preview

Denver Sugg's Transformation In Beloved

Decent Essays

Beloved, by Toni Morrison is one of the most important books in the anthropocene, and yet the meaning behind the central message of the novel is still widely disputed. The story is told by several events in the past told by the perspective of several characters which can be formed into a chronological timeline about one family’s experience of slavery. Beloved can be viewed as Denver Sugg’s rebirth into the social community, as well as the rebirth of our nation after slavery.

The given passage from Beloved page 290-92 shows the moment when Denver’s metamorphosis completes. “She did not know it then, but it was the word “baby,” said softly and with such kindness, that inaugurated her life in the world as a woman.” (Morrison 292). The phrase “Inaugurated” means to mark the beginning of, and Morrison chose to use this word to signify the start of Denver’s …show more content…

Towards the start of the novel, based on how Morrison developed Denver’s character, I think that Denver would be a young adult woman with Reactive Attachment Disorder. According to the Mayo Clinic, RAD is when, “A child whose needs are ignored or met with a lack of emotional response from caregivers does not come to expect care or comfort or form a stable attachment to caregivers” . This shows an accurate description of Denver in the beginning of the novel because Morrison writes “[Denver was] a person that wept, sighed, trembled, and fell into fits” (Morrison 35). Earlier in the same page Morrison writes, “Denver’s imagination produced its own hunger and its own food, which she badly needed because her loneliness wore her out. Wore her out” (35). The way we are introduced to Denver in this chapter seems off. Denver’s living condition is comparable to a child who is neglected by their mother or father because Denver is constantly forced to be her own friend and live in her own

Get Access