Beloved

In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, human responses to slavery are explored by looking past the mere descriptions of the institution of slavery and rather by delving into the anthropological effects of on African American people by the organization. Specifically, she uses a skillfully engineered language to fortify the readers perception of the mental enslavement that exists both inside and outside of slavery. The negative psychological effects of slavery present in speech and naming existed in the African American community for decades after the Civil War. According to Morrison’s descriptions it is when words are converted into song that individuals and whole communities are able to claim ownership of themselves and begin to exist in their own present

Unlike the day in the clearing where the community was introduced to a message to which they could easily ignore, this communal action shows the notion enacted by their song. Whereas the school teacher was not able to break Sethe with the scars he whipped into her back, the community itself “broke the back of the words” by building “voices upon voice until they found it (261). Therefore, the people gathered around 124 Bluestone Road were able to release themselves from the white influence, the white definitions, the white system and the white mentality of slavery. By creating meaning of the songs they sing themselves and redefining what they know the African American community refuses to allow their past dictate their future. Thus, they have digressed from their previous lack of aid in the arrival of the white man to 124 Bluestone road. It is in this moment that Sethe “tremble[s] like the baptized in its wash’ (216) and is granted with the strength to rebel against who she thinks is the school teacher, slavery and her past, confining her to a house marked by her isolation and guilt. No longer acquiescing to her function to aiding the white man’s spreading labels, Sethe is able to attack the “man without skin” (262) whom she presumes to be the school teacher, rather than killing her own children

The constant repetition of the statement “it was not a story to pass on” (174) suggests the possibility of existing in a forward moving society but also implies distance and a lack of full acceptance of the events that have taken place. The final statement, “this is not a story to pass on” (275), concludes something that is entirely different: progress is not only attainable but it has been attained. The change in tense with the use of “this” rather than “it”, holds that the community has begun living past the mental slavery enacted by language that has held them under a spell for so long. The described footsteps which “come and go, come and go” but also “disappear… as though nobody ever walked there” (275) serve to remind all that the past should not be forgotten, but rather forgiven, as there is hope for the existence of a clean, bright future. The community in Beloved, representing “sixty million and more” constrained African Americans, represents also the American community as a whole that is not bound by