Beloved

Morrison's Beloved.” Women's Studies, vol. 45, no. 3, Feb. 2016, pp. 203–214. MLA International Bibliography [EBSCO], doi:10.1080/00497878.2016.1149029. Accessed 28 July 2017. In this journal article, Gardner explores the character of Sethe in relation to the institution of motherhood. Sethe is described as a slave mother who, desperately trying to spare her children from the horrors of slavery, attempts to murder the children in her family and succeeds in murdering her oldest daughter,…

Author Rick Warren once said, “We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it.” Toni Morrison epitomizes Warren’s ideal with her novel Beloved, depicting various characters who undergo their own personal struggles to escape the chains of their pasts. Denver, Sethe’s daughter, and her situation together illustrate the imprisoning power of the past, as her mother’s infanticide casts a lonely shadow over her life. Estrangement from her community and a history of abandonment…

Grief has an unusually physical presence in Beloved, manifesting in the character of a house that “wept, sighed, trembled, and fell into fits” (p.35). On page 47 and 48, the passage “124 was so full…. bread ain’t greasy” reveals the development of grief by illustrating how Sethe and Paul D have been impacted by the trauma of their past, and how their union allows them to revive what that trauma had not previously made space for. In the introductory line “124 was so full of strong feeling…

its physical brutality, its mental scars live on even after the abolishment of slavery with the 13th amendment in 1865. Toni Morrison illustrates the psychological battles that former slaves, Sethe and Paul D, face after emancipation in her novel Beloved. Sethe and Paul D belong to the Sweet Home Plantation. When Schoolteacher, a new slave master, is brought in with his two nephews, he enforces brutal punishment and discipline of slaves. Sethe manages to runaway from Sweet Home while Paul D is…

In the novel, Cry, the Beloved Country, written by Alan Paton, apartheid plays a significant role throughout, as it encourages those who struggle with inequality to take a stand for themselves and try to change the way their lives are determined by others. Apartheid has been a problem for South Africa since the earlier nineteen hundreds because of the unjust society and heartbreaking rule of "white man's law over a black man's country," (Cry, the Beloved Country.) Some positive results come from…

All throughout writing literary devices are used to create mood in text; Paton does a great job doing so throughout his writing “Cry, the Beloved Country” giving his audience a great sense of what life was like. In the passage from chapter 36 of “Cry, the Beloved Country” literary devices were used to emphasize the effect on readers of Absalom’s hanging and its effect on his father. Of the many different literary devices used in this passage, both rhetorical questions and imagery have the…

In Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, both Sethe and Paul D escape their physical bondage as slaves; however, a comparison between Sweet Home and 124, both places of torment and suffering, reveals how emotional bondage can also enslave a person sometimes without them even noticing. As we learn from piecing together flashbacks the characters share, our two main protagonists Sethe and Paul D begin their story at a farm called Sweet Home, where they are slaves to the Garner family. Although these…

One of the themes portrayed in Cry, the Beloved Country is that reconciliation between fathers and sons is important. The short story writer Alice Munro once said, “Moments of kindness and reconciliation are worth having, even if the parting has to come sooner or later.” The fathers and sons in this novel have formed closer relationships with each other because of the effects of reconciliation. By choosing love rather than hatred, theses characters overcame their struggles and faced their…

Through the reference to Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” Foster asserts that “violence is one of the most personal and even intimate acts between human beings;” however, such violence still retains cultural, social, and symbolic significance while bidding to communicate the illogical cruelty of our society…

In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Denver is seen as the future generation of free African Americans. However, Denver is hindered by her mother and the baby ghost to leave 124 and explore life as a free African American. Denver is an outsider, which makes her unable to have a mutual connection with Sethe, Paul D, and Beloved. According to critics, Denver is seen as the “daughter of hope”, which prohibits Denver from forming a mutual connection to any of the characters that suffered slavery because the…