The True Horrors Of Slavery In Beloved, By Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison’s novel “Beloved” aims to convey to its reader the true horrors of slavery. Combining the themes of a mother’s love and the effects of slavery, Morrison centers her novel on a single moment which illustrates the lengths to which one might go to avoid a life of slavery. This act: protagonist Sethe’s brutal murder of her baby girl. Sethe justifies her disturbing performance of infanticide by claiming that it was out of love and prevented her children from the many abuses of slavery.

Love, particularly that of a mother, is one of the most significant aspects of “Beloved.” As a slave, Sethe, like Paul D, “protected [herself] and loved small” out of fear that someone might take away her loved ones (191). Consequently, freedom for her entails the ability to “love anything [she] chose” without that fear (191). When she escapes Sweet Home, she can

However, Sethe only seems to feel guilty when Beloved convinces her that she is an unloving mother for “leaving her behind” (284) in the afterlife. Beloved “[makes] her pay for” her death by emotionally manipulating Sethe - making her sing lullabies, feed her sweets, tell her stories, etc. (293). Although some of Sethe’s actions may appear regretful, she maintains throughout the entire novel that her action was right. When Paul D questions her actions and suggests that “[m]aybe there’s worse” than Sweet Home, Sethe replies “It ain’t my job to know what’s worse. It’s my job to know what is and to keep them away from what I know is terrible. I did that” (194). In her eyes, she successfully protected her children because “[t]hey ain’t at Sweet Home” and “Schoolteacher ain’t got ‘em” (295). She also reiterates that “what she had done was right because it came from true love” because taking her children’s lives was the ultimate sacrifice and the most earnest, desperate, and true form of protecting them