We will be using the book Beloved Novel by Toni Morrison

Format: Times New Roman, 12 pt. font, double spaced, default margins

Heading: Trauma/Melancholia and Ceremony/Beloved (e.g. Trauma and Ceremony or Melancholia and Beloved, etc.)

Length: 3 paragraphs; each paragraph should be at minimum 250-350 words

Citations: Use MLA in-text citations for textual and narrative evidence; you do not have to include bibliographic information if you are using the assigned standalone texts, the edition identified in the syllabus.

Paragraph #1 (Psychical Distress from Trauma/Melancholia)

Use a topic sentence to identify which of our three theories you’ll use as a lens. Then discuss a concrete example (or subset of related examples) from the novel in which the depiction of the symptoms of trauma or melancholia seems to accord with the theory that you are using as a lens. Explain how this moment corresponds to the theory. Then complicate this application by discussing how Morrison or Silko supplements this idea of trauma or melancholia in their depiction, whether in this moment or elsewhere. In other words, how does Morrison’s or Silko’s presentation of their characters’ trauma or melancholia go beyond the ideas in the keyword explanation? What are the implications, especially in relation to racial or ethnic identity, of this difference from the theory?

Paragraph #2 (Recovery from Trauma/Melancholia)

Transition from the suffering to recovery, and use a topic sentence to frame your analysis of the depiction of recovery in novel you discussed in the preceding paragraph. Find a concrete example (or subset of related examples) from the novel that depicts some aspect of the idea of recovery—even if only a partial recovery or the beginnings of one—from trauma or melancholia and put it into conversation with the theory that you are using as a lens. Explain how this moment corresponds to the theory. Then complicate this application by discussing how Morrison or Silko supplements this idea of recovery in their depiction, whether in this moment or elsewhere. In other words, how does Morrison’s or Silko’s presentation of their characters’ recovery from trauma or melancholia go beyond the ideas in the keyword explanation? In what ways or to what degree does the writer offer an alternative path to recovery? What are the implications, especially in relation to racial or ethnic identity, of this difference from the theory?

Paragraph #3 (Putting It Together; Cultural Trauma)

First, synthesize your preceding discussion. What is the relation between your analyses of the depiction of the psychical distress caused by trauma/melancholia and the character’s recovery, that you’ve discussed? Given your discussion of them, what’s the core idea about trauma or melancholia that Morrison or Silko expresses? Next, what’s the relation between your preceding account of the depiction of trauma or blocked mourning and Ron Eyerman’s notion of cultural trauma (see Module 13 keywords)? In other words, what kind of intervention in the broader cultural narratives about African enslavement or Native dispossession does the writer make by presenting personal trauma or blocked mourning in the way that you’ve previously discussed? That is to say, how does Ceremony or Beloved through its depiction of trauma or melancholia, in Eyerman’s words, “seek to shape the public meaning of catastrophic events in a group’s history”?