The Profound Impact Of Abuse

Published in 1987, Beloved is the most acclaimed work of Toni Morrison. The author was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for this novel. Besides, Beloved, in 1993 the writer won the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was the first African American woman to be honored with this award. Upon receiving the Nobel Prize, Morrison stated that she always insisted to be called a black woman writer and, more importantly, she admitted that as an African American woman, she experienced discrimination first hand. Besides, in her writing, she aims at fighting with “national amnesia” because she does not want to allow the memory of slavery to be forgotten (Iatsenko, 2014: 58). Beloved is the novel in which past and present often overlap. The characters retell stories from the past referring them to their current situation. The novel is written from many points of views and, that is why, the fragmentation of events presented is easily noticeable (Page, 1995: 134). Philip Page argues further that the novel’s power lies in its “patterns of circularity” as well as “overlapping consciousness” (Page, 1995). In juxtaposition with this argument, Susan Bowers states that “Beloved is a novel about collecting fragments and welding them into beautiful new wholes” (in Page, 1995: 134). This argument is supported by another researcher, Marianne Hirsch, who writes that the novel presents “a cyclical reunion between the mother and

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.

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.

Toni Morrison’s Beloved takes place in Cincinnati, Ohio at house 124 and centers around Sethe, a run away slave, her daughter Denver, and Beloved, the ghost of Sethe’s daughter that she killed eighteen year earlier. An unknown force has haunted House 124 for eighteen years. One day Paul D, a slave that Sethe knew from the plantation she worked on called Sweet Home, arrives to 124, soon after the spirit leaves the house. One day, Sethe, Denver, and Paul D meet a strange young woman who calls herself Beloved. Although Paul D is very suspicious of Beloved, Sethe is captivated by this woman and allows her to stay at 124. While Beloved is at 124 she asks Sethe about numerous thing which no guest would know about. This causes Denver to grow apprehensive about Beloved, but Sethe is enamored with her and cannot see through her love for Beloved

Sethe’s relationship is in a balance at the beginning. She has the two poles of attraction, Paul’s desire to settle down and start a family, and Beloved’s desire to draw Sethe back into the past. Throughout the novel, acts of cruelty wind into her life and alter the outcome of her days. Cruelty in Beloved affects both the perpetrator and victim in that the perpetrator becomes consumed by such acts, and the victim simply devolves to be more and more vulnerable to such acts. In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Beloved’s acts of cruelty reveal how one’s inner desires can overcome the perpetrator, and dehumanize victim in the long term.

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

African-American author Toni Morrison, in her novel, Beloved, explores the experience and roles of black men and women in a racist society. She describes the black culture which is born out of a period of slavery just after the Civil War. In her novel she intends to show the reality of what happened to the slaves in the institutionalized slave system. In Beloved, the slaves working on the Sweet Home experiences brutality, violence, torture and are treated like animals. Morrison shows us what it means to live like a slave as she sheds light on the painful past of African-Americans and reveals the buried experiences for better understanding of African-American history. In the story of Beloved, special importance is given to the horrors and tortures of slavery to remind the readers about the American past. Morrison reinvents the past because she does not want the readers to forget what happened in African-American history.

     Toni Morrison's Beloved - a novel that addresses the cruelties that result from slavery.  Morrison depicts the African American's quest for a new life while showing the difficult task of escaping the past.  The African American simply wants to claim freedom and create a sense of community.  In Beloved, the characters suffer not from slavery itself, but as a result of slavery - that is to say the pain occurs as they reconstruct themselves, their families, and their communities only "after the devastation of slavery" (Kubitschek 115).  Throughout the novel, Morrison utilizes color as a symbolic tool to represent a free, safe, happy life as well as involvement in community and

Beloved is a novel by Toni Morrison based on slavery after the Civil War in the year 1873, and the hardships that come with being a slave. This story involves a runaway captive named Sethe, who commits a heinous crime to protect her child from the horrors of slavery. Through her traumas, Sethe runs from the past and tries to live a normal life. The theme of Toni Morrison’s story Beloved is how people cannot escape the past. Every character relates their hard comings to the past through setting, character development, and conflict.

 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

Every person was shaped by something, no baby exits the womb formed with all their fears, joys, and desires. Humans develop their sense of self and reaction to events through their experiences, starting in their youth. In Toni Morrison’s novel “Beloved” the early events in the life of the protagonist Sethe, have a profound impact on her future. This is a common element in all of Morrison’s work, she gives voice to those usually seen as outcasts who in reality lived an adverse childhood. What Sethe lived through in her early years of development leave her feeling guilty, yearnful, and fearful leading her to spend the rest of her life dealing with the repercussions of her past, in turn creating drama in her own life as well as her loved ones.

Toni Morrison illustrates the traumatic effects of slavery and how it was able to substantiate itself through a family over time. In Beloved, Sethe was used to demonstrate that even after years of liberation, she was not able to break free from the past. Morrison’s novel emphasizes the cruelties of slavery and illustrates that the history of slavery should not be forgotten or avoided. Morrison’s novel not only demonstrates historical accuracy on the content of slavery brutality, it also reveals how the institution of slavery critically damages the slave's’ psyche and demoralizes them.

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.

Morrison's Beloved offers a non-linear perspective and a reshaping of the discourse of slavery. The identities of the characters in Beloved are recreated through dealing with and facing their past. Morrison not only reexamines and modifies the history of slavery; she also acknowledges the female African American identities in the cultural and societal contexts that were dominated by the white race. Morrison has said, "if we don't keep in touch with the ancestor . . . we are, in fact, lost" (Rushdy, 567). In order to keep in touch with the ancestor, Morrison adds, that it is essential to reconstruct memory: "Memory (the deliberate act of remembering) is a form of willed creation. It is not an effort to find out the way it really was-that is research. The point is to dwell on the way it appeared and why it appeared in that particular way" (Rushdy, 567). The concern of appearance and philosophy of conveyance is fractionally part of her project, stating we must, "bear witness and identify that which is useful from the past and that which ought to be discarded" (Rushdy, 567). Morrison uses one tragic and traumatic event, in this case infanticide, to set the story into a tone and context that is easily relatable and understood. As a result, the reader