Self Realization in the Novel Beloved

Self Realization in the Novel Beloved

Toni Morison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved centers on the powers of memory and the history behind those memories. The characters of the novel are former slaves for whom the past is a shackle that tethers them to their own personal slavery in their free lives. Each character seeks to find what remains of their true self once the veil of slavery is peeled away. The novel shows how the internalization of oppression can distort human relationships and subvert the self. The time frame of the novel is a juxtaposition of past and present, which reinforces the idea that the past is indeed alive and thriving inside of each character and must be reconciled before they can look towards a future. The characters cannot begin to make sense of who they are until they reconcile who they have been and the roles that they have played. The novel allows readers to examine the negative effects that slavery had on the characters, most notably the self-alienation that it caused. Their relationships to their past entangle them in a web from which they cannot escape. The characters do not know how to live for the present or plan for the future. The legacy of slavery has damaged the ways that they experience love and think about their own worth as human beings. The denial and oppression of the black identity by the larger slave-owning society led to the internalization of shame and subsequently to an inability of the characters to develop a self-empowered subjectivity when free from physical slavery. Slaves were told they were subhuman and they were sold and traded which gave them a worth that could be expressed in dollars, but robbed them of their self-hood. Thus each of the characters w...

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...society did not grant African Americans an identity legally or socially. Those able to attain subjectivity had to do so by their own assertion. Slavery, racism and sexual violence defined who these characters were in the past. Beloved's existence allowed the characters of Sethe, Denver and Paul D to use the process of rememory to gain a clear sense of who they really were. They became able to integrate all aspects of their selves into that one essential being that made each of them unique. Paul D and Denver were able to achieve this clear sense of self and could integrate their past into the present and begin to live for the future. They were both willing to help Sethe heal. Sethe had helped Paul to find his manhood, and he was willing to help her find her integrated self and her humanity.

Bibliography

Morrison, Toni Beloved Penguin Books, NY 1988