Analysis of Storytelling
There are myriad ways to critique, analyze, and interpret this novel, and there is no shortage of academic resources to look at for inspiration. My goal here is to provide high school literature teachers with a departure point for analyzing the novel based on the concept of storytelling, and the following analysis will be broken into "Structure and Culture" and "Narrative Truth, Historical Truth." The categories are neither superficial nor definitive; rather, they provide me with broad parameters in order to guide my students through the novel.
I have structured these sections in a way that will allow teachers to see how the novel can be interpreted in the classroom. Creating day-by-day lesson plans is not the most effective introduction to this analysis because, as is evident upon reading this unit, teachers will benefit most from having all of these elements in mind when beginning the novel with students.
Structure and Culture
Oral Tradition
There is a beautiful complexity to the novel that is revealed each and every time it is read, but it can certainly be intimidating to a reader of any age. In addition to the specific literary techniques that Morrison weaves throughout are the overarching styles of writing that coalesce and make it such an engaging and challenging read. The modes of storytelling must be examined so that students can comprehend, break apart, and interpret the text in a meaningful way. This is not a novel that can be read just for plot or character or structure because of the way that the elements have been woven together. I will not divorce the author from a text, thus the cultural perspective of African Americans necessarily informs the structure. For example, one notices the use of parallel structure and repetition almost immediately; the first sentence of each of the three parts of the novel are "124 was spiteful," "124 was loud," and "124 was quiet." 12 However, when one recognizes that Morrison embeds the black vernacular tradition into the structure, we see how it contributes strongly to the story that the novel tells and the way that it is revealed. "The vernacular is a complex oral discourse characterized by such tropes as call and response and signifying (a means of repetition and revision)." 13 In literary terms, we tend to call this repetition or parallelism, but specifically naming it within the African American tradition brings with it the cultural weight and significance that it deserves.
The character of Baby Suggs exemplifies the oral traditions of African Americans. Several of the terms used above, like call and response and signifying, along with witnessing, are directly connected to religious practices. We discover in chapter 9 that after she was purchased from slavery by her son Halle, "she became an unchurched preacher...uncalled, unrobed, unanointed". 14 After Paul D tells Sethe that Halle lost his mind after seeing her violated, Sethe aches for the support that Baby Suggs would have provided and she hears the voice of Baby Suggs saying, "Lay em down, Sethe. Sword and shield. Down. Down. Both of em down. Down by the riverside. Sword and shield. Don't study war no more. Lay all that mess down. Sword and shield." 15 There are several techniques at work in this passage and it is a worthwhile exercise to have students identify them and examine how they work together. First, the characterization of Baby Suggs is as a soothing source of comfort for Sethe, placing Baby Suggs in the mold of a mother figure. The use of dialect reveals class and status, but it also makes her seem approachable and human. This passage serves to connect the techniques of parallelism and repetition to the culturally-rooted terms of witnessing and signifying (defined in the paragraph above). Even though Baby Suggs' comments are just for Sethe, they could easily be used in one of her sermons—the "sword and shield" has biblical connotations—that she delivers in the Clearing to other escaped and former slaves and their children. The imagery, repetition, and structure also create a melodic flow that seems to envelope Sethe and the reader, similar to repeating a mantra or prayer can induce a calming effect.
The story begins in medias res, but it quickly establishes the main characters and setting within the first paragraph. Reading this passage aloud is an excellent way of introducing the novel and allowing students the time to process the text and ask questions (not that they will all be answered). Some examples of useful analysis that can be performed on the first paragraph begin with the first sentence: "124 was spiteful." The house has already achieved its own significance by virtue of opening the novel and being personified, and "spiteful" is a loaded word worthy of a brief discussion of connotation and association. The second sentence, a fragment really, "Full of a baby's venom," contrasts that idea of personification. It opens with an angry house and follows with the image of a dangerous, bestial baby, purportedly the most innocent of all creatures.
