Essay 2

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Recommended: Feminism Beloved by Toni Morrison

While I was reading the novel Beloved, I noticed several testimonies throughout the book, one of them being equality. The novel tells a tragic story about slavery and it is often pointed out that the color of one’s skin determines how he or she will be treated throughout life. The slaves in the book are in constant battle to survive among the white men; however, survival is not always the best things for the slaves. Sethe, a woman and mother who is trapped in slavery, believes that the only way her children can ever escape the hardships that slaves encounter is to be dead so that they are able to spend their lives in a place that is hopefully better than the one they currently live in. To give her children this opportunity, Sethe attempts to take the lives of her children. Her boys survive but her daughter, known throughout the book as Beloved, is killed (175). Although the novel focuses on equality based on skin color, I believe that feminism also plays a role in the equality throughout the book. For example, Sethe and her daughter, Denver, are both portrayed as being strong women who are fighting for their place in society not only because of their skin color, but also because of their sex. Sethe is an extremely devoted mother who is willing to go great lengths to protect her children. Although she cannot even recognize her own mother from anything besides a scar (72) she still understands the importance motherhood can play in a woman’s life. As a slave, Sethe is stripped of her rights to obtain an education, a career and so much more, however, she does not allow her rights to be a wife, a mother, and to bear children get taken from her because she knows these are a few things in life that are only granted to women. When she d... ... middle of paper ... ...s put upon people based on differences that actually play no role in how worthy a person really is. Those who died due to these inequalities gave their lives hoping for a better and fairer future for their friends and families. Identity and the importance in knowing who you are also allowed Beloved’s voice to be heard in the novel simply because she was not even given the opportunity to grow and create an identity of her own. We live our lives constantly giving ourselves names and labels that describe who we are and who we wish to be. Since Beloved and the 6 million angry dead were not able to do so, which in a sense made their lives seem pointless. Not being able to actually live and discover yourself as a person takes away the gift of life and hearing the identity crisis in the story gave a better understanding to everything that Beloved had been trying to say.

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