Text 1: Critic Pham argues that Toni Morrison's Beloved must be read as a ghost story. The titular character is, literally, the murdered child returned. To explain her away as metaphor or hallucination, Pham contends, is to retreat from the novel's confrontation with the supernatural reality of historical trauma.
Text 2: Critic Whitney shares Pham's commitment to taking the novel seriously, but suggests that the literal-ghost reading flattens Morrison's ambiguity. Beloved is a ghost and a memory and a stranger, sometimes simultaneously. To insist on a single ontology, Whitney argues, is to choose the interpretive comfort that Morrison deliberately refuses to provide.
The authors most clearly disagree about
- A
whether Morrison's prose is well-crafted.
- Bcheck_circle
whether the title character should be read as definitively a ghost.
- C
whether the novel addresses historical trauma.
- D
whether Beloved is an important novel.
Explanation
Both treat Beloved as a major novel about trauma. They disagree on whether to read the character as definitively a ghost or as deliberately ambiguous. C captures this disagreement.