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The Role Of Cruelty In Toni Morrison's Beloved

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Cruelty is defined as brutal pain and suffering caused from one person to another in exchange for desires and needs or pleasure. Society depicts cruelty as a norm violation and an inhumane act yet people have enough ego to use cruelty to get what they want. In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, cruelty sets as a stimulator for 60 million voices lost in slavery to advocate for their pain and suffering. Toni Morrison’s character, Beloved, plays two roles; one as the ghost of slavery and another as a resurrected daughter of Sethe. In both roles, Beloved uses cruelty to speak for her two intentions. As the ghost of slavery, Beloved’s intention includes wanting a voice and accounted for rather than forgotten. As the daughter, Beloved’s intention includes wanting love from her mother who took her life to save her from reality during the time of Sethe’s enslavement. To alleviate the exertion for herself, Beloved combines her two intentions and directs it toward …show more content…

Cruelty stood as the motivation for the baby’s death; it is displayed in Sethe’s former slave owner, the School Teacher, who would label his slaves as animals, recording any evidence of animal like characteristics that the slaves would exhibit to make himself feel less inhumane because the concept was to believe that slaves were no more and no less than animals and that it was okay to harm them in any way. “I am full God damn it of two boys with mossy teeth, one sucking on my breast the other holding me down, their book-reading teacher watching and writing it up.” (70) As the Schoolteacher's nephews harass Sethe, he observes how Sethe exhibits her behavior and he records her responses that are similar to animals. This conveys the extent of cruelty slave owners would stoop down to, they would stoop low enough to convince themselves that African Americans were not human and treat them as if they were equivalent to a

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