The Dehumanizing Effects of Slavery on the African-American Slaves in Toni Morrison’s Beloved | ||
| Journal of Research Diyala humanity | ||
| Article 1, Volume 0, Issue 56, August 2017, Pages 579-596 | ||
| Author | ||
| LECTURER SHIREEN SADDALLA RASHID | ||
| Abstract | ||
| Toni Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1988 upon publishing her novel Beloved. It was adapted in 1988 into a film of the same name starring Oprah Winfrey. In 2006 a New York Times survey of writers and literary critics ranked it as the best work of American fiction of the past 25 years. This research intends to show that Toni Morrison makes the reader become aware of the physical and psychological damage done to the African American people by the brutal inhumanity that constituted American slavery. Because of the painful nature of slavery, most slaves repressed their memories in an attempt to leave behind a horrific past. This repression and dissociation from the past caused a fragmentation of the self and a loss of true identity. In this sense, slavery splits a person into a fragmented figure. In this novel, Toni Morrison frees herself from the bonds of traditional narrative and establishes an independent style, just as her characters have freed themselves from the horrors of slavery and escaped from Kentucky to Ohio. Rapes, beatings, murders, and mutilations are recounted in this novel. Indeed, it is a dense, complex novel that yields up its secrets one by one. As Morrison takes us deeper into Sethe’s history and her memories, the horrifying circumstances of her baby’s death start to make terrible sense. Beloved can be considered a slave narrative of the twentieth century, since, from the unfolding of the story, we follow Sethe's journey from enslavement to freedom .Sethe, is an escapist,a slave and mother of four children. The slavery could not tear her away from her heritage and the past is more real and powerful than the present. In this respect, she lives in a community where the effects of her past are still being felt in the present, and she continues to be haunted by them. | ||
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