The novels Beloved and As I Lay Dying by Toni Morrison and William Faulkner, respectively, compare and contrast in many different ways, such as when it comes to trauma, and other traumatic events, such as the former taking place during slavery and the latter taking place after the war, and they are similar because they show the traumatic events, and PTSD that people face due to the different traumatic events that they have experienced. For example, they are identical because they both show characters being traumatized due to the event they faced. Still, the difference is that while Sethe, Beloved, and Denver are recovering from their trauma from slavery, Anse, Arthur, and Addie are recovering from their trauma due to the war. The similarity …show more content…
Pa’s feet being poorly injured due to the work he had to do shows toxic masculinity in the text As I Lay Dying (i.e., a set of rules that men have to follow to be “manly”, e.g., show no emotion, be a breadwinner, and to be ignored as a victim of abuse and rape). It shows the misogynistic stereotype that men are more robust than women. Additionally, Rachel was told that she needs a real man to “fix” her, which shows how women are treated in a patriarchal society and how men control them as a means of “protecting” them (they are protecting the patriarchy). In Beloved, the text shows the oppression that Black women go through, such as misogynoir, which is misogyny towards Black women (i.e., the intersection of misogyny and anti-Black racism), and how it affects Sethe, Denver, and Beloved. While both novels show what women go through, they are different since Black women face oppression differently than their White counterparts. This difference is major because each person fits into more than one category when it comes to identity, so we can all have privileges in some areas while being oppressed in other areas (e.g., White women, White LGBTQ+ folks, and White autistic folks). Also, some identities rank higher and can be more powerful; for example, when it comes to being transgender or cisgender, a cis woman can hold more privilege than a trans man (even though the former is a woman and the