I would also ask students to think carefully about the specific number of the house. This is a good time to point out that nothing in the novel is accidental, so why the sequence 124? They will typically point out that the number three is missing, which is a powerful symbol as one continues to read—Beloved, the murdered daughter, being the third of Sethe's children. When asked what the sum of 1+2+4 is, they quickly and proudly shout out "Seven!" The follow-up is, what does the number seven symbolize, particularly in a biblical sense? Some students will point out that God created the world in seven days, which means the number seven is symbolic of completion. This then prompts the final question of, how can the sequence be symbolically complete when it is so clearly missing a component? Revisiting this question at the end of the novel, students recognize that the family is complete without Beloved; she does not belong. Additionally, the numbers may come to symbolize the three characters that can make a new family—Sethe, Denver, and Paul D—by the end of the novel.
Flashback and Time Shifts
That the novel will shift quickly in time is established in the fifth sentence, "The grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time there were thirteen years old—as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered it (that was it for Buglar); as soon as two tiny hand prints appeared in the cake (that was it for Howard)." While the third sentence states the present time as 1873, the reader is quickly alerted that events of the past will frequently collide with the present. (One of the most useful activities in the classroom is to have students create a chronological timeline of events; this is elaborated in the "Activities" section.) The teacher can point out cues to the students that a time shift is going to occur in order to give them confidence. A strong example for this is found in the extract: "'No more powerful than the way I loved her,' Sethe answered and there it was again. The welcoming cool of unchiseled headstones...". 16 Through the phrasing, "and there it was again," a careful reader will recognize that as a cue that we are entering a flashback, and those verbal signs are important in identifying moments of time shift.
Flashback has its own narrative significance in the novel, clearly demonstrating the power of the past on the present. "[T]he leveling out of different time frames enable[s] the novel to mimic and reflect the process of memory: the actual act of remembering as well as the incorporation of told memories into the oral tradition." 17 This connection does not just provide background for the novel's events, but is a powerful reminder that past events create memories and memory can be dangerous. Sethe admits that "she worked hard to remember as close to nothing as was safe," indicating a tenuous relationship between remembering, forgetting, and deliberate memory suppression. 18 The danger of forgetting is exemplified for Sethe on the following page as she describes a moment of walking home: "Nothing else would be in her mind...and suddenly there was Sweet Home rolling, rolling, rolling out before her eyes, and although there was not a leaf on that farm that did not make her want to scream, it rolled itself out before her in shameless beauty. It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too." 19 This is one of my favorite passages to examine and analyze with a class because there is so much power in the use of figurative language, repetition, and allusion, which connects to the characterization of Sethe and the theme of memory.
Breaking down these early passages in the classroom is an important and valid use of time because it shows the students the depth of analysis that is possible while also giving them the benefit of working through it together, even when following a teacher's modeling. It is critical that students understand the importance of flashback as more than just a literary device, but a stylistic element that informs the structure, characterization, and meaning of the novel as a whole.
Magical Realism
In addition to the subtle flashback, the fifth sentence of the novel also sets up one of the key writing styles, magical realism. "Magic realist novels and stories have, typically, a strong narrative drive, in which the recognizably realistic merges with the unexpected and the inexplicable and in which elements of dreams, fairy story, or mythology combine with the everyday, often in a mosaic or kaleidoscopic pattern of refraction and recurrence." 20 It becomes clear in the fifth sentence from the text that while the house is the vessel for supernatural occurrences, the creator of the disturbances is the venomous baby, as displayed through the disconcerting image of the "two tiny hand prints...in the cake." This style is reinforced on the following page when "Sethe and Denver decided to end the persecution by calling forth the ghost that tried them so. Perhaps a conversation, they thought, an exchange of views or something would help. So they held hands and said, 'Come on. Come on. You may as well just come on.' The sideboard took a step forward but nothing else did." 21 In this passage, the two characters make a conscious decision to communicate with the spirit that they believe is causing "the outrageous behavior of that place," and it is treated matter-of-factly, without any special introduction. "When Morrison recreates these elements in her art, she purposely departs from consensus reality, not to foreground the supernatural as a unique expression of the black community, but as a way to signify the difference between culturally imposed ways of seeing. Morrison's assumption in her writing, her consensus reality, is very different...because the supernatural does exist [and] presumes a truth that is unassailable." 22 Morrison is not asking the reader to suspend his disbelief; trust in supernatural occurrences is a cultural truth in the African American community and she will not explain or apologize for it.
