Be. Loved.

As a teenage girl, I am fascinated by love. Born into fairy tales and raised on a steady diet of princesses and dashing knights, I am a creature of romance, a child of story. I was never taught how to imagine; rather, it seems imagination taught me how to form muscle and flesh into the semblance of a human. Often, I feel like a changeling, stealing in from the forest in the shape of a person, with a faerie heart beating out heat underneath. It is little wonder, then, that I was drawn to Beloved by Toni Morrison simply for its title.

'Beloved' is a nickname between my dear friend Shelby and I; we trade the word like a precious stone when we need comfort or protection. Beloved. Tirzah. Blessed city. Like God in the desert, we use the word when we mean it, and never again. Cheap endearments---sweetheart, honey, darling---fall from my lips like rain, but 'Beloved' is for special occassions, dressed-up love. Thick love. 'Cause thin love ain't love at all.

So what does this novel tell us about identity, as it journeys into love and loss and the past and the tenuousness of the future?

1. Love is not a constant, but it is constant. We are not responsible for defining love for everyone; that is too great of a task to undertake in many lifetimes. But love---the nature of it, the shape of it, real and persistant and unselfish---that love is constant. It lasts. It may change, but like salt on the skin after a dip in the ocean, it leaves an echo. We are defined by those we CONTINUE to love, are DETERMINED to love, despite or because of their deserving.


2. Our past is our present, and our future. Who we were directly informs who we are today, and who we will become. Unless we can lay down our "sword and shield", put our memories to rest, we will suffer in the future as we suffered in the past and can find no peace in the present.


3. Anything dead coming back to life hurts.


4. We cannot be all things to all people. Nor should we be just one thing. Sethe is more than a mother. Denver is more than a daughter. Humans have dimensions and space and layers.


5. Story makes us human. Humaness makes us tell stories.

When we raise our daughters on fairy tales, sometimes we leave bits out. Snow White's stepmother rarely dances to her death at the wedding, but when the Brothers' Grimm told the tale she was tap-dancing in heated iron shoes. Until she died. We don't believe Ariel is washed away as sea foam and rarely do Cinderella's sisters go blind for their evil.

It seems that they are not all stories to be passed on.

Certainly no clamour for a kiss.

Beloved.

but it doesn't really matter.

The Stranger, by Camus, was probably one of the stranger things I have read.

It sounds like a children's story to the ear but was anything but childish, takes place in a society that I know nothing about, and concludes in a way I don't fully understand.

Ah, the beauties of literature!

Our main character, Meursault, can help us with a couple of aspects of our big question, despite the confusion inherent in such a work.

1. We are all a little bit strange. As much as some of us would like to deny any aspect of oddity in ourselves, there is a tiny element of strange in every human being. I had a friend once who was terrified of the texture of cotton balls. I have trouble falling asleep when its windy. When my mom is stressed, she likes to clean. There are little idosyncracies in everyone, aspects of personality that go beyond the ordinary and make us stand out


2. Although society can condemn us for strangeness, it is strangeness that often defines who we are. Now, obviously, killing a man like Meursault did goes a little beyond the realm of "strange", and into the areas we consider criminal in this modern world. But it is important to remember that safe strangeness, strangeness that doesn't harm you or anyone else, can be part of what makes you unique. It is a conversation-starter and a way to be remembered.


3. Perhaps no one is normal.


4. Perhaps there is no need.

Die Verwandlung

"Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt."


"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself in his bed to be into a giant vermin TRANSFORMED."

Although the conventional English translation doesn't place the emphasis on the world 'transformed', the original German edition does. Kafka is actually famous for this type of phrasing, leaving a tantalizing word or unexpected impact right before the period, but we do not speak that way. To us, Gregor was "transformed into a gigantic insect." To Kafka, he was a gigantic vermin, but the emphasis was that he was TRANSFORMED.

This seems to be a minor detail, but because I love language so very much, it is exactly this type of thing that interests me. I picked up very little German in my friendship with the exchange student last year (I have a vague memory of him teaching us a couple theater terms, and I know three different ways to say "I love you", so I figure I'm pretty much set!) but I do remember his accent. It's something in the throat, like chewing but not the sort of chewing necessitated by food. To me, it sounded like the words had to rattle around tongue and teeth before being released; they had to age in the mouth before they saw air. I'd like to read The Metamorphosis in the original someday, because I'm sure it's an experience.

So, Mr. Gregor, transformed as you are from a man to a vermin and from German to English, what can you tell us about our big question?

(Just a little review: our big question is "How do we define who we are?")

1. We are what we are what we are...except when we're...not. Yeah, sure, THAT makes a lot of sense! But really, part of the message within Gregor's happy little tale is that we are what we are, until we aren't any longer. This seems an obvious fact to most of us; one day I may be a dentist, and the next I may be a tap dancer. But the reason this idea is important is because how shocked OTHERS can be by this transformation. Gregor's family is shocked by his transformation, unable to believe that he won't provide and would just throw away his job, actually unable to comprehend the occurrence or understand how to help him. WE may be what we are until we're not, but sometimes people expect us to continue as we were, or even become different than we've ever been before. We are who we are. And it's often others who cannot understand that.


2. It's scary to change. Again, thank you, Captain Obvious! But really. It's scary. It's scary and painful and confusing. But until we change, we don't know if we're going to find anything better on the other side. You've got to make the shift, before you get the reward. And hopefully, you won't be treated like Gregor!


3. Apples can HURT. (Self-explanatory. But it pays to remember!)