Analyzing Morrison´s Beloved

The novel Beloved by Toni Morrison weaves a story about African American refugee slaves caught between remembering and forgetting what they have been through. Morrison, although evoking various complex emotions from her readers, has structured the novel so that we are unable to identify with any of the characters, especially Sethe, due to how slavery has deconstructed their lives. Slavery brings down these characters, causing them to lose their individuality. As a result of their sub-human treatment they are handled as if they were animals that are not up to the capacity of human intelligence; managed as possessions that know no freedom. Some may say that it is possible to identify with at least one character, but through Morrison’s use of third-person narrative, changing perspectives, and animal imagery, it shows that readers are not meant to identify with any characters, but rather take in the whole situation of slavery in the 1800s.

Throughout the novel, the author uses a majority of third-person narrative, otherwise known as, “narrative distancing” to keep readers at an emotional space from the characters. “Morrison reaches toward the ineffable by maintaining otherness through strategies that position the reader at the right distance from the narrative” (Travis 233). By keeping the readers at a distance, the unspeakable can be explained in such a way that readers get an overall understanding of the plot without individual emotions compromising the story. With the use of third-person narrative, there is limited access to the thoughts and emotions that are going through a character’s mind, opposed to how it would be if the whole novel were written in first person. All the characters seem to be talking about situations of other ...

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...lly Sethe, due to the fact that slavery is a horrible experience that should never be repeated. This story as described in the novel, “is not a story to pass on” (Morrison 323-324). The presentation of this story helps us to understand what we cannot imagine ourselves, and teaches us lessons of what slavery was as a whole. Ultimately although readers cannot identify with the characters, there is a higher general understanding of the African-American people during the 1800s. Through strategic structuring and imagery, the degradation of these individuals was powerfully portrayed throughout the novel.

Works Cited

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Vintage International, June 2004.

Travis, Molly Abel. “Beyond Empathy: Narrative Distancing and Ethics in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.” Journal of Narrative Theory. 40.2. (Summer 2010): 231-250.