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Historical Erasure and Stagnation in Paradise
by Anca Szilagyi In a Salon interview, Toni Morrison regrets one major event in her novel Paradise: Patricia Best's confrontation with Reverend Misner (Jaffery). It is unclear in the interview what Morrison would have liked to do. Nevertheless, it spurs one to contemplate Patricia's confrontation with her research, the town's genealogical charts. Perhaps a more positive confrontation, rather than the destructive burning of all her labors, is wanted. Certainly by destroying her research, she destroys all her discoveries about the town and the truth behind its myths. Indeed, by destroying what she has found she merely gives in to the very same erasure of history that the town ritually practices to maintain its mythic past and uphold its self-imagined perfection--that which angers her in the first place. With the practice of erasure comes stagnation (symbolized in the novel by infertility and vegetation), and with that stagnation comes also a sacrificial scapegoat (the Convent). All of this can be seen on a national level, as the town of Ruby (and its predecessor Haven) mirrors the Puritan beginnings in the New World, rife with self-righteousness and paranoia, exclusion and violence, and ultimately hypocrisy, issues the American nation battles within itself to this very minute. If the themes do not connect the novel to the American nation, the deliberate time span of pre-1755 colonial beginnings (with action beginning post-Civil War) to July 1976 certainly do. Thus a discussion of historical erasure and its resulting stagnation in Paradise is necessary. The town of Ruby is imbued with fundamental hypocrisies, passed down from their venerated Old Fathers. Foundational anger is entrenched first in the loss of control experienced after the emancipation and the short period of empowerment. "Even now, in 1973, riding his [Steward's] own land free wind blowing Night's mane, the thought of that level of helplessness made him want to shoot somebody" (96). The helplessness Steward is referring to is not just from that initial loss of control; more important, the foundational anger is built on what is called the Disallowing. "They saved [. . .] their hatred for the men who had insulted them in ways too confounding for language: first by excluding them, then by offering them staples to exist in that very exclusion" (189). The exclusion and betrayal experienced by the Old Fathers continues ad nauseam as the Disallowed become the Disallowers. In doing so, they try to gain a sense of power over their space in a way that can be maintained within white jurisdiction--that is, displacing their anger toward outsiders and women, and especially the outsider women of the Convent. Furthermore, by controlling the women of the town, they gain a sense of control where (under white jurisdiction) there is little else to control and they try to remain racially pure so that they may see the results of their control in a rudimentary, visual way. Billie Delia's observation of the townsmen seems especially apt: "the real battle was [. . .] about disobedience, which meant, of course, the stallions were fighting about who controlled the mares and their foals" (150). The displaced anger of the founding fathers and their descendants mixes in with actual violence involving the nation outside of Ruby. All symptoms of problems within the town are blamed on events occurring outside the town or outsiders bringing their problems into the town. One may look at Jeff Fleetwood's grievances with the Veteran's Administration in two ways. The first is that they are displaced upon K.D. Smith and his Morgan uncles. "Since he couldn't kill the Veteran's Administration others just might have to do" (58). The second, however, that this is told through K.D.'s perspective and is thus suspect; perhaps K.D. assumes Jeff could not possibly be that angry about K.D. getting Arnette pregnant or K.D. slapping her--that nothing within the town is wrong, only things without. Soane, in fact, assumes that outside of Ruby, "war was safer than any city in the United States" (101) and encourages her boys to enlist. This action only leaves her childless in the end, one of many signs of stagnation within the town, to be discussed shortly. The chapter entitled "Patricia" is essential to our discussion of erasure. It is here that the reader, previously excluded by this non-linear text is given background information via Pat Best's genealogical research. Within this chapter is also the Christmas pageant, which provides a picture of Ruby's mythic past. The Christmas pageant is symbolic of the myth of Ruby perpetuated by its inhabitants, the living myth. A grammatical shift from the past tense to the