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How is syntax used in Beloved?

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In addition to the other two Educator answers, I would point out that Toni Morrison uses fragments, compound-complex sentences, appositives, and parallelism in her syntax for Beloved. Syntax, at its most basic level, is the arrangement of words and phrases within a sentence.

While the fragment tends to be looked down upon by formal and academic writers since it does not follow typically accepted grammatical rules, the intentional fragment can be used by an author for emphasis.

Morrison opens her novel with an intentional fragment: "Full of a baby's venom."

Another example of syntax is the use of the compound-complex sentence. A compound-complex sentence contains at least two independent clauses (or complete "thoughts") and one dependent clause (a fragment). One example of a compound-complex sentence appears in the opening paragraph of the novel:

The grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen years old—as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered it (that was the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny hand prints appeared in the cake (that was it for Howard).

Two independent clauses are as follows:

  • The grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead
  • The sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen years old

There are two dependent clauses in the sentence as well:

  • as soon as looking in the mirror shattered it
  • as soon as two tiny hand prints appeared in the cake

Morrison also uses appositives in her writing. An appositive is, essentially, the renaming of something. The sentence contains two appositives:

  • Grandmother = Baby Suggs
  • Sons = Howard and Buglar

The sentence also includes the use of parallelism. Parallelism is the balancing of verbal constructions. Essentially, this means that a sentence's words bear the same weight, so as to show the parts possess equal importance. An example of parallelism within the sentence lies in Morrison's use of "as soon as" when describing the circumstances which surround each boy's leaving.

Morrison uses these types of syntax throughout her novel.

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Toni Morrison uses non-standard English syntax in Beloved. "Syntax" refers to the order of words and phrases used to make sentences. Many of the characters use non-standard or disordered syntax, and much of the narration in the novel is told with non-standard syntax. For example, in Chapter One, the house in which Sethe and her daughter live is described in the following way:

"It had been a long time since anybody (good-willed whitewoman, preacher, speaker or newspaperman) sat at their table, their sympathetic voices called liar by the revulsion in their eyes. For twelve years, long before Grandma Baby died, there had been no visitors of any sort and certainly no friends. No coloredpeople. Certainly no hazelnut man with too long hair and no notebook, no charcoal, no oranges, no questions" (page 7; page numbers may vary according to the edition).

In this passage, Sethe's house is described as empty in a very interesting, fractured way. The syntax in the book is disordered in part to replicate dialogue and the way people in the book, brought up mostly as slaves, would speak. Some sentences are not full sentences but fragments to show the way people might have told this story orally rather than in writing. In addition, the confused syntax expresses the confusion and disorderly nature of the characters' world. The African-American characters in the book are all affected by slavery, a horror that created lives that aren't orderly or neat. The characters' language and syntax reflect their life experiences in a cruel and disorderly world.

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Toni Morrison uses language to express the culture of the black community.

"In Beloved, Morrison makes use of idiom to help re-create the sense of a specific community, that of African Americans in Reconstruction Ohio. When the characters use words like "ain't" and "reckon" and phrases like "sit down a spell," it helps place their characters within that community."

"One particularly interesting example of this idiom is the way in which it describes people of different races. In compound words such as "whitegirl," "blackman," and "coloredpeople," a person's race is actually part of the word that describes them."

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