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Trauma In Toni Morrison's Beloved

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Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved explores the ways that trauma, especially that which emanates from situations of powerlessness, like being enslaved, contributes to a shift of one’s perceptions of motherhood, love, and how love is shown. Sethe, who was formerly enslaved, commits a heinous act as a way to protect her child who she loved dearly from being taken away and forced into a life of slavery. Even though Sethe did this act for reasons that were perfectly logical to her, Beloved and Paul D struggle to come to accept what happened, because her reasons seem so foreign to their own ideas of motherhood and love. Due to her past traumatic experiences when she was enslaved, Sethe’s understanding of how she, as a mother, should express her love …show more content…

Instead, she focuses on her feelings of abandonment and not being loved. “None of which made the impression it was supposed to...Beloved denied it. Sethe never came to her, never said a word to her, never smiled and worst of all never waved goodbye or even looked her way before running away from her (284).” In this quotation, Beloved focuses on tender, motherly actions that she expected and waited to receive from Sethe, but never did. Her perception that Sethe “never smiled” or “never said a word to her” shows that the act of being killed by her mother completely clouded her memory, so even though she is told about the mosquitos attacking her at Sweet Home (284), she can not, or chooses to not, recognize that her mother did love her and want to protect her. Furthermore, her phrases “worst of all” and “running away from her” indicates that she sees Sethe’s action as cold, individualistic, and unable to be forgiven. According to Beloved, Sethe cared only about herself and for that reason she was able to desert helpless Beloved and “run away”. Even though Sethe gives reason after reason, trying to justify her action, Beloved remains set in her perception that her mother’s action was

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Soren Kierkegaard once said, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” In this quote, Kierkegaard speaks of the past and how dwelling in events that already happen will prevent a person of living their life in the present. Toni Morrison conveys this message in one of her major themes, showing that constantly wallowing in past memories will prevent characters to move on with their lives. Beloved portrays various sides of cruelty, showing it from a black slave’s point of view to even the owner’s point of view. Throughout the novel, the cruelty that characters experience, whether it be at Sweet Home or from the black community, show the victims’ struggle to move on from the past and the perpetrator’s awareness, or lack thereof, of their own cruel acts.

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At one point, the line “A complaint from Beloved, an apology from Sethe” stands as a teeter-totter affect as we read more and more examples of how Beloved is altering herself into a position where Sethe is taken advantage of. It is not really up until now that the readers view Beloved as evil, rather than just the reincarnated baby Sethe has been hung up on for so

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The positive parts of this passage work to unite Sethe, Denver, and Beloved together which in turn makes Sethe feel complete as she can now only focus on caring for her two children. In contrast, however, while this dream or Sethe’s may be true, this passage reveals the pain that will come

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In Beloved by Toni Morrison, the author often utilizes many different writing techniques to emphasize the story’s main idea that one cannot let past mistakes dictate one’s life and future. Morrison’s application of nonlinear exposition in Beloved helps convey the novel’s main theme by allowing the reader to witness Sethe’s journey to self-acceptance through her personal flashbacks and Paul D.’s point of view. From the beginning, the author incorporates a flashback to illustrate how Sethe is burdened with guilt from killing her baby daughter. Morrison makes it clear to the reader that Beloved is constantly on Sethe’s mind.

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A key feminine quality for women in general around this time period was their capacity for being a mother. Throughout the story, Beloved is one of the many memories that haunts Sethe which she tries to repress in vain because she attempted to murder her own child in order to save them from the same physical, emotional, and sexual abuse that she endured during her time working at Sweet Home. However, Morrison depicts this as an act of kindness. Sethe 's character is given a connection to the audience for her motherly instincts, but also a way for the audience to reflect on the fact that her attempted murders were out of motherly love and protection. Placing Sethe in the scope of many women of the time who had lived without the harshness of slavery are forced to confront the weight of a decision that they never had to make nor most likely ever will.

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After Sethe loses her job and happily settles in to give Beloved all of her attention, their relationship transforms into “furious arguments. The poker slammed up against the wall, all the shouting and crying that followed that one happy January when they played. [ . . . ] the more [Beloved] took, the more Sethe began to talk, explain, describe how much she had suffered, been through, for her children”(241).

