Great American Books

This is the official blog for the students of Monica Osborne's Great American Books course at Purdue University.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Morrison: Love


In Chapter 2 ("Friend"), we get, among other things, a depiction of Christine and Heed at Bill Cosey's funeral. "Hate," writes Morrison, "does that. Burns off everything but itself, so whatever your grievance is, your face looks just like your enemy's" (34). In a book titled Love, it's a curious description.

I'm going to leave this open. With this quotation in mind, I would like you to comment on what you've read so far. Be sure to use specific examples from the novel in your responses.

Please post your response no later than Saturday, October 21, 8pm.

posted by Monica @ 11:59 PM  

22 Comments:

  • At 9:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I believe that is Morrison's Love, we are getting a sense of all the good times in Christine, and Heed's lives but in actuallity we are only getting their perceptions of a good life. It seems like every women idealizes Mr. Cosey when he is not such a good man. Heed thinks her husband Mr. Cosey was just trying to comfort everyone, and that was all, which was untrue. In this passage between Heed and Junior we can see Heed's misconception about her husband. "'Why is your husband (Mr. Cosey) looking at her and not you.' 'Trying to cheer her up, I suppose. He was like that'" (61). It is through "L" that we really see Mr. Bill Cosey for who he really is. "I raised my hand and wanted to call out to him (Mr. Cosey), but something- the way he held his head, maybe, or a kind of privacy wrapped about him- stopped me. I wanted to warm him but, weary and still out of sorts, I kept on walking. Down a piece I saw somebody else. A woman sitting on a blanket massaging her head with both hands. I stood there while she got up, naked as truth, and went into the wave" (105-6). I feel that this passage shows that Mr. Cosey despite being a generous man, was one that got around, a lot, and was unfaithful and a great a man as everyone thought he was.

     

  • At 11:22 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I think Jon’s example, where Junior asked Heed where Mr. Cosey was looking in the picture is an excellent example of what kind of man Mr. Cosey truly was. He is not faithful, but does take care of the people close to him financially. I got the impression he was unfaithful because of his wealth. All of the women wanted to marry him because they would be taken care of financially and therefore where willing to live with his unfaithfulness.
    I am not sure why the title of the book is Love. It does not seem like anyone of the characters in the book love another character. In my opinion everyone in the book seems to be mean to everyone else. Even Romen is treated badly by his grandparents. His grandma slaps his hand when he reaches for the pineapple and makes him quit eating before he has finished his supper (18). I don’t know why you would name a book Love when all that the book portrays is hate and dislike. Another act of hatred is shown on page 46 when the seven boys rape the girl.

     

  • At 1:39 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Michael raised an interesting point when he commented that he was confused as to why a book about hate and dislike would be titled Love. It seems that in Love, Morrison is not trying to portray a beautiful story of hope and devotion, but to show how many emotions can become entangled over years of events among a group of people. Morrison even tries to explain her intentions on page x of the foreword, saying, "People tell me that I am always writing about love. Always about love. ... In fact, I am always writing about betrayal. Love is the weather. Betrayal is the lightning that cleaves and reveals it."

    I feel that the quotation cited by Monica somewhat explains the author's intentions. Christine and Heed are portrayed as having a vile, deeply rooted hate for each other, and many of the other characters are intertwined in the story of how these two came to dislike each other so much. However, Christine is still living in the same house as Heed, and throughout their lives, there has always been a strong connection between the two. It seems that common sense would dictate that if these two really hated each other as much as they claim to, they would live very far away from each other and never be in contact. Since this is not the case though, there can be a strong argument made that these two share a twisted and displaced love for each other, of which hatred and betrayal are the byproducts.

     

  • At 2:32 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I think that Heed and Christine do love each other on some weird level like Kristin was saying. If someone really and truly hates another person, they would try to get as far away as possible. And if they honestly hated each other either Heed or Christine would have (eventually) killed the other. (ex. of 'violence' between Christine and Heed on page 98, if Christine really wanted to kill or harm Heed, I believe that she would have regardless of L stopping her.)

    As for Mr. Cosey, I believe that every person is good in ways and isn't the best in some aspects too. Mr. Cosey is portrayed as both in this book and I think that he does try to do good things, for instance, when he asks Mr. Sandler out for fishing. (40) These fishing trips happen for at least a good year. Mr. Cosey seems genuine in these regards to me.

