Colonialism In Beloved And Fences

The book Beloved and the play Fences are both surfaced around the psychological wounds formed from slavery and oppressed colonization. This is then brought upon the children in both the book and play, by their parents of how the colonial rule by the white people have shaped their complex culture and in a way of protection. Thus, “all of the cultural factors influencing characters’ behavior or plot events” (Tyson 247) are shaped by the colonization that was brought upon the subalterns by the “dominant culture” (Tyson 249). In both the book, Beloved, and the play, Fences, many characters deal with the colonialist oppression brought upon by colonizers which forces them into the lowest socioeconomic class and to believe that they are inferior.

In Beloved, Sethe shows her way of anti-colonialist resistance by attempting to kill her children when she see schoolteacher and his boys coming toward 124 as a way of protecting them from the harshness of slavery: “Inside two boys bled in the sawdust and dirt at the feet of a nigger woman holding a blood-soaked child at her chest with one hand and an infant by the heels in the other. She did not look at them; she simply swung the baby toward the wall planks, missed and tried to connect a second time, when out of nowhere-in the ticking time the men spent staring at what there was to stare at-the old nigger boy, still mewing, ran through the door behind them and snatched the baby from the arc of its mother’s swing,” (Morrison 175). All of the colonizers from Sethe’s past and the things they did to her at Sweet Home, led her to the point where she would rather kill her children as a way to protect them instead of letting schoolteacher take them back to Sweet Home and let him treat her children like they treated her, showing resistance to the normalities of being caught when a slave usually escapes. Also, in Fences, Troy and Cory have an argument because Troy doesn’t want Cory to play in the Major Leagues which is why he won’t sign the papers to be recruited leading back to the fact that he is just protecting Cory from dealing with the discrimination that he faced when he was playing sports: “Troy: ‘Naw ...naw. You getting your butt out of here and finding you another job. Cory: Come on, Pop! I got to practice. I can’t work after school and play