It can sometimes be a challenge for students to treat magical realism in the commonplace manner that the author intends; teenagers, not surprisingly, are prone to dramatic interpretations. However, because Morrison has embedded the supernatural from the very first sentence and makes it a common, if complicated, part of the characters' lives, the students are much more likely to develop a way of seeing the supernatural in the way it is meant to be treated. The definition quoted above names "recurrence" as an important element of this style as a way of normalizing it. This is specifically reinforced in this passage in a subtle way, but one that demonstrates Morrison's craft as a writer.
At the beginning of chapter 8, Denver is basking in the joy that Beloved is exuding. Beloved seems to be delighted to have a physical body and performing with it: "Beloved put her fists on her hips and commenced to skip on bare feet. Denver laughed. 'Now you. Come on,' said Beloved. 'You may as well just come on.'" 23 The spoken language here doesn't quite fit, but nor does it stick out as being particularly wrong. The reader has noticed Beloved's language skills developing and the first two fragments seem appropriate, but the last sentence is a developed thought that seems more advanced. In class, I would ask the students about Beloved's use of language here and then point them back to the beginning of chapter 1 and give them the open-ended direction of finding the connection to this extract. Thankfully, the passage appears on the second page, so it doesn't take long for them to find Sethe's original invitation to the ghost form of Beloved (referenced in the paragraph above). The next question is obviously, what does this mean about Beloved and her consciousness? Students then realize that when Beloved's presence in 124 was spiritual, not physical, this proves that she could hear the family and her form of participation was through making objects move or presenting herself as "a pool of red and undulating light." 24 It also demonstrates how purposeful Beloved's physical presence is. She does not feel the need to present herself tangibly until Paul D arrives, creates a sense of intimacy with Sethe, fights back against "the screaming house," and gets "rid of the only other company [Denver] had." 25
Stream of Consciousness
The technique of entering a character's unfiltered thoughts and following wherever s/he may lead is one of the cornerstones of Modernist and postmodernist literature. My students have already encountered A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce and are usually adept at identifying stream of consciousness passages in Beloved. There are short examples of this throughout the text but the most significant and difficult are the chapters that are from the points of view of Sethe, Denver, and Beloved respectively, and then the chapter that is the marriage of all three voices. One of my favorite aspects of the novel is the way that Morrison prepares the reader for what will happen next, and this is achieved in the final sentence of the nineteenth chapter: "Mixed in with the voices surrounding the house, recognizable but undecipherable to Stamp Paid, were the thoughts of the women of 124, unspeakable thoughts, unspoken." 26 At this moment the reader may not exactly know what the next few chapters will hold, but the first line of chapter twenty, "Beloved, she my daughter," does not come as a surprise, and clearly defines Sethe as the speaker. The following chapter belongs to Denver as established through its opening sentence, "Beloved is my sister," a parallel to Sethe's. Students usually do not struggle with these two chapters, but it is chapters 22 that tends to need thorough class discussion and analysis.
The first sentence of chapter 22 provides some comfort—it creates a parallel to Sethe and Denver and ends in traditional punctuation—but, alas, it is the only such sentence in the chapter. I will now take this opportunity to freely admit that given the chance, I would ask Toni Morrison to explain every word in this chapter. Short of that, however, I begin by reminding students that this is the strongest example of stream of consciousness in the novel for multiple reasons. First, Beloved still speaks like a child; we have seen many examples of this through the text. Children tend to describe things as literally as possible and she wrestles with her lack of language: "how can I say things that are pictures". 27 Second, we know that Beloved has a divided consciousness. She is here physically, but having come from the other side, part of her self is still connected to the non-physical world. Beloved laments, "there is no one to want me to say me my name I wait on the bridge because she is under it there is night and there is day". 28 Understandably, the "she" that Beloved wants so desperately is Sethe, and this is confirmed through the imagery of Sethe's earrings that she dangled for the baby and that Beloved asks her about in chapter six: "Tell me your diamonds." 29
One strategy to increase student confidence in their understanding of the chapter is to ask them to find examples of imagery that they recognize and to establish its context in the stream of consciousness narrative. There are several examples of repetitive imagery from within the chapter, but none is as dominant as "a hot thing," repeated ten times in five pages. It is always its own complete thought, an image connected to but separate from what is around it. Considering Beloved's lack of vocabulary, "a hot thing" strikes me as something dangerous, requiring caution. It seems, though, that the most common reference surrounding "a hot thing" is Sethe—Beloved's mother, a source of love. For example: "her face is my own and I want to be there in the place where her face is and to be looking at it too a hot thing"; "she wants her earrings she wants her round basket I want her face a hot thing"; and perhaps most conclusively, "Sethe's is the face that left me Sethe sees me see her and I see the smile her smiling face is the place for me it is the face I lost she is my face smiling at me doing it at last a hot thing now we can join a hot thing". 30 Students want a definitive answer: "What is the hot thing??" I have been accosted at my door, in the hallway, and even while getting out of my car after assigning this chapter.