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In general, Beloved’s role in the formulation of Sethe’s identity is absolutely crucial in the novel. Beloved is not only the ghost of Sethe’s killed daughter, but also a powerful symbol of the link between the present and the past Sethe attempts to keep the past away, however, Beloved’s comeback demonstrates the impossibility and the difficulty of suppressing her past. In other words, with Beloved’s arrival, revealing memories helps Sethe understand her past and thus herself. Beloved can be seen as Sethe’s personal past and at the same time as her repressed memories.

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Throughout Toni Morrison’s Beloved: Slavery Haunting America, author, Inez Martinez elucidates the different archetypes portrayed not only throughout slave times, but also America today. Martinez embellishes the repetition of questions of love asked to the reader throughout Beloved. Martinez mainly focuses on the unique question of love that Morrison presents to the reader asking what the odd love shown when Margaret Garner murders her children to ultimately save them is. This portion primarily stuck out to me because the underlying meaning is love however, ordinarily murdering your children is no sign of love, yet hatred instead. Furthermore, Martinez exemplifies the meaning of black motherhood by depicting the significance of such a huge obstacle that is overcome.

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Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel Beloved is a multiply narrated story of having to come to terms with the past to be able to move forward. Set after the Civil War in 1870s, the novel centers on the experiences of the family of Baby Suggs, Sethe, Denver, and Paul D and on how they try to confront their past with the arrival of Beloved. Two narrative perspectives are main, that of the third-person omniscient and of the third person limited, and there is also a perspective of the first-person. The novel’s narrators shift constantly and most of the times without notifying at all, and these narratives of limited perspectives of different characters help us understand the interiority, the sufferings and memories, of several different characters better and in their diversity.

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In Chapters 2–5 of Beloved, Toni Morrison uses Beloved’s character to prompt her family’s and African Americans’ collective reminiscence of previous trauma. Part 2 Chapter 2 begins with Sethe analyzing her relationship with Beloved, pondering the justification for her slaughter. As Sethe’s obsessive thoughts with her daughter continue, she thinks to herself: “Beloved. Because you are mine and I have to show you these things, and teach you what a mother should” (237). As if Sethe was not already perseverating on enough trauma from her past, she is now accompanied by the guilt of killing her child.

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The character Beloved is an anomaly in the story, and is the whole crux of the plot of the story as well. Her name, or lack thereof, is allegorical and the most defining character trait that she has throughout the whole book. As a character, she is a mysterious entity who latches onto Sethe and her family who feeds off their attention, and reveals little to nothing about who she is. Besides these traits, her name leaves most readers to believe that this character is the ghost of Sethe’s unnamed baby that she murdered; as we know the baby’s headstone has the word “Beloved” written on it due to Sethe misinterpreting what the pastor said

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Motherhood Annihilation Wrought by Slavery: An Elucidation of Toni Morrison’s Beloved P J GIFTLIN, Assistant Professor of English, Nesamony Memorial Christian College, Marthandam. Abstract Toni Morrison is s famous contemporary black female author who admirably succeeds in creating a ‘penetrating view of black motherhood’.

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Their antithetical perspectives on why and how the accident should have occurred ensure not only the possibility of deception but misconstrued feelings of love. In Beloved by Toni Morrison, Sethe both sacrifices and forfeits a huge part of her life. Sethe forfeits her eldest daughter’s life in order to shield her from the hardships of slavery and in doing so she sacrifices her relationship with her family, friends, and with herself as well. The action of murder highlights how much Sethe values her children through love and care.

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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

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Literary Analysis of Toni Morrison’s Beloved Toni Morrison’s most popular novel, Beloved, displays an array of literary elements that intermingle and affect each other. For example, the setting of the novel takes place in 1870’s Ohio in the home of an escaped slave woman. This setting sets a precedent for further conflicts involving slavery and relationships. In conjunction with setting, a lack of character development contributes to conflict in relationships.

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