     

  • At 3:08 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I agree with what Wendy has said about Bill Cosey being portrayed in a good light and bad. Bill Cosey is definitely the center of all the relationships that go on in the novel. For example he caused and awkward relationship between Christine and Heed, that is never fully brought out, but definitely noticed. For example Christine makes a casserole for lunch for Heed. Bringing it up to her Heed makes a rude comment to Junior about her so called "friend". "Heed lifted the casserole lid, then replaced it...Anything to annoy me..looks delicious (Junior)..then you eat it...what she knows is I dont eat shellfish". This underlies the relaionship between the two and you can feel the tension. This makes many of us think that Bill Cosey is not a great man for ruining such a friendship. However, when it comes to the resort that he owns, he is looked at in a completley different light. "His pleasure was in pleasing...this best good time" "All because of the beaming Bill Cosey and the wide hospitality his place was known for". People in this aspect of things look at him to be such a great guy who would do anything to please. The book Love is kind of ironic when you see nothing but hositility and fakeness towards one another. Maybe its because we think what we have is love and sometimes its not what it turns out to be.

     

  • At 3:09 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    the quotes above can be found on pages 29,33-34!

     

  • At 9:51 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I think Toni Morrison really wants her readers to think about the idea of love. Why do we love? Why do we love certain people and not others? I like the quote that Kristin used in her entry. Morrison’s Love seems to be about hate and betrayal but sometimes and for many this is apart of love for someone else. I believe many people throughout their lifetimes question the people they have loved. All people have so called “good” and “bad” qualities. Although like with many of Morrison’s characters, they cannot help but to continue to love even with the “bad.” This quote is from one of her other works, Paradise but deals with some of the same feelings I believe she is trying to portray in Love. “Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God.”

     

  • At 1:07 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Well when you think of Love people think the opposite is hate, but in reality it is indifference. This may not go with this quote exactly but when you think of heed and christine's relationship you think of hate, and logically you would say they dont love each other. But in reality, they do love each other, they always did, they care enough to hate each other. The more one hates the other the more the other hates them for hating them. In their case it has been a vicious cycle. You can tell they still care because there is still conflict and they are still living together. Even at one point in the book one makes the other a sandwich. I think their vicous cycle is that they want the other to stop hating them but the more one hates the other the more the other hates them.
    Morrison is essentially changing the way we view love. The view of love in this book is the love in the community, who loved bill cosey, the love to hate, and the love of family. This quote I believe is saying that though you may think that you hate someone and that you are better than them, you are just the same as them, you hate them the same that they hate you, you feel the same they do, you have a common thread, and though you may think you are better for being the one to hate, you are just as bad as the one hating you.
    Morrison, I think, really wants us to look at what love is in all reality. Love is not easy as whitney said, it is not simple, it is not all bunnies and pink flowers. Its hard, its full of dislike, think about it the people you most love tend to be the people you at times can have the most problems with, you have high expectations, and when those are dashed, you get angry, you fill shortchanged.

    Love is life and life is love.

     

  • At 3:23 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    When I read that description in Love, I interpreted as a depiction of their own personal self-loathing. Hate makes people ugly, but it also reflects a person's own ugly feelings. When looking at each other, Christine and Heed see not only a person they hate but also their own flaws reflected back. They see a person who used to be a friend, turned enemy for their differences in their relationship with Cosey.

     

  • At 7:57 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I think that in the passage referred to, as well as throughout the book, L represents a sort of unconditional love. She is the only one who doesn't judge the characters, she accepts them for who they are, and loves them all the same. She is the only one who truly knows Mr. Cosey, and it is arguable that she has the most sincere love for him because she refuses to see him through the "rose-colored glasses" the rest of the town uses.

    The passage on page 34 is a good example of L's symbolic representation of love. It says "Once again L restored order, just as she always had." To me, this is saying more than just "L" stepped between the two. It is saying that the love the two had for eachother, however buried it might be, stopped them from commiting the ultimate betrayal.

    The paragraph goes on to say that "L" quit that very day (of the funeral). I think that is what caused the downfall of the hotel, no one worked there that was able to set aside differences. This teaches us another of Morrison's lessons on love, that it doesn't exist when you waste your time focusing on how you are different (either better or worse) than the person next to you.

