What Is The Mistreatment Of Black People In Beloved

Toni Morrison’s novel “Beloved” tells the unspoken story of black people prior to and after the abolishment of slavery. Throughout the novel, the main characters -- Sethe, Paul D, Baby Suggs, Denver, and Beloved -- countervail an alien world that has stripped them of their humanity. The novel is a fractured history of slavery’s legacy as it delves into the “disremembered” sufferings of the black community that have been so facilely stashed away in a complacent state of national amnesia. Through the depiction of black people as powerless, rootless, and inhumane misfits in the eyes of white people, Morrison strives to divulge the harrowing subjugation of black people’s psyche as a result of slavery, not to convince readers of black people’s
It is revealed in the beginning of the story that Baby Suggs’ children have been taken away one by one without giving her a chance to experience motherhood. As she herself states, “It wasn't worth the trouble to try to learn features you would never see change into adulthood anyway... All seven were gone or dead” (139). Not only has baby Suggs not had any claim on her children as a mother, but she has been incapable of preventing them from being stolen from her, a dismal struggle that every black mother was faced with under slavery. By the same token, men are forced to acquiesce in white people’s desires defenselessly as demonstrated by Halle’s powerlessness when watching Sethe’s suffering as her milk is taken away by the white slaveowners and his subsequent lunacy. In effect, male slaves were deprived of the power to speak up in response to their anguish, tormenting them to the point of madness. However, even after death, black people were not able to liberate themselves from slavery. For instance, Baby Suggs’ last wish is to be buried in the clearing, which was “prevented by some rule the whites had invented about where the dead should rest” (171). In a sense, Baby Suggs still has to give in to white people’s decisions despite no longer being in the depraved world of slavery; she has been
Throughout the story Sethe is dispossessed of the last bit of her integrity: Motherhood. As Bülent Cercis states in his article, her sense of motherhood is so intense that she wants to lay next to Beloved in grave, but she does not because of her other children (Effect of Slavery on Sethe). Despite having a strong commitment, however, Sethe never experiences motherhood; When white boys “took her milk... Sethe feels robbed of her identity and loses fundamental essence as a mother,” which pushes her to such extremity to kill her youngest child, leading her sons to run away and her daughter Denver to be forever fearful of her (Quest for Identity). Therefore, Sethe, representing all black mothers, is a frail victim of slavery who defies the definition of a mother by destroying rather than creating life. Moreover, “slavery has stolen [Paul D’s] manhood by forbidding him to make decisions or exist for himself” (Quest for Identity) His life is marked by stages during which he has had no control over the determination of his identity as a man. “It troubled him that, concerning his own manhood, he could not satisfy himself... was that Garner's gift or his own will? What would he have been. ..without Garner” (220)? Although he is called a “man” he can not prove it to himself as his identity is dependent on Mr. Garner’s presence. Therefore