Examples Of Alienation In Beloved

In Toni Morrison's novel Beloved, she attempts to throw the reader into an alien environment by using various literary devices throughout her writing. She wants the reader to not only imagine the life of being a slave but instead she wants the reader to feel that they are living within the character’s shoes living the experience for themselves. Some of the literary devices Morrison uses in her writing is point of view, symbolism, and diction to portray the environment in Beloved to seem unknown or alienated so the reader is unable to anticipate what will happen next. Morrison wrote this novel through the point of view of the various characters mentioned in the novel. She uses point of view to portray the diversity of each character. Based on Morrison’s narration of the characters, “Nothing could be counted on in a world where even when you were a solution you were a problem.” (Morrison, 256), places the reader in the shoes of the character as they experience an unknown environment for the first time. The read proves to be difficult because of Morrison’s skill of …show more content…
The diction used in the novel consists mainly of black vernacular language to help characterize the former slaves mentioned throughout this novel. Through this use of diction the reader can tell if the character being narrated is a former black slave or not. The use of this language helps the reader envision the suffering that the African Americans had to go through and constantly reminding the reader of the hardships these characters had to face in order to gain their freedom. The sentence, “Move. Walk. Run. Hide. Steal and move on.” (Morrison, 66), shows the reader the type of lifestyle slaves had to live through as they attempted to escape slavery. As the reader envisions the lifestyle of these characters it puts them into an environment that they themselves have never