Beloved By Toni Morrison: Independent Study

The past comes back to haunt accurately in Beloved. Written by Toni Morrison, a prominent African-American author and Noble Prize winner for literature, the novel Beloved focuses on Sethe, a former slave who killed her daughter, Beloved, before the story begins. Beloved returns symbolically in the psychological issues of each character and literally in human form. The novel is inspired by the true story of Margaret Garner, a slave in the 1850s, who committed infanticide by killing her child. Barbara Schapiro, the author of “The Bonds of Love and the Boundaries of Self in Toni Morrison’s Beloved”, Andrew Levy, the author of “Telling Beloved”, and Karla F.C. Holloway, the author of “Beloved: A Spiritual”, present ideas of the loss of psychological freedom, the story being “unspeakable”, Beloved being the past, and the narrative structures of the story rewriting history.

After reading Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, I could not help but feel shocked and taken aback by the detailed picture of life she painted for slaves at the time in American history. The grotesque and twisted nature of life during the era of slavery in America is an opposite world from the politically correct world of 2016. Morrison did not hold back about the harsh realities of slavery. Based on a true story, Toni Morrison wrote Beloved about the life of Sethe, a slave and her family. Toni Morrison left no stone unturned when describing the impact slavery on had the life of slaves. She dove deeper than the surface level of simply elaborating on how terrible it is to be “owned” and forced to do manual labor. Morrison describes in detail, the horrors and profoundly negative impacts slavery had on family bonds, humanity of all people involved and the slaves sense of self even after they acquired their freedom.

In her novel Beloved, Toni Morrison spins an intricate web between names and numbers for the reader to unravel. The deep connection that lies between names and numbers is a direct correspondence to the identity and worth of black people during slavery. Beloved begins with the identity of the house which is characterized by a number. The house is given a temperament as if it is a living, breathing entity and yet it still referred to as a number. The significance of this is symbolic to the plight of the black slaves. Regarded as little above the common animal, slaves were defined by their selling price, essentially they were reduced to a number. Viewed as nonbeings they nevertheless feel and suffer their place in the south. The character Beloved is similar in this regard as well. All that defines her is an age and a name that remains unfluctuating through time. In an insufferable and cruel world, names and numbers play a critical role in understanding the identity of black existence in the South. To uncover the implications and nuances that names and numbers play will be instrumental to delving into the lives of black slaves. Beloved contains a vast amount of names and numbers and the connections between them deepen the novel and provide mammoth insight into understanding and interpreting Morrison’s work and purpose for juxtaposing such elaborate bonds between names and numbers.

In this essay I am going to explore the use of the supernatural in the

Love is said to be one of the most desired things in life. People long for it, search for it, and crave it. It can come in the form of partners, friends, or just simply family. To some, love is something of a necessity in life, where some would rather turn a cold shoulder to it. Love can be the mixture of passion, need, lust, loyalty, and blood. Love can be extraordinary and breathtaking. Love being held so high can also be dangerous. Love can drive people to numerous mad things with it dangerously so full of craze and passion.

At the climax of her book Beloved, Toni Morrison uses strong imagery to examine the mind of a woman who is thinking of killing her own children. She writes,

So often, the old adage, "History always repeats itself," rings true due to a failure to truly confront the past, especially when the memory of a period of time sparks profoundly negative emotions ranging from anguish to anger. However, danger lies in failing to recognize history or in the inability to reconcile the mistakes of the past. In her novel, Beloved, Toni Morrison explores the relationship between the past, present and future. Because the horrors of slavery cause so much pain for slaves who endured physical abuse as well as psychological and emotional hardships, former slaves may try to block out the pain, failing to reconcile with their past. However, when Sethe, one of the novel's central characters fails to confront

Late in 1987, after being inspired by a fellow story of a female fugitive slave, Toni Morrison pens a novel about a runaway slave and her children. Although Morrison’s “Beloved” quickly became a best-seller, and even has a movie adaption, it still left the audience with many unanswered questions. This novel not only gave a voice to those who were often silenced in the male stories of slavery, but it also perfectly exemplified the relationship was between the mother and the child, and the effects of slavery. Much like Jacob’s autobiography, Morrison follows directly on the issue of shame, as the protagonist of this novel is often haunted by her actions following the passing of the Fugitive

Toni Morrison brings another surprise to the story of Beloved. The addition of character Beloved conceals whole meaning Morrison tries to conduct to the readers. So far, character Beloved is portrayed as an innocent, pure, yet egotistic girl. Beloved also presumably the incarnation of Sethe’s dead baby, whose tomb is engraved Beloved. Morrison offers supernatural element in the story to create mysterious and spooky atmosphere, which raise curiosity and excite readers even more.

