ipl-logo

Theme Of Revenge In Toni Morrison's Beloved

915 Words4 Pages

It is quite unlikely for one to contemplate murder, but even more unlikely for it to be the murder of one’s own child. While the event of murder is more common than expected, revenge may be the source of anger buildup that leads to the horrendous acts. What may seem yet even stranger to some is if the victim resurrects and seeks a greater revenge. If a wrong is done to someone, should they be allowed to get revenge to whatever lengths they see fit? That question is the heart of Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved. Sethe had a tough life in slavery, having to run and escape while pregnant. She had to make the gruesome choice before leaving about how to make the trip easiest and most successful. Using these factors, she had determined that killing her first child, Beloved, would be the best course of action. She did it quick and as painless as she could, yet the mark still remains to taunt her. While it could be argued that she made the right choice, the child would obviously take on a very biased perspective. Beloved desires a very different type of revenge, she thrives to make her mother and younger sister Denver suffer in a prolonged similar way to her. Throughout a majority of the novel, Morrison makes it clear how revenge is a dish best served by oneself. With the tone she ridicules the antics of Beloved, it is easy to unveil her bias to the plot. Beloved shows that even though revenge sounds sweet, it may never have a good outcome. Whilst the main source of revenge going

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of More Than It's Commanding Hurt You By Thomas Foster

    388 Words  | 2 Pages

    In summary the use of death can be protective or even an act for love as twisted as it sounds. Foster retells the tale told in Morrison’s Beloved where as protection from slavery a black mother murders her children, not out of cold blood, but to save them from the troubling life of slavery.

    Read More

  • Repressed Memories In Toni Morrison's Beloved

    1334 Words  | 6 Pages

    1. Beloved, the novel by African-American writer Toni Morrison is a collection of memories of the characters presented in the novel. Most characters in the novel are living with repressed painful memories and hence they are not able to move ahead in their lives and are somewhere stuck. The novel, in a way, becomes a guide for people with painful memories because it is in a way providing solutions to get rid of those memories and move ahead in life. The novel is divided into three parts; each part becomes a step in the healing ritual of painful repressed memories.

    Read More

  • Toni Morrison Beloved Rhetorical Analysis

    470 Words  | 2 Pages

    With just one mention of her passed baby, Sethe is brought back to “the welcoming cool of unchiseled headstones” (Morrison

    Read More

  • Banning Beloved Research Paper

    490 Words  | 2 Pages

    As the book ends Paul D returns, and finds Sethe laying down in Baby Sugg’s bed ready to die (70). Sethe cried out to Paul that she lost the most meaningful person in her life, Beloved (70). Paul D then hugged her as he told her she was the best thing to ever happen to him (70). Instead of Morrison writing about families being separated, she writes about them being sold as if they were livestock (71). Morrison chose to write about the African-American experiences during slavery (Heinze 127).

    Read More

  • Sacrifice In Toni Morrison's In Beloved

    1238 Words  | 5 Pages

    Parenting has been a long practice that desires and demands unconditional sacrifices. Sacrifice is something that makes motherhood worthwhile. The mother-child relationship can be a standout amongst the most convoluted, and fulfilling, of all connections. Women are fuel by self-sacrifice and guilt - but everyone is the better for it. Their youngsters, who feel adored; whatever is left of us, who are saved disagreeable experiences with adolescents raised without affection or warmth; and mothers most importantly.

    Read More

  • 124 In Toni Morrison's Beloved

    564 Words  | 3 Pages

    All the while, Beloved is distracted by her need for revenge on her mother, taking advantage of the attention Sethe gives her. Instead of realizing that this attention is all she really desires, Beloved takes a turn for the worse, slowly wearing her loving mother

    Read More

  • Slavery In Toni Morrison's Beloved

    1350 Words  | 6 Pages

    A key feminine quality for women in general around this time period was their capacity for being a mother. Throughout the story, Beloved is one of the many memories that haunts Sethe which she tries to repress in vain because she attempted to murder her own child in order to save them from the same physical, emotional, and sexual abuse that she endured during her time working at Sweet Home. However, Morrison depicts this as an act of kindness. Sethe 's character is given a connection to the audience for her motherly instincts, but also a way for the audience to reflect on the fact that her attempted murders were out of motherly love and protection. Placing Sethe in the scope of many women of the time who had lived without the harshness of slavery are forced to confront the weight of a decision that they never had to make nor most likely ever will.

    Read More

  • Healing In Toni Morrison's Beloved

    1494 Words  | 6 Pages

    CHAPTER-V THE HEALING POWER OF FOLK CULTURE Images of women healing ill or injured women, or of women healing themselves, have become one of the central tropes in contemporary African American women’s novels. Authors such as Gayl Jones, Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara, and Toni Morrison utilise the trope of healing to measure past and present oppressions of women of color and to discuss what can and what cannot be healed, forgotten and forgiven. Much focus is put on how healing could be accomplished. Some hurt, they say, is so distant that it cannot be reached; other hurt goes so deep that there may be no possibility of healing... some pain can only be healed through a reconnection to the African American community and culture (Gunilla T. Kester 114)

    Read More

  • Comparing Revenge In To Kill A Mockingbird And The Homecoming Of Samuel Lake

    1473 Words  | 6 Pages

    “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind” (Gandhi). Revenge, the act of inflicting hurt or harm on someone for an injury or wrong suffered at their hands, is relevant in both life and literature. In real life, it can often be seen when people are victims of abuse or unfair treatment, and they sometimes will try to get back at whoever hurt them through killing or injuring not only their abuser, but occasionally their loved ones as well. Similarly, in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Jenny Wingfield’s

    Read More

  • The Effects Of Rape And Sexual Assault In Beloved By Toