Beloved by Toni Morrison

Beloved

by Toni Morrison

Vintage, 2004

ISBN: 978-1400033416

321 p.p.

“You are your best thing.”

Awarded a Pulitzer Prize, as well as the American Book Award, Beloved by Toni Morrison has astonished audiences everywhere. The novel is based on the story of Margaret Gardner, an African American slave who escaped slavery in Kentucky by fleeing to Ohio.

The novel is set after the Civil War. The protagonist, Sethe, is a slave who escapes slavery and is fleeing to Ohio. After tasting freedom for twenty-eight days, Sethe is retrieved under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. This act gave slave owners the right to pursue slaves across state borders. In order to keep her daughter from being recaptured, Sethe kills her, causing a turmoil that follows her throughout the rest of the novel.

The events in the novel are very vivid and tragic. Morrison did an amazing job in capturing the history of slavery. It is horrific to think that countless people had to endure such horrendous acts of violence, such as being tied to a pole and whipped mercilessly or women giving birth to children from forced encounters. She captured the emotions of those who wondered if their loved ones were still alive and free or dead, and those who were deeply afraid of starting a new life and adding a purpose to it, not knowing what to do with the new-found freedom after the war; Afraid of loving too much and losing too much because of it; Not being able to truly understand the systematic brutalization of one particular race by another just because one proclaimed racial superiority over the other.

American history has time and time again minimized slavery and the far-reaching effects it had, which is why Beloved is a great account of how someone lived through this time. Beloved serves to remind these characters of their repressed memories, eventually causing the reintegration of their selves. Slavery splits a person into a fragmented figure by not allowing people to have a sense of self and denying them an identity as a human being. To heal and humanize, one must constitute it in a language, reorganize the painful events, and retell the painful memories.

Morrison’s creation of Sethe’s character is so stunning because she did an unparallel job of making Sethe come alive. It's always difficult for a parent to bury their child, moreso for Sethe, because she couldn't live to see her daughter being pushed into the endless abyss of torture and humiliation that she herself had to endure. The way in which this scenario is presented allows readers to sympathize with Sethe and understand her efforts of wanting to keep her daughter safe by taking her life. Through the vivid details, I could visualize Sethe engraving the word "Beloved" on the headstone of her buried child, because she had no name:

Beloved You are my sister You are my daughter You are my face; you are me I have found you again; you have come back to me You are my beloved You are mine You are mine.

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Chloe Ardelia Wofford—better known as Toni Morrison—is an American novelist, editor, and professor from Lorain, Ohio. Her novels Beloved, The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Song of Solomon are known for their difficult themes, vivid dialogue, and detailed characters. Morrison won a Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award in 1988 for Beloved and the Nobel Prize in 1993.