Toni Morrison 's Beloved And The Ghosts Of Slavery : Historical Recovery

1691 Words7 Pages
In the novel Beloved, Toni Morrison develops character Beloved as an allegorical figure to embody slavery’s horrific past and the lasting impact that unresolved past trauma has upon the present. Morrison develops the character Beloved to represent all the unremembered and untold stories of slavery and to further the message that we must maintain a collective memory of slavery in order to pursue a hopeful future. Morrison develops Beloved as a character through her interactions with other characters in the novel and they way in which they interact with their past trauma. In Lina Krumholz’s The Ghosts of Slavery: Historical Recovery in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, she comments on Morrison’s construction of a parallel between individual and community memories and the nature of history making as a healing process. Krumholz’s argues that the individual memories of the characters of the novel function as collective memories as well, just as slavery does in our history. It is both deeply personal while being a collective experience, the importance of community and of confrontation of the past therefore presents itself as the theme that Morrison hopes to further. Morrison therefore forms the tragedy of slavery into something that can be manageably remembered and able to handle, while also setting the tone for an optimistic future in the face of this rememory. Beloved’s character is surrounded by a great deal of ambiguity as she functions as the novel’s central enigma. Morrison never
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