One of the best methods I have found for dealing with this difficult passage is structured small group discussion. Offering students some comprehension-based questions, like the imagery that they recognized from earlier in the novel, gives them a boost of confidence. In regards to "a hot thing," I tell them that my teacher's edition of Beloved just has all of these notes in the margins, and none of them define what "a hot thing" is (the notes, of course, being my own annotations). I admit to having my own theory, but I would like to hear theirs before revealing my own. Despite the lack of a concrete answer, this makes students more comfortable in their own suppositions about the chapter. When they assign meaning to "a hot thing," they must defend their response based on textual support and interpretation, and I have heard some interesting theories. At the end of class, if no one has landed on it, I share my own thoughts: that "a hot thing" is the emotion or relationship that exists between Beloved and Sethe. It is rooted in love, a "hot," powerful, passionate sensation, but it is also tainted with Beloved's anger that Sethe abandoned her. There is a sense of desperation, longing, and control in the image itself and in its repetition.
Bildungsroman
Beloved may seem the obvious choice as the character for whom the novel is a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel, but it is actually Denver who rapidly matures and becomes an adult in the year that the text covers (in present tense, spring 1873 to spring 1874). It is a worthwhile activity to have students trace specific moments that showcase Denver's maturation throughout the novel, and what follows is an example of guiding them.
Morrison does not hide the fact that Denver is practically a woman in the first chapter; we know that it has been eighteen years since Paul D saw Sethe and, he says to Denver, "Last time I saw your mama, you were pushing out the front of her dress," a reference to Sethe's pregnancy. 31 It is, however, remarks like Sethe's response that lead the reader to forget Denver's age: "Still is, provided she can get in it." The students I teach are seventeen to eighteen years old, about to enter the world of independence; they cannot imagine either themselves or a peer wanting to crawl into a parent's lap or re-enter the womb. Denver is consistently characterized as being exceptionally childish, even from the first moment she arrives: "the girl who walked down...was round and brown with the face of an alert doll." 32 She is also quite jealous of the relationship between Paul D and Sethe, particularly because it creates an intimacy of which she is not a part. Students tend to perceive this as an immature, childish need for attention. Additionally, there is her emotional and seemingly unprovoked outburst that begins with an impudent retort and ends with her "shaking now and sobbing so she could not speak," and lashing out at her mother: "It's not the house! It's us! And it's you!" 33 The idea of fighting with a parent is much more realistic to students, but the way in which Denver handles her emotions seems to infantilize her. Sethe's treatment of Denver encourages the reader's interpretation of Denver's immaturity, as well: "Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What's that supposed to mean? In my heart it don't mean a thing." 34 Denver is the only child of four that Sethe has left, so it makes sense that she wants her to stay a child so that she will not leave like her brothers.
The moment Denver begins to mature hinges on the arrival of the physical Beloved. Denver has been desperate for a companion, especially since Paul D has taken her mother's attention. Once the family takes in this stranger, "Denver tended her, watched her sound sleep, listened to her labored breathing and, out of love and a breakneck possessiveness that charged her, hid like a personal blemish Beloved's incontinence." 35 Denver realizes long before Sethe exactly who Beloved is. Once Denver has set boundaries with her mother—"Leave us alone, Ma'am. I'm taking care of her"—Sethe casually wonders where their dog Here Boy is. "'He won't be back,' said Denver. 'How you know?' 'I just know.'" 36 The dog has refused to enter the house since the description in the first chapter when Beloved's spirit "picked up Here Boy and slammed him into wall hard enough to break two of his legs and dislocate his eye". 37 Denver's mysterious declaration is a good moment to ask students what she knows, and many animal lovers hold a serious grudge against the ghost for harming the dog and quickly remember that painful description in chapter 1. This moment is a strong indication that Denver knows Beloved's true identity and that she is beginning to act her age. Despite the fact that Beloved is technically older than she is (twenty to her eighteen), she senses that Beloved is developmentally the age she was at her death. This allows Denver to care for and protect Beloved, though still in an immature, possessive way.
Denver's final test of maturity comes in part three of the novel. Once Sethe realizes that Beloved is her child returned to her, "the two of them cut Denver out of the games." 38 Sethe is consumed with pleasing Beloved and Beloved refuses to be pleased. The relationship between them becomes dangerous and Denver realizes that "[s]he would have to leave the yard; step off the edge of the world, leave the two behind and go ask somebody for help." 39 Asking students why the language in this quotation is so powerful is a good strategy for understanding Denver's characterization and maturity. 124 has been her world because it has been her insulation from the judgment of others about her family, but for the first time, she is not concerned with herself. She is worried about her mother and her sister and is willing to put her own desire, to stay in the confines of the world she knows, aside so that she can save them all. Denver leaves the house and goes to the one person she knows outside of 124: her former teacher, Lady Jones. Denver admits she is seeking work because her mother is ill. "'Oh, baby,' said Mrs. Jones. 'Oh, baby.' She did not know it then, but it was the word 'baby,' said softly and with such kindness, that inaugurated her life in the world as a woman." 40 Students usually recognize the significance of this moment and I like to ask about the juxtaposition of word choice and impact. Why does the word "baby" make Denver a woman? Is it simply for irony's sake? Rather than the word itself, it is the tone of sympathy that accompanies it that leads Denver to maturity.
Denver's childish loneliness and possessiveness are swept away in this moment, and she realizes that she does not have to be alone in this struggle. The welcoming and support of the women in her community, by way of Mrs. Jones, are what allows her to achieve womanhood. She displays her maturity for Paul D once Beloved is gone. In a conversation about who or what Beloved really was, she proclaims "I have my own" opinion, and Paul D acknowledges that Denver can no longer be treated like a child. It is her final words to him, however, that have the strongest impact: "Paul D, you don't have to stay 'way, but be careful how you talk to my ma'am, hear?" 41 Denver clearly establishes that she is responsible for her mother, reversing the care relationship that has been the basis of the novel. She lets Paul D know that he is welcome as long as he is cautious, making Sethe the child that needs comfort. That Denver is now capable of unselfishly caring for another is strong evidence that her journey into womanhood is complete.
Narrative Truth, Historical Truth
Storytelling is supposed to be fictional, creative, and fantastical. Morrison begins her Nobel Prize lecture with the following: "Narrative has never been merely entertainment for me. It is, I believe, one of the principal ways in which we absorb knowledge. I hope you will understand, then, why I begin these remarks with the opening phrase of what must be the oldest sentence in the world, and the earliest one we remember from childhood: "Once upon a time...". 42 Those last four words are the cue that we are about to enter a world of fantasy, simultaneously connected to and removed from reality. There must be, however, some form of personal or universal truth to give a story its power and credibility. The characters and world of 124 Bluestone Road are entirely fictional but are rooted in multiple types of historical truth that command the reader to engage and wrestle with the repercussions of the stories that have been told to and about them, and which they tell to each other and to the reader.
Slavery and its horrors have been well-documented, even prior to its legal end in the United States a century and a half ago. There are firsthand accounts from Frederick Douglass and Linda Brent (AKA Harriet Jacobs) that speak to the violence and fear that slaves experienced even while seeking to find ways to free themselves from their bondage. Slavery has been reimagined in a variety of fictional works throughout the twentieth century; The Known World by Edward P. Jones is a recent addition to the canon that adds a unique perspective—the little-acknowledged fact that some blacks owned slaves. Part of the powerful narrative truth in Beloved stems from the historical truth of slavery, and in particular, the memory of and psychological trauma inflicted by slavery. I should acknowledge my teaching context: I am from and teach in the South (North Carolina). Despite the long separation of years and generations, there continues to be a different treatment of the history of slavery in states that fought against the Federal Army in the Civil War. I believe this to be true based on conversations with colleagues who were raised in Massachusetts or Indiana. Some students that I teach acknowledge coming from families that owned slaves. Even now, this is delicate territory.
