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Toni Morrison Beloved Trauma Essay

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Toni Morrison’s Beloved implies that trauma has profound and lasting effects on an individual and communities, but close connections may provide an easier path to healing. She illuminates the emotional toll of intergenerational trauma through the strained relationship between Sethe and Denver. Morrison also underlines the importance of community in healing, demonstrated through Baby Suggs’ spiritual leadership and the transformative impact of Paul D in Sethe’s life. The author uses a non-linear narrative structure to imitate the arduous and multifaceted journey to healing accompanied by Beloved’s character, a metaphor for the endless emotional void left by past traumas. Morrison uses Sethe and Denver’s relationship to suggest that trauma has …show more content…

As he is “the last of the Sweet Home men” (Morrison 7) and Sethe “could never mistake his face for another’s” (Morrison 7), she is more comfortable discussing her thoughts and feelings about her experiences. “Close relationships may provide the necessary support that can allow traumatised individuals to reconnect with themselves and others and engage in a healing process” (López-Zerón and Blow 581). Paul D’s reappearance in Sethe’s life allowed her to begin healing, as “the responsibility for her breasts, at last, was in somebody else’s hands” (Morrison 22) and “Because with him, in his presence” (Morrison 21) she could finally express her pain and “feel the hurt her back ought to” (Morrison 22). Morrison discusses the cruciality of community in healing through Baby Suggs’ spiritual leadership of the ex-enslaved and the relationship of Sethe and Paul D, conveying that trauma is more effectively overcome with the help of …show more content…

1113). Moreover, the author uses Beloved’s character to personify Sethe’s trauma that had built up over her lifetime, particularly in the “eighteen years before Paul D came to call” (Morrison 135). Beloved’s existence is symbolic of the idea that the effects of trauma persist even after the event has passed, as “symptoms [of PTSD] were thought to evoke reliving experiences through the reestablishment of the physiological, psychological, and emotional state of the individual that occurred during the original trauma episode” (Terpou et al. 1111) and therefore hinder one’s ability to function in daily

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These three steps not only apply to the individual memory but also to the collective memory. In this novel, the memory of an individual is not just his or her memory; it’s actually the memory of a community that has gone through the same pain, cruelties and humiliation. That is, Sethe’s character represents every black woman who was tortured, raped and whose children were taken away from her. Thus, her character represents the pain that every black woman in

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Morrison 's masterpiece Beloved, is dedicated and refers to the number of blacks who were killed as captives in Africa or on slave ships and, therefore, never made it into slavery. Through non-western eyes, Morrison allows the reader to re-vision and understand African-American history by re-telling history through the lives of former African slaves, because the “violence within the African American community can only be understood in a context in which ... the white power continue[s] to violate African American lives.” ( Kader Aki, 1) The novel re-conceptualizes American history and is concerned with historical transmission which continues into the present.

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