Research Paper On Beloved

A Fading Memory
The novel Beloved, by Toni Morrison, illuminates the memory of slavery through history and the past. In remembering and exploring the trauma that slavery bestowed upon its victims, Morrison sheds light on an institution that denied people of a certain color the right to an existence and furthermore, an identity. Identity, the fact of being who or what a person or thing is, is an essential aspect of the novel that highlights a basic right stolen by slave owners. In the present day, there is a national amnesia of slavery such that no race wants to remember and support the immorality of their ancestors from a time of national disgrace. Morrison fights to break the silence of slavery’s destruction on slaves and their identities
Throughout her life as a slave and finally as a freed woman, Sethe believes that she only has two titles which make up her identity: mother and slave. However, as a slave, Sethe could never truly embrace the title of a mother as Schoolteacher and his nephews at Sweet Home robbed her from a crucial part that allows her to be a mother; her milk: “And they took my milk!”. To Sethe, milk meant that there is more to her than what she is told she is. Despite all the torturous and desensitizing encounters Sethe faces during her time as a slave, her loss of milk deems to be the most life changing for her. Not only does she lose her tangible connection to motherhood, but she also loses an aspect of herself that has been defining her for her whole existence. In losing part of her maternal identity, Sethe is driven to the violence that establishes the main upset of the novel, her murdering of Beloved. Due to Sethe’s deprivation of identity and choice, she is compelled to enter a corrupted place where slavery brings out her most animalistic qualities: “’You got two feet, Sethe, not four’” (194). Slavery pushes Sethe to transform her being and values and commit an arguably bestial act of killing her own child. In doing so, Sethe’s identity morphs once again to that of which the white man desires and ultimately constitutes the idea that the death of
Over the course of the novel, Morrison exposes how the lack of a father figure causes Paul D. to have to deduce what a real man is by himself and assess whether he has the right to claim himself as one. Throughout the novel, Paul D.’s manhood is frequently under threat by members of Sweet Home and is constantly being redefined. As a result, Paul D. finds himself lost and has trouble finding sense of his true identity. During his slave days, Paul D.’s manhood is tested and leads him to doubt if he could ever be a real man since everything that he is can be summed up into a dollar value: “he has always known, or believed he did, his value…he learns his price. The dollar value of his weight, his strength, his heart, his brain, his penis, and his future” (267). Through the inhumane institution of slavery, Paul D. always knew that his physical ability had some type of worth, however, he never knew that his emotions, intellect, and future would be valued at a price that would only depreciate throughout the years. In labeling Paul D. and the other slaves with monetary values, the slave owners not only belittle their existences, but also dehumanize their slaves by robbing them of their identities. Slavery degrades Paul. D. as he is forced to call a rooster by the name Mister and is taught that a barnyard animal has more of