Two Narrative Perspectives In Toni Morrison's Beloved

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.

Better than me. Stronger, tougher” (2004: p.72), or we can read from his point of view how he doubts his manhood while Mr. Garner calls his slaves “men”, “Garner called and announced them men- but only on sweet Home and by his leave. Was he naming what he saw or creating what he did not? …concerning his own manhood, [Paul D] could not satisfy himself on that point” (2004: