The Negative Effects Of Slavery In Toni Morrison's Beloved

Introduction

Historically speaking, the collective enterprise we now know as African American or black literature is of rather recent vintage. In fact, the strong presence of African American literature has made way for the emergence of Native American, Asian American, and Chicano American streams of literature. African-American literature was produced in the United States by writers of African descent,begins with the works of 18th-century writers. Toni Morrison - a novelist who had set her fiction in key periods of black U.S. history, had dedicated her literary career to ensure that blacks experiencing slavery would not be left to the interpretation solely at the dictates of whites. The discrimination that continues to be the African American

”Beloved” is concerned with the negative effects of slavery on the blacks. The novel represents the psyches of its characters who suffer due to the horror-struck burden of their past which was full of exploitation under the cruel control of slaveholder. Past is a beautiful thing. The more we try to live with it, the more we get captivated by it. It’s a madness that can encompass people. African-American past was one such

Slavery was one such existence. It affected families. Black literature gained momentum in the nineteenth century. Most printed black literature consisted of slave narratives. One such piece of literature was Beloved by Toni Morrison. In this novel, Toni Morrison frees herself from the bonds of traditional narrative and establishes an independent style, just the way her characters have freed themselves from the horrors of slavery. Morrison intended to show the reader what happened to slaves working in an institutionalized slave system.

In Beloved the slaves working on Sweet Home experience great violence, brutality and are badly treated like animals. In the novel, the character who is mostly affected of slavery’s severe conditions is Sethe. Sethe gets tortured, raped and mistreated. As a result, Sethe tries to run away from the bondage of Sweet Home and then she is forced to kill her own baby. To understand the past, if one wishes to, the present-day readers must face with the past incorporated in Beloved.Only by engaging with this ominous, unwavering force in a conscious way, we will understand the past, and its impact on our