Theme Of Cruelty In Beloved

William Shakespeare once said,“I must be cruel only to be kind; thus bad begins, and worse remains behind” (Hamlet 3.4.14-17). Those same words can be applied to the iconic American novel, Beloved. From the start of her story, Toni Morrison makes it apparent that slavery haunts the residents of 124, as the cruel institution has characterized their identities from the day they were born. Cruelty is constantly present in the relationship dynamic of Beloved and Sethe, who share a twisted relationship that parallels the relationship of slavery and those who were once oppressed by it. In Beloved, Morrison portrays Beloved as a physical representation of cruelty as she evokes the painful memories of slavery in those who can’t leave the past behind,
Cruelty in Beloved reaches to two extremes, one where cruelty and kindness become intertwined and the other where cruelty is simply a behavior that causes pain or suffering. Morrison utilizes that interchangeable form of cruelty to force the idea that the past, no matter how cruel, has to be acknowledged in order to create a future . While slavery became a social norm at the time when“Beloved” truly emerges, the present has chosen to ignore what cruelty Beloved truly represents; the reason why Beloved returns is to show that society has to return to their roots to progress without neglecting those it has done wrong to. Morrison uses the character of Stamp Paid to convey that notion as he notices that, “Mixed in with the voices surrounding the house, recognizable but undecipherable to Stamp Paid, were the thoughts of the women of 124, unspeakable thoughts, unspoken” (199). The fact that the residents of 124 can’t speak their minds as a result of the cruelty of the past shows that cruelness was the way that slavery was left uncontested during the era when it was prevalent, because the harshness of slavery was too painful for slaves to come to terms with even in the present.
While Sethe’s experience with cruelty drives her to fear her past, Beloved’s symbolic representation of those who lost their “voices” to the same cruelty drives her to pull Sethe back to her painful memories. While Sethe becomes victim to Beloved’s tie with the past, embracing the memories she’s chosen to ignore is what brings her back to the present and leave “Beloved” behind - but not forgotten. Beloved and Sethe’s paradoxical relationship represents the cruelness of slavery and those affected by it, and Morrison utilizes that relationship to convey the theme of balancing the past and present to move on with