     

  • At 7:49 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    It seems that Bill Cosey betrayed both girls (Christine and Heed). Though neither girl wants to admit that Mr. Cosey would do that. By choosing Heed as his wife, he broke a friendship between Heed and Christine forever. Also, he was not true while married to Heed. This shows betrayal at its core since he was her husband, bound by sacred vows which he broke. Yet, he also betrayed Christine by sending her off right after the ma

     

  • At 7:52 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    It seems that Bill Cosey betrayed both girls (Christine and Heed). Though neither girl wants to admit that Mr. Cosey would do that. By choosing Heed as his wife, he broke a friendship between Heed and Christine forever. Also, he was not true while married to Heed. This shows betrayal at its core since he was her husband, bound by sacred vows which he broke. Yet, he also betrayed Christine by sending her off right after the marriage. I found it odd that Heed continually speaks about how Mr. Cosey never underestimated her intelligence, yet he never sent her to get an education. It seemed as though he was trying to keep her ignorant in more areas than just his nighttime wonders...

    Yet, even as the women refuse to see fault in Bill Cosey's actions, they are quick to point the finger at each other. The fact that Mr. Cosey's will was so ambiguous. Both are fighting for the affections of a dead man, a ghost. They do not seem to understand that it is Bill who transgressed on their trust and loyalty and not the other. This does not seem to even be the normal, "he's dead so we must think good of him" routine. It is truly that Heed and Christine see no flaw in Bill's character or actions. Everything he did was noble. They never even blame him for the will being so vague (or lack thereof).

    Though, them elevating him could be more to gain worth in themselves. When Bill chose to marry Heed and allow her to take over the estate and hotel, he drew away Christine's confidence. The same happened to Heed since he paid for Christine to go to school. Therefore, by raising their opinion of him, they are trying to make up for the lack of opinion in themselves. Also, by trampling on each other, they are attempting to degrade the other and put one above the other through that means. Either way, it is impossible to see that Bill Cosey is the disease that killed the friendship and caused the betrayal they feel.

     

  • At 8:56 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    It is interesting that Morrison decided to name the book Love, when in fact this book seems to be nothing about love at all. Maybe Morrison is showing how love can come in many forms, such as taking care of the ones we care about after death, or it can even be disguised as hatred. Just the fact that Heed and Christine manage to live with each other even though they are “enemies” is something I find hard to believe. It is hard to be around or even look at someone that you hate, let alone live under the same roof as them. I agree with Kim, that Bill did betray both girls by marring Heed and breaking up the friendship between them. I feel that the fact that he married Heed at such a young age shows that he took advantage of her, and this made Christine jealous of her friend which lead her to despise Bill as well. On page 37 there is a quote that gives us a side of Bill that shows that he had plently of people who didn’t want him around. “Yet those who might have wanted him dead—Christine, a husband or two, and a few white businessmen—were nowhere near.” This shows that he wasn’t fair, faithful, or an honest man to all.

     

  • At 9:09 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I agree with Whitney when she said that she thinks Toni Morrison wants us to really think about what love is. Some people say that hate is very close to love because they both involve a lot of emotion. Maybe that is what Morrison is trying to convey. Maybe Christine and Heed have a love-hate relationship. Maybe they don't know how to show love because they have been bitter towards each other for too long so they channel their emotions into hate. I think that is why Toni Morrison entitled her book "Love". I think she wanted to challenge the normal way that we think of love and make us see how love looks in many different forms.

     

  • At 9:39 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    At first I really did think that the title of this book Love was an inappropriate one. As I have gotten closer to the end it seems that love conquers all. Simply because Heed and Christine become friends after all of these years of animosity. Now I find the title to be very fitting for this book.

    I have thought some of what we talked about in class on thursday. How people want to assign good and bad titles to characters in books or even people in life. It's just a natural tendency. It seems to me that this obsession for Bill Cosey is because his appearance of goodness. Having a resort for both black and whites, buying Heed a lot of clothes on their honeymoon, taking Sandler fishing, providing for his family, and he was just an all around pleasant guy to be around. I find his real character becomes evident when he marries an 11 year old who isn't old enough to be responsible for the commitment she is making, and when he commits adultry. Real character is displayed when nobody is looking and he shows no great character to me.

