Marrow weariness describes spiritual exhaustion that overwhelms hope.

Evidence

Perhaps Dr. King, like Baby Suggs in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, had finally succumbed to marrow weariness: the ugliness of white folks, the folks who Baby Suggs knew could come into her yard anytime they wanted, made King beyond tired, a kind of spiritual fatigue that cut through the bone. Maybe he no longer could hold himself together. Marrow weariness always threatens to overwhelm hope: it involves the nastiness of life breaking through your defenses, leaving you with a sense of helplessness and a feeling of being terribly alone. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 265

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the evocative term ‘marrow weariness’ as spiritual fatigue cutting through a person’s defenses.
• FICTION: The Baby Suggs/Beloved connection frames marrow weariness as a bodily-emotional state a writer could explore for a character exhausted by injustice.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still…, 265