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Toni Morrison's Beloved
This story works to capture the essence of slavery's aftermath for its characters. It tells a truth created in flashback and ghost story. It aims to create mysticism only memory can illustrate. "The novel is meant to give grief a body, to make it palpable" (Gates, 29). The characters are trapped in the present because they are imprisoned by the horrors of slavery. They are literally held hostage in their home, isolated from the outside world. In many ways Beloved represents a geographically realistic neo-slave narrative by presenting in flashback the experiences of Sethe. This story also has the fantastic element of a ghost who later becomes flesh and bone. The paragraphs below explore the characters memories and the magical realism of a ghost.
Memory affects the character of Sethe in a way that illustrates the pain and grief of her past enslavement. Sethe is living with the memory of killing her two old year daughter to save her from the horror of slavery while she herself was struggling to attain freedom....
As a result of this action, she is unable to forgive herself and lives trapped in this memory. As much as this is a very private pain, it dominates her and comes to life in her house. The memory affects the other occupants of the house and even drives her sons to leave. Sethe believes that nothing can destroy a memory, not even destroying the physical evidence. The following quote exhibits this idea:
It's so hard for me to believe in [time]. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. . . . But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place -- the picture of it-stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. (Morrison, 36)
In essence, this means that the soul takes every experience with it. I believe her relationship with this memory only deepens over time and does not change for the better. Even the attempt to leave her happy with her new marriage leaves the reader feeling that she is still coping. Morrison writes, "the…
Works Cited
Gates, Henry Louis and Appiah, K.A., ed. Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York: Amistad Press, Inc., 1993.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Penguin Books, 1987.
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