Pieces of literature often show relationships involving the supernatural. In Macbeth (1606), the supernatural plays an extremely important part in the structure of the plot. It provides a substructure for action, a deeper look into Macbeth’s character and it affects the impact of numerous scenes. In contrast, in Susan Hill’s novel, The Woman in Black (1983), Susan shows how the supernatural can be used in an attempt to make the reader frightened, she attempts to do this through the ghost of Jennet Humfryes who is trying to seek revenge and solace for the injustice that was done to her in her past life and to her son. Once again, the supernatural plays an integral part throughout the story with the ghost of Jennet Humfryes and what occurs at Eel Marsh house. While over three hundred and seventy years separate the two pieces of literature, both explore how the supernatural affects the protagonist’s sanity and both pieces of literature feature the supposed involvement of ghosts which are widely used in plays or novels that feature the supernatural. However, whereas Shakespeare illustrates the destructive effects the supernatural can have on a protagonist’s (Macbeth’s) decision making and how an honourable and well respected man can turn into a dishonourable and largely hated man whom people generally despise. Susan Hill demonstrates the effect of when the supernatural affects a lawyer who doesn’t end up resorting to doing anything dishonourable and who doesn’t deserve the

It is within human nature to fear that which we do not understand. In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, this idea is explored through the lens of racial discrimination. In this passage, Morrison uses animal imagery as a means to criticize the whites’ dehumanization and subsequent fear of the blacks. With a focus on this inherent, primal fear, this section stresses the novel’s theme of the “Other” and reinforces the existence of racial prejudice. While this piece of the narrative emphasizes that this “othering” strips the blacks of human identity, it also brings to the forefront the idea that through this cruel evaluation of the blacks, the whites only degrade themselves. This reinforces the novel’s idea that anywhere slavery exists, each individual suffers a loss of compassion and humanity.

Toni Morrison’s classic novel, Beloved, can be briefly summarized as a story with woman who is living in both the horrible aftermath of slavery, as well as her action of murdering her baby child in an attempt to save her from slavery. This story is based on the true story of Margaret Garner, who killed her own child and attempted to kill her other children instead of willfully letting them all return to lives of slavery. While slavery is today clearly classified as wrong by the vast majority of civilized society, as is infanticide, the event that takes place in this book is not as black and white. These instances of a grayer side of morality represent a sort of moral ambiguity that runs rampant throughout the entire novel. The example that is of paramount importance is when Sethe, the protagonist of the story, murders her child in order to save the child from a life of slavery. While at first glance, this act may seem wrong to modern readers, there is actually some evidence that, when thought about, justifies Sethe’s actions.

One of the most engaging arguments about Toni Morrison’s book Beloved is centered around the nature of the girl Beloved. The argument is whether Beloved is simply a young woman who herself had suffered the horrors of slavery, or the ghost of Sethe’s crawling already? baby girl. The evidence shows that Morrison intended Beloved to be the ghost of the crawling already? girl.

“The need of a love-relationship is the fundamental thing [in life].” (Guntrip 45) Love - possibly one of the most universally known yet personally exclusive emotion felt by man. In merely one word, “love” is used to express the love between a person and an object, a parental figure and his/her dependent, two people in a platonic relationship, and even the bond between two lovers. Love can also come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and even magnitudes. Throughout her novel, Beloved, Toni Morrison shows a very peculiar sense of love through Sethe’s relationship with Beloved as well as her relationship with Paul D. Although certain accounts may seem as if the love died

Beloved’s monologue uses postcolonial de-centering and postmodern dissemination through gothic elements of horror to convey a reimagining of the past of dead slaves, and to give Beloved a voice. Beloved begins a complex first-person stream-of- consciousness monologue, “I am Beloved and she is mine.” Through this highly impressionistic, elusive extract, Beloved narrates through patchy memories. Beloved describes what is often interpreted as a tomb or the metaphorical confines of an inescapable womb (Brooker, 435). The ambiguous meanings within Beloved’s monologues highlight the often misunderstood and broken past. Moreover, through this abstruse gothic juxtaposition of life and death, Morrison elucidates the role of Beloved as a ghost; bringing the dead to life. Most