jones (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1993 |
| Volume | 27 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 615 |
| Publication date | 1993-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | African American Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1062-4783 • E-ISSN: 1945-6182 |
| Publisher | Penn State Press (Project Muse) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/3041897 |
| OpenAlex | W75575407 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
In The Mark of Cain, Ruth Mellinkoff rejects single modern image of Cain she examines, Hesse's Demien, as an intentionally distorted treatment of myth. In Hesse's novel, she claims, interpreter has designed his interpretation to serve his own purpose--a self-conscious twisting to achieve personal ends. Clarification or elaboration of biblical texts is not primary goal; rather, biblical elements are used to enhance interpreter's particular point of view about something he is critical of in his contemporary society. (81) Displacements of myth in contemporary fiction, however, are not distortions but are intertextual examinations of place and function of myth in contemporary life. Myth as a point of reference is archetypal memory, fixed in time and space; but as writers utilize myth, they signify on it, displace its original meanings. This displacement, as Charles Long explains, gains its power of meaning from structure of itself without signification being subjected to rules of discourse (1). This allows the community [to] undercut this legitimized signification with a signification upon this legitimated signifying (2). Thus, minority writer or community may emphasize a meaning or an implication of a myth that master narrative,(1) ideological script that Western world imposes on others, refuses to consider, and may signify original meaning into background, giving primary authority to signification over master's trope. Thinking and writing about myth in modern world is, to use Henry Louis Gates's term, double-voiced, representing a process of both repetition and revision (22, 50, 60). Thinking on Cain has been subject to this process of signification. Writers, working with Biblical myth, have focused on meaning and form of Cain's mark. Various answers for what mark was have been offered--either a mark on Cain's forehead(2) or a blackening of Cain's face, connecting him with Ham as a father of black race (Mellinkoff 77).(3) Cain himself has been called mark, a pariah identifiable by his marked body--either his trembling, groaning, or incessant wandering.(4) Yet, what strikes me about Cain myth, reading it in a hermeneutical and intertextual relationship to Morrison's Sula and Beloved, is Cain's complete refusal to remember and to mourn. Cain denies responsibility both for his brother and for his act: Am I my brother's keeper? (Genesis 4.9). And he seeks to protect himself: Lord, my punishment is greater than I can (Genesis 4.13). Cain, concerned with self, lets sin in door, but more importantly, he refuses to acknowledge his effect on other; he refuses to remember and to mourn his brother Abel. This refusal marks him, and tattoo becomes taboo: He is set apart as both dangerous and holy. Sethe and Sula, both victims and victimizers, reenact myth of Cain. Sethe is beloved slave who is remarked as an animal when Schoolteacher's odious nephews drink her breast milk while Schoolteacher remarks, writes down her reactions, using ink that Sethe herself made. They then mark experience on her body, whipping her and creating a chokeberry tree on her back. Sethe's mark limits her. It is sign of her slavery, and with return of Beloved, it traps her in 124 Bluestone. Sula, with her rose birthmark, is denied identity by her mother, and she murders a childhood friend, throwing him accidentally into Ohio River. Yet Sula, in contrast to Sethe, claims absolute freedom, which is symbolized by her mark. Both Sethe and Sula commit Cain's act, although they do not act out of jealousy as Cain does. Sethe acts out of pure desperation, and Sula, who feels Cain's sense of rejection, kills accidentally. They also bear Cain's mark, a mark that sets each woman apart both from person identity and from community, and each must undergo mourning and memory to find and define self
Art · Literature · History · Modern American Literature Studies · Violence, Religion, and Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.21 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2012 - 2026 (15) |
| Highly cited | No |