present tense (208) for the duration of the pageant shows that ever-present imagining of the foundations of Haven and Ruby, yet, they are shaved down to seven families from the original nine. According to Pat, this is to exclude those that are racially impure or have broken the covenant (purity in exchange for immortality) by producing racially impure children (217). This exhibits the collective ease of manipulating history (oral history, specifically) to maintain a certain desired image. Pat's research explores this erasure further. Blots and lines through names in family Bibles (188) are certainly indicative of a desire to exclude and erase. It seems that after Patricia's chapter, there is some reverse of the previous exclusion or alienation of the reader. Patricia does not get to discover the story behind the blot in the Morgan Bible, but the readers do (303). Indeed what Pat does learn angers her so much that she burns her evidence, giving in to the collective desire of erasure. In her epiphany, in her bitter scholarly glee, it seems, she confronts her anger the same way in which the Haven and Ruby fathers have, re-enacting their hypocrisies. Another aspect of the town's manipulative oral history is the Oven and its inscription. There is a generational discrepancy in interpretation. The older generation clings to "Beware the Furrow of His Brow," a warning to outsiders, not to the townsfolk; the townsfolk are protected by God in their mythic self-fashioned role as chosen people and remain passive, so as not to disturb their perfect town. However, Misner points out: "It's not clear as daylight [. . .] It says '. . .the Furrow of His Brow.' There is no 'Beware' on it" (86). It seems then, that they want to cling to this interpretation and hide behind it. The younger generation initially insists on "Be the Furrow of His Brow" an active statement that asks for mobilization. After the massacre at the Convent, however, they decide on "We are the Furrow of His Brow, " a final recognition of the town's mistakes and a movement toward change. The act of historical erasure, of course, causes stagnation in the community in its attempt to uphold its mythic imaginings, as they constantly erase down to their idealized image. Reverend Misner sums it up well when he says "How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it" (306). The thin human imagination becomes a rigid ideology of racial purity, that which Pat discovers in her research, which can only result in a stagnating society. This stagnation is symbolized by a lack of Morgan children and Fleetwood's "broken" children. The unnatural stagnation is highlighted by Sweetie's unexplained (but perhaps understandable) escape to the Convent, where she hears babies crying. "Suddenly, in the midst of joy, she was angry. Babies cry here among these demons but not in her house?" (130) Sweetie displaces her anger at the unnatural repression of the Ruby community onto the Convent, the easy-to-reach scapegoat of the town within their 90-mile radius of isolation. Further hypocrisies in this realm of reproduction are seen in the new preference for the Demby hospital and "the cool hands of whitemen" over Lone's midwifery (271). Lone, as an outsider picked up by the Du Pres family just before Haven is founded, becomes the reason why defective babies are born, not the inbreeding of the 8-rock families. "During those times [. . .] the midwife is the interference, the one giving orders, on whose secret skill so much depended, and the dependency irritated [the fathers]" (272). Here, a fear and hatred of women in positions of power--that being power over their very offspring--overrides the racial hatred, as the former is easier to control than the latter. One may connect infertility to Billie Delia's search for baby's breath to enhance her bouquet at Arnette's wedding: "no baby's breath anywhere" (149). The town's stagnation is further highlighted by "the garden battles" (89). Here, less edible vegetation are cultivated by the women of Ruby as household appliances allow them the time. Contrast the inedible flowers of Ruby with the abundance of Connie's vegetable garden: in one morning she sells forty-eight ears of corn and a whole pound of peppers (40). A natural abundance crops up just outside Ruby, attracting members of the town and creating commerce with the convent. The most important product of that commerce is the black-purple hot pepper. Anna Flood calls them "black-as-eight-rock peppers" (120), connecting them to the black-as-eight-rock families and their racial purity. As a symbol, the peppers are a tad elusive. Perhaps the town's erased bits of shame, anger, and hypocrisies are buried (symbolically) and crop up at the Convent in a tangible form. Steward, the most staunch and rigidly