     

  • At 11:54 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I agree with the fact that Heed and Christine still care about one another. The fact that they still live in the same house proves that. Like was said earlier, if they really hated each other, they would try to get as far away from one another as possible. I also think they still care for each other because they were best friends for most of their childhood, and even after Heed married Bill, there were times when they wanted to be nice to the other. On pages 133 and 134, Christine says that she planned to be civil to Heed and wanted things to be different than before she left the house. Unfortunately, things did not turn out to be that way until the end. Like Mia said, love conquers all, and I think that is why Morrison chose to name this book Love.

     

  • At 2:36 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I think love is a very subjective emotion. The comment Heather said made me think. She said that the opposite of love is indifference, and not hate. Everyone appears to hate someone else. The fact that they have an emotion at all means that they do care. It is if Heed betrayed Christine by marrying Mr. Cosey. Neither Christine nor Heed can let and go and move out of the house. They seem to be both holding on to their past friendship and love for eachother. I think that Morrison wants us to think about how we love one another. As I looked more into why Toni would name this book Love, I stumbled upon this quote. I think it explains what she was thinking “(Love) is easily the most empty cliché, the most useless word, and at the same time the most powerful human emotion—because hatred is involved in it, too.”~Toni Morrison

     

  • At 5:28 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Well, I agree with several people's discussion on the topic of why this book is titled, "Love". I agree with Heather that Morrison wants us to take a closer look at what love really is in life in general. I think this book shows the 'other' side of love. What love can do to people. My impression so far in the book is that Christine and Heed aren't getting along because of their 'love' for Mr. Cosey. They both love him for different reasons. They both want the 'home' because of their love of memories. So, I think that the quote does represent the opposite of 'love' which is 'hate' but most people hate because of something they love.
    I think the quote on page 98 is a perfect example, "The argument that followed was a refined version of the ones that had been seething among the women since the beginning: each had been displaced by another; each had a unique claim on Cosey's affection; each had either "saved" him from some disaster or relieved him of an impending one". They both have a 'love' for him and yet the love between them is shown through hate.

     

  • At 6:02 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I agree with other opinions that Heed and Christine care about each other. As we can see on the page 199,"If such children find each other before they know their own sex, or which one of them is starving, which well fed; before they know color from no color, kin from stranger, then they have found a mix of surrender and mutiny they can never live without. Heed and Christine found such a one.", their love can be found in the deep place in their heart. Therefore it exists all the time even they turns to hate each other. I think Morrison wanted to draw "love" which is held in people's heart unconsciously, and won't disappear even their relationship turn into totally different one.

     

  • At 10:58 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I agree with what most of the posters had to say with that idea that "Love" shows the different kinds of love. I thought the most interesting example of different kinds of love comes from the idea that the two girls show a very young-old love while Cosey shows an old-young love. The girls seem to be very immature in their love as can be seen with their silly arguments and the fact that they are mad at each other rather than at Cosey who is the real reason for their situation. This idea of them not pointing fingers at Cosey would seemed to be caused by the fact that they have both been in love with him since they were very young and that he has done some trully amazing things in both of their lives. Also, their immaturity shows in the example from the book where they both share a sandwhich as they wouldn't seem to trully hate each other but instead are just stuck in a never ending argument.

     

  • At 8:58 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I agree with Wendy, with how she said that if you truely hate someone then you want to get far away from them and not be around them. And the way this book is going either Christine or Heed would have killed the other if they truely hated each other. As for Mr. Cosey, I agree with what Laura has brought to everyones attention. How people thought he was good because of his hotel and how people felt more comfortable there and therefore, saw Mr. Cosey as a good and nice man.

     

  • At 10:02 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I beleive that what Ashley Risk said has merit. If the opposite of love is indifference, then this book is all about love. Love can come in many forms. If you think of love as in a sense of you love someone enough to spend the rest of your life with them, then this book fits the bill. No matter what happens (fights, make-ups, hard times, good times, etc...) you still care so much about that person and stay with them.

    On page 35 it describes how L left, "she lifted a lily from the funeral spray and never set foot in the hotel again - not even to pack, collect her chef's hat or her white oxfords." I beleive that Morrison's intent with this depiction was to show a resemblence between L and Bill Cosey. Not about how they treated people, but about their departure. Both of them had an abrupt, unexpected, and unexplained departure that was followed by chaos. Bill Cosey's death caused chaos in the lives of those who cared about him and L's departure caused chaos in the hotel and it's life.

     

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