preview

Traumas In Ta-Nehisi Coates's Beloved

Decent Essays
Open Document

“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.” Traumas are exactly like that. Sometimes it can be so poisonous that any decisions you make could be impacted with that trauma. However it is also positive in a sense that you can look back at it and learn from it. It is important for authors to recount past traumas in their work because the readers can get a better understanding and learn from them. Through the use of pathos, repetition, and rhetoric, these authors are able to clearly pass the ideas of how we all need to remember the institution of slavery as many still carry traumas and suffered great injustice from it. The big trauma that the book Beloved showcases is the past …show more content…

Remembering a trauma is very valuable as you can learn from them and for others to come back stronger. He says that “Race is the child of racism, not the father.”and that “The process of naming ‘the people’ has never been a matter of genealogy and physiognomy so much has one of hierarchy.” He wants people to see that even now many still struggle “through the Dream” and the false narrative of American History.” “Between the World and Me is an exhortation against blindness.” Relativistic Beaming can be used as an allegory to better explain what Coates is trying to present through his use of rhetoric. "Beaming (short for relativistic beaming) affects the apparent brightness of a moving object just as a lighthouse affects the appearance of its light source: the light source appears dim or unseen to a ship except when the lighthouse is directed towards a ship where it appears very bright.” So just like the light house, if we don’t direct our attention to past traumas and ideas of racism that are still apparent today, it will be unseen and forgotten which means that we can never learn from them. However if we direct our attention towards these traumas and the extreme racism that are still in effect today, we can get a better understanding of them and learn from it just as Coates had explained in his book. By remembering and not being blind to the institution of slavery, we can all help to better heal the wounds of this

Get Access