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History And Memory In Toni Morrison's Beloved

1865 Words8 Pages

In the beginning of the book Beloved, the author Toni Morrison focuses on the significance of history and memory. “Sixty million and more” in the novel Beloved was the only statement on her dedication page. The sixty million to whom Morrison dedicates Beloved refers to represents the estimated number of black people who died during the Atlantic slave trade. Every character in the novel holds significance and seems to be scarred in one way or another by the violence of this particular period of American history, which Toni Morrison’s fiction Beloved is about the after-effects of slavery. Morrison’s main character, Sethe, has caused a great deal of pain to those around her, which Morrison guides, her audience through the pain of extracting the memories that these characters have so long repressed and the struggles that they had to face. By looking at each character’s connection to Sethe especially with Paul D you are able to sense a coherent identity that they’ve formed that weave them together to their past, and gain an understanding of their actions.
With many of the characters in Beloved, both Sethe and Paul D has experience of slavery but because of it they have repressed these memories in an effort to forget about the past and being able to move on from it. The experience of loss of self can only be remedied by acceptance of the memory and the past of their original identities. In the novel, Beloved is a reminder to these characters of their repressed memories, which

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