exclusive member of the town is addicted to these peppers. In fact, his chewing tobacco causes him to lose all sense of taste except for those peppers. "Blue Boy packed in his cheek for twenty years first narrowed his taste to craving for spices, then reduced it altogether to a single demand for hot pepper" (81). Perhaps even the use of tobacco as a cause for his desire for those peppers is necessary to understand the peppers; tobacco was a crop raised by slaves that allowed the American nation to prosper. Thus by chewing tobacco, Steward loses his sense of taste as he chews on his hypocritical foundations (and of course, the nationšs fundamental hypocrisies) and blind support of them. By losing his sense of taste, he requires hot peppers-- the black-as-eight peppers-- that continue to fuel his displaced anger. Thus perhaps it is more accurate to say the peppers are a product not just of the town's hypocrisies (as one will find that Consolata discovers them prior to the founding of the town) but a product of the nation's hypocrisies. Another elusive symbol is that of mint. The scent of mint wafts into several scenes and mint and mint-colored things appear in abundance in the novel. The symbolic implications of mint are less clear than the peppers. Perhaps the coolness of mint is meant to serve as a contrast or perhaps even an answer to the fiery peppers. Indeed, Consolata is described as having minty-green eyes; Deek, in fact, is mesmerized when he says, "your eyes are like mint leaves" (228). He had come to the Convent for peppers and encounters this minty-eyed woman. During the massacre, the man in the kitchen drinks milk, "taking such long, measured swallows the milk is half gone by the time he smells the wintergreen" (7). This picture is highly loaded: a man in the midst of participating in a massacre, holding his rifle, drinks the cool, mint-infused, nourishing milk of his victims. It almost seems as if cool mint is offered as redemption from the hot pepper. Indeed, the mysterious cowboy figure that visits Consolata just before the healing ritual mirrors her image with his "tea-colored hair" and green eyes (252). There is a transition from commerce with the Convent to a confrontation with it, as all the town's problems are blamed on the scapegoat seventeen miles away, building up to the seminal violence of the novel. Because they could not truly destroy the women, because they had no corpses to bury (along with their other repressed bits of knowledge, to peep back out of the soil in the form of a pepper), they could not continue to freeze the myth as everyone had a different version of the encounter. The fragmentation of the confrontation into various stories prevents a collective erasure of the violence: "When they learned there were no dead to report, transport or bury, relief was so great they began to forget what they'd actually done or seen. Had it not been for Luther Beauchamp--who told the most damning story--and Pious, Deed Sands and Aaron--who corroborated much of Lone's version--the whole thing might have been sanitized out of existence." (298) Thus the fragmentation is a breaking up of the mythological block of ice, that collective foundational narrative that requires periodic erasure of the recent past, that allows for fluidity and change within the town. This fragmentation can be taken back to the botanical symbolism: when Reverend Misner and Anna Flood visit the Convent after the event, Misner holds out green, red, and purple black peppers, the green and red previously unmentioned in the novel. It is then that they have their epiphany, when they sense a door and a window (305). The new peppers at the Convent, combined with the notion of thresholds, resonate with the hope of change. "The future panted at the gate" indeed (306). The natural death of the unnaturally broken Fleetwood child, Save-Marie, further supports this. Thus the town of Ruby, in its hopes of maintaining a paradise of sorts, sought to do so by assuming they already were living in one, and therefore necessarily rid themselves of any marks against them in a manner that would leave them apparently blameless. In other words, to construct their paradise, they had to ignore reality and attempt to delete it, which was only a detriment to them. This detriment can be seen in the instances of infertility as well as the in the symbolic use of vegetation. The work put in to understand (or attempt to understand) Morrison's occasionally elusive novel is perhaps the minimum requirement to the "endless work" she suggests as the key to a true paradise (318). Works Cited Jaffrey, Zia. "The Salon Interview-- Toni Morrison." Salon. 09 Nov. 2002. http://archive.salon.com/books/int/1998/02/cov_si_02int.html Morrison, Toni. Paradise. New York: Plume, 1999. Back |