1/28 Group 4 review- Beloved

Major Themes:

• Dehumanization
• Emotional destruction as a consequence of slavery
• Familial distortion
• Psychological chains as a consequence of slavery
• Hopelessness
• Resilience
• Family

The novel Beloved explores many different aspects of life in America post-emancipation.  The world did not stop, or even slow down for people thrown into freedom, so the adjustment from bondage to freedom was a tremendous and hard transition for the entire formerly enslaved populus.  Major themes themes in this book, as noted above, focus more on the emotional bondages of slavery and how these bondages kept a strong-hold on their victims even after freedom was achieved.  From the inability to love and care to the heavy broken spirits that were too abounding to lift, Toni Morrison does an excellent job of traveling back in time and encapturing the ora of a people as they tried to reconstruct themselves after centuries of being torn down.  

Using a medley of flashbacks, Beloved depicts the challenge of navigating everyday life while grappling with the haunting past of slavery and its present implications. As characters yearned to move forward in their lives, memories of slavery continued to rear its ugly head. Countless examples could be cited on the hopelessness enslavement chained people to, however some of the most poignant are the plights of Sethe and Paul D; which fundamentally crippled the capacity for love, also, simply, to feel. Made evident in the novel Sethe is overwhelmed with the past she does not even the energy to dream, because she is plagued by her past. “But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day.” This demonstrates how much the past has changed one’s present because their traumatic experiences have inhibited their capacity for more.

Additionally, Paul D’s masculinity is constructed difficulty, because he has been trained in slavery to show no emotion as it is a sign of weakness. Expressing his frustration with having to suppress his emotions he says, “Let me tell you something. A man ain’t a goddamn ax. Chopping, hacking, busting every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can’t chop down because they’re inside.” While he is explaining how difficult it is to be called on as a man as strong and emotionless, he also shows how being treated as an object and work tool changes a man's psyche and causes them to break when brought into severe emotional distress. Furthermore, in the novel characters are constantly reminded not to love at all, because in slavery everything is temporary. The novel continuously grapples with how people learn to love again as all their lives they’ve been taught not to love, to save their feelings.