I have found one of the novel's strengths to be the focus on the psychological, rather than physical, scars left on the characters. A strong example to use with students that iterates the dominance of the psychological over the physical is in the first chapter as Sethe explains to Paul D what she means when she says, "I got a tree on my back." 43 This off-hand remark intrigues Paul D, but for Sethe, the real story is what came prior to the whipping that produced the tree-like scar. Sethe tells him that she was still nursing her third child while pregnant with the fourth and that "those boys came in there and took my milk. Held me down and took it." This is a physical desecration on par with rape—to be restrained and suckled like an animal—but for Sethe, it violates her ability to be a mother to her child and that is what continues to haunt her. She tells her mistress what happened and while the white owner's "eyes rolled out tears, [t]hem boys found out I told em. Schoolteacher made one open up my back and when it closed it made a tree." As Paul D hears the story, he cannot believe that a pregnant woman was whipped: "They used cowhide on you? They beat you and you was pregnant?" Sethe repeats, "And they took my milk!" Many students will react similarly to Paul D; they will not fail to recognize the physical and even emotional toll that this event has on Sethe, but a teacher's guidance through the psychological territory will help them understand the heavy maternal burden that she continues to carry.
Perhaps the most significant historical reality in the novel is not addressed until the sixteenth chapter, in which the reader finally learns how Sethe's two year old child was killed. The background of the murder is now one of the more famous historical connections in modern literature. As Morrison writes in the foreword to Beloved, "A newspaper clipping in The Black Book (one of the books I had published back when I had a job) summarized the story of Margaret Garner, a young mother who, having escaped slavery, was arrested for killing one of her children (and trying to kill the others) rather than let them be returned to the owner's plantation." 44 While Margaret Garner's story was sensationalized and well-known at the time, it was forgotten over the years. When I first read the novel, I had no idea of the historical reality or the parallels that Morrison built into the narrative.
It is of particular interest from a writer's perspective that, in the foreword, Morrison goes on to say, "The historical Margaret Garner is fascinating, but, to a novelist, confining...So I would invent her thoughts, plumb them for a subtext that was historically true in essence, but not strictly factual." Morrison, however, embeds several historical truths from Margaret Garner's story in the novel that lend a tone of gravity. Sethe and Denver do not reveal last names, but Paul D introduces himself as "Paul D Garner," after the masters at Sweet Home. 45 In Levi Coffin's autobiography, published in 1876, the man hailed as the "President of the Underground Railroad" wrote that "no case...attracted more attention and aroused deeper interest and sympathy that the case of Margaret Garner." 46 He goes on to give details about the escape, including the fact that the slaves were "living in Kentucky, several miles back from the [Ohio R]iver" and that they planned to escape to a free state, which would be Ohio. Sweet Home is in Kentucky and Sethe gives birth to Denver on the banks of the Ohio River before being ferried across by Stamp Paid, where she is reunited with her three other children, who are already with Baby Suggs. Once "the fugitives were surrounded by pursuers, Margaret Garner, seeing that their hopes of freedom were in vain, seized a butcher knife that lay on the table, and with one stroke cut the throat of her little daughter, whom she probably loved the best." 47 There is no exact parallel of language in Morrison's novel, but when the slavecatchers enter the woodshed, Sethe is "holding a blood-soaked child to her chest" so "her head wouldn't fall off." 48 At the end of the novel when Beloved has disappeared again and Sethe has taken to her bed, much like Baby Suggs, she says, "[Beloved] was my best thing." 49
These are all powerful connections that students are fully capable of perceiving, and it truly deepens the significance of the novel. The historical truth is so strongly intertwined with the narrative truth that the impact is compounded, not in any way lessened, because it is a work of fiction. After students have read this chapter, they come into class, expecting an immediate discussion. Many of them have clearly formed judgments about the justice of Sethe's decision. As students walk through the door, I hand them the passage from Reminiscences with directions to read the selection and write a response to two questions prior to discussion: Paragraph 1) What similarities are present between Margaret and Sethe? Does reading this change your opinion of Sethe at all?
Paragraph 2) How do you personally deal with the situation in ch. 16, morally and/or ethically. (Philosophically, 'morality' speaks to the character, actions, and/or values of an individual; 'ethics' is the set of standards that governs a particular group.) The discussion that follows is more serious and grounded in the text, which respects the historical reality of the situation (see the Appendix for the text from Reminiscences).
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