Cruelty In Toni Morrison's Beloved

Within America’s history there are sixty million and more African Americans with untold stories lost forever. To those voiceless, the cruelties of slavery brought suffering and loss. Cruelty involves causing pain to another, but at its core it has a much more deeper meaning; it is when an advantage over another being is unnecessarily used to inflict lasting damage and humiliation out of pleasure and self-fulfillment from the perpetrator. As seen in author Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, traumatic memories from the past linger among the characters as they try to deal with slavery’s scars and move forward in life. Cruelty appears in the novel through the people who profited from dehumanizing slaves and the victims who lived under oppression,

Sethe gets trapped in a timeless loop as she is haunted by the memories of her dead daughter and life as a slave. She recalls her view of the past when she warns Denver about unhappy memories saying, “If you go there and stand in the place where it as, it will happen again; it will be there for you, waiting for you” (36). Sethe’s memories wait for her every day in her home, family, and the chokecherry tree scar on her back, which all contain remnants of the cruel experiences she went through in life. In Sethe’s mind, the past is inescapable and no matter how long one succeeds in avoiding it, the past will always catch up. As seen in Sethe’s arrival to house 124, she only had twenty eight days of freedom until she was found by Schoolteacher. This event horrifically scarred Sethe because it led to the murder of Beloved and the attempted murder of her other children. After, Sethe was never able to move on and she punished herself by not accepting forgiveness. Cruelty presents itself in this scene through the boundaries that a mother willed to go to in order to prevent the far worse outcome of slavery from happening. For a mother to refer death as the ultimate act of love, life as a slave had to be an intolerable,

Sethe’s past reanimates in the form of Beloved who also acted as a chain to hold Sethe back from moving on. She abandoned the idea of starting a life with Paul D and

Morrison includes this in her novel to give the sixty million and more a voice in a world that did not allow them to speak. Slavery caused Paul D to lose his self-image and his respect as an individual, showing that oppression and humiliation have the power to break someone’s spirit. Sethe no longer felt worthy of forgiveness. The constant suffering from her memories as a slave tethered her to the past because permanent damage caused from cruel treatment marked her life in a way that could never be forgotten. Slaveowners like Schoolteacher acted cruel for self-interest, rationalizing his behavior by stating slaves were animals. However, Schoolteacher in turn became the animal who committed heinous crimes. Morrison depicts cruelty in her novel as a darkening shadow that covers everyone and trails behind its victims in order to show its effects on happiness and hope. It plays as a motivating tool in understanding the reasons for a character’s behavior, how they see themselves, and the drive that compels them to