폴 디의 담배갑 속에 감추어진 미국 노예제도의 역사—토니 모리슨의 『빌러비드』다시 읽기

Abstract

A good number of criticisms focus on similarities between Sethe of Morrison’s Beloved and Margaret Garner of the real story who had to kill her own daughter in order to protect her from the cruelty of slavery. Based on the mother-daughter relationship of female slaves, many of them analyze Beloved’s return and what the return of the repressed memory means to ex-slaves. However, this essay instead focuses on Paul D and what his life as a male slave represents. In particular, this essay tries to interpret the meanings of the rusted tobacco tin he secretly hides in the place of his heart. Paul D’s rusted tobacco tin reveals the repressed chapter of early American history in which America earned independence from Britain with France’s help, which America bought by exporting tobacco. Of course, tobacco was cultivated in plantation based on slavery. In this way, Paul D’s individual memories contained in the tobacco tin are inevitably connected to the black people’s collective memories as slaves. The fact that this rusted tin opens by the sexual intercourse between Paul D and Beloved insinuates the possibility that Paul D’s painful memories as a male slave also have much to do with Middle Passage, the character Beloved insists she returns from. Paul D later saves Sethe from the prison-like 124, the house of dead memories, and helps her join the black community. When we read Beloved from Paul D’s perspective, we can trace the process in which individual memories are united with collective ones and claim to revise official history written from the perspective of whites.