How does a slave Be loved?

The novel "Beloved" written by
Toni Morrison and published by
Vintage in 2004

“Sethe," he says, "me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. 

We need some kind of tomorrow.” 

This quote by one of the characters in Beloved holds a haunting reality any reader cannot ignore. In this scene, the language of the character is important because it gives the reader a picture of his environment. The character, Paul D, was a slave, and slaves were given no form of education.  Also, while the word choices made by the author are simplistic, they hold a deep meaning behind them that is far from simplistic.  This simple line shows the pasts of these characters are constantly haunting them.  These former slaves have enslaved themselves through an obsession with their pasts, almost destroying their identities completely.  Author Toni Morrison shows how a writer's choice of words and ability to tell stories are keys to bringing them in to the realities of the characters.  

"Her face is polished in places and fissured in others, like the weathered stone of Mount Rushmore: the first black woman Nobelist, who’s lived long enough to speak to the first black president. Born only two years after Martin Luther King Jr., she’s a great-grandmother of assimilation—and she looks the part." -Boris Kachka, New York Times  

Author Toni Morrison has her photograph taken during
an interview for the New York Times on April 29, 2012.

Morrison was born on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio.  She attended Howard University in Washington, D.C. and received her bachelor's degree in English. She went on to receive her master's degree in English at Cornell University and afterwards started teaching English at a university. She was married to Harold Morrison, but the couple got a divorce in 1964, sending Morrison on with her two sons to New York City, where she was an editor for Random House Publishing. She has published ten novels which all capture life for a black living in America, but hold universal truth and application for all readers. On October 7, 1993 Morrison became the eighth woman and the first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1996, the National Endowment for the Humanities granted Morrison the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. government's highest honor for the humanities. She also received the National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Her novel, Beloved, was written in 1987 and captured a reality of life for many black Americans.

Slavery. Racism. 

Looking at those two words as I write causes me to shudder. Those two words are the primary reasons for the novel's existence, as Morrison tells a story about an 18th century slave woman who decides to kill her own child rather than allow the girl to live in the reality of slavery that she would be constricted to. I think the terms "slavery" and "racism" are viewed obliviously by many people, for while they may know the definitions of these words, they have no idea what a devastating reality of life these words created.  Morrison uses personal narrative, story telling, symbolism, motif, and facts to bring the meaning of those words to life through the characters of her novel.

The main character Sethe gives a look of painful horror at the slaveowner during a scene in the movie 'Beloved' directed by Johathan Demme.

I believe Morrison creatively captured a difficult subject to understand for many people.  The black people who were thrown into slavery experienced torture and ridicule beyond comprehension.  However, when you look through the eyes of a little girl, one who watched men torture her mother and take milk from her mother's breasts, you can't help but feel the pain rise up inside you, and the anger that wants to stop this injustice.  Morrison tells stories and takes the reader through thoughts of the characters, where you get to glance into the way the characters thought.  The novel has this vulnerability about it and raw truth that makes you feel so personally connected to it.  I think Morrison wanted the reader to walk through the life of the main character, Sethe, the slave woman who killed her own daughter to keep her daughter from being confined to slavery for her lifetime. You immediately find yourself asking the question, "was she justified in killing her own daughter?" By the end of the novel, however, you have grown to love that woman, a woman so completely broken, physically and emotionally, and you no longer want to answer that question.  You want her to experience healing and forgiveness, because the treatment she experienced was evil and no one would desire to bring a child to live in evil.  Through other characters who are aged older than Sethe, or male enslaved men, we are taken back into memories of slavery as a reality for those individuals.  The memories are different but equally haunting. I have no critique for Morrison's novel, as I, a reader, journeyed with the characters that all gave me a vision of what the words "slavery" and "racism" mean, words I will fight against for the entirety of my life. 

Read Beloved.  

To be haunted by reality is to be haunted by truth, not so that we stay in that state but so that we create passion to see a world where all people are loved.   Morrison's novel will find you immersed in the literary images, as well as the symbolism behind color and trees and names.  She tells stories you will be pained to hear, but forever inspired by. She will redefine those two terrible words, "slavery" and "racism" so that you know the souls that lived through them.