Paranoia In African American Culture

Toni Morrison's Beloved expands on the long lasting effects of slavery, and how those effects can have just as strong of an impact on generations that had never had a direct experience with it. The novel is an expansion well beyond the individual experience in slavery, but retells how the individual can be held captive by their past and their personal response to it. Beloved may be seen as a work that is primarily about women, and the slave mothers experience. However, in the male characters Toni Morrison also explores manhood in the time of slavery as well as how race and personal history can have a significant effect on it’s very definition. Throughout Beloved, it seems as though the oppression that the black characters face and the horrific

Toni Morrison redefines the boundaries and capacities of love in her novel about freed African Americans, Beloved. Due to their positions and past experiences, the former slaves in Beloved have a tendency to disassociate themselves from love. Sethe, one of Morrison’s main characters, suffers from the opposite affliction; Sethe loves too much and much too hard. Morrison explores the complex feeling of love and its power to hurt both the receivers and givers of this feeling.

Slavery was abolished in 1865, freeing all enslaved African Americans in the United States. But even after it was abolished slavery left a lasting Toni Morrison’s Beloved protests the injustices and trauma of being a slave and how it persists even after freedom is attained. Through the characters Sethe and Paul D, Toni portrays the pain and terrible memories they carry with them from their time of being enslaved. In the novel Beloved Morrison is protesting slavery and the lasting trauma it leaves on the character’s lives after freedom through flashbacks, the ghost who haunts house 124, and the character’s individual fears.

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

Furthermore, Sethe spoils Beloved with as much motherly love as possible in order to make up for killing her. Therefore, Beloved personifies the past because she is the literal embodiment of Sethe’s daughter’s spirit coming to life. However, not only does Beloved embody the spirit of Sethe’s dead child Beloved also embodies the psychological trauma of Sethe’s past because if it were not for slavery then Sethe would not have to kill her child and experience the vengeful spirit known as Beloved. Therefore, Beloved is a constant reminder to Sethe of Sweet Home’s atrocities. Morrison uses the revival of the past through Beloved in order to comment on the enduring effects of slavery because Morrison suggests that those who have been affected by slavery will forever be haunted by their captivity.

In Toni Morrison's Beloved, the Black literature author touches upon tough subjects such as slavery, the affects of slavery, and the cruelty that is brought by it. For a person to be cruel, they commit inhumane crimes against a victim or victims that ultimately dehumanizes them. This concept displays itself several times throughout the novel, depicted through the characters that represent not only the "sixty million and more," but also the broken system of a slavery-ruled society, effectively showing the affects of such heinous crimes. In Beloved, the community commits cruel acts to characters such as Paul D, Denver, and Sethe, prompting them to act cruely themselves.

Repression of memories is a psychological concept that has haunted modern psychology for years. Repression of memories also known as “rememory” defined by the mind pushing away traumatic or shocking experiences into a dark corner of a person’s unconscious. As this idea developed and began to be studied more thoroughly, slavery became an institution in which researchers saw promise in drawing conclusions about the dangers of repressing memories. In Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, the character narratives of Paul D and Sethe exemplify the dangers of repressing memories. Both disconnect from and push away unwanted emotional traumas or experiences from their past. However, this effort doesn’t pay off and their repression of memories is not successful. Through the use of symbols such as Paul D’s tobacco tin and Sethe’s scars and lost child, Morrison demonstrates how repression of the past isn’t effective and how it always comes back to haunt a person who doesn’t correctly cope with their trauma. Paul D and Sethe live unfulfilled lives as a result of repressed memories.

Grotesque images of rape, murder, and sexual abuse are recurring throughout Toni Morrison's novel Beloved. The ideals of the white oppressor, be it murder, rape, or sexual abuse were powerful forces that shaped the lives of many of the characters, especially the character Sethe.

In Beloved, the life of the blacks and their working condition is an epitome of their suffrage under slavery. Beloved pictures the physical and psychological effects of slavery not only upon women but also the community. Toni Morrison wants to make readers become aware of the physical and psychological damage done to African American people by the brutal inhumanity that constituted American slavery. Sethe brings out the full human meaning and implications of the slave experience. Beloved points out love as the solution to overcome Seethes’ trauma of killing her daughter and her wounds of slavery. Love can also be regarded as the cure to heal the past slavery racial conflicts. Another important aspect of slavery in the novel is the fact that its effects are felt even after persons find freedom.

Toni Morrison’s main purpose of animal imagery throughout Beloved is to more deeply connect the underlying question of self-identity that African Americans experienced as a result of slavery. This question specifically relates from the widely accepted subhuman treatment of African Americans in the South even years following the emancipation of slavery, and it provides a deeper understanding of the brutal dispositions of white slaveowners. Characters in Beloved, including Sethe, Stamp Paid, and Paul D, who have directly experienced this type of animalistic dehumanization as former slaves find themselves frequently question their own fundamental self worth and identity. Through constant abuse and antagonization, these slaves unavoidably accept themselves as subordinate to animals. This sentiment derives from several instances throughout the novel where these characters directly confronted with comparisons to animals as a result of this sub humane treatment by former slave owners. Toni Morrison uses animal imagery to more effectively emphasize the relation between the brutal and dehumanizing experiences in the South with the actual barbaric dispositions of white slave owners.

     The same publication that leads Morrison to conjuring up the characters and the story of Beloved  also surveys the horrors of slavery in the mid 1800's.  Morrison dedicates the book to "Sixty Million and more"(Morrison, i) slaves and acknowledges the freedom that each slave yearned for.   This freedom constitutes having the ability to chose one's own responsibilities and loving other people more than you love yourself. (Taylor-Guthrie, 195-196).  Morrison's characters stand in for all those slaves and former slaves who were 'unceremoniously buried' without tribute or recognition.  As she feels chosen by these slaves to attend to their burial 'properly, artistically', Beloved becomes her effort to accomplish that.  It is an act of recovering the past in narrative, to 'insert this memory that was unbearable and unspeakable into the literature. (Furman, 80).  Even Morrison finds it hard to

Throughout Beloved, Morrison alludes to the historical role of slaves, specifically the weakness of the innocent individuals due to the dominance of the white race. As a slave, Sethe suffers internally as she is stripped of her identity. Prior to escaping from slavery, schoolteacher’s white nephews steal one of the physical properties that transforms a woman to

 Toni Morrison’s powerful novel Beloved is based on the aftermath of slavery and the horrific burden of slavery’s hidden sins.  Morrison chooses to depict the characters that were brutalized in the life of slavery as strong-willed and capable of overcoming such trauma.  This is made possible through the healing of many significant characters, especially Sethe.  Sethe is relieved of her painful agony of escaping Sweet Home as well as dealing with pregnancy with the help of young Amy Denver and Baby Suggs.  Paul D’s contributions to the symbolic healing take place in the attempt to help her erase the past.  Denver plays the most significant role in Sethe’s healing in that she brings the community’s support

to her. Amy Denver saves Sethe. Amy is a white girl who came to Sethes

Beloved (1987) is a sensitive novel written by Toni Morrison a renowned Afro-American author. It deals with the forgotten era of slavery and the pathos of black slaves. The novel tells a wrenching story of a black female slave, Sethe, who kills her own daughter to protect her from the horrors of slavery. Morrison has excelled in creating her female characters. Her novels show a deep sense of bonding between the female characters. In Beloved the female bonding and the multiple layer of meaning in their relationship makes the story emotionally appealing and according to Barbara Schapira in Contemporary Literature it is the story that, “penetrates perhaps more deeply than any historical or psychological study could, the unconscious emotional and psychic consequences of slavery.”(194). The story touches the social, psychological, philosophical and supernatural elements of human life.