Beloved

Authors often withhold significant information or details until later in the book to help convey the text’s meaning. Beloved, written by Toni Morrison, is a prime example of an author using this non-linear fashion of writing to further enhance the understanding of the reader. In the novel, the author utilizes non-continuous timelines to help convey the major ideas of Beloved such as loving oneself and the past never stays in the past. Beloved is a magical realism book. Magical realism is, in its most basic terms, contemporary fantasy written to a high literary standard. In this genre various non-objective world views are conveyed through non-linear timelines. Morrison successfully masters the use of magical realism to help her convey her embedded messages to her audience.

This was a central theme throughout the text; appearing in the past and present. For example, as the timeline continued on, Sethe walked to the Clearing with her daughters, trying to desperately find peace. While on the walk there, the timeline of the book suddenly jumps to the past. The novel goes from talking about Sethe’s problems with Paul D to Baby Suggs’ role in spreading the Word (Morrison 86-7). In the Clearing, Suggs used to preach the idea of “loving yourself because no one else will” (Morrison 88-9). This change in timeline is significant because it showed the embedded message of loving oneself through the importance of the Clearing’s past. It was a place where people found love for themselves, and Sethe found herself with the desire to go where all this was preached in the present timeline. Morrison uses the change in timelines to convey the major ideas in Beloved. Not only did she use the change in time to convey the idea of loving oneself, she also used it to help convey the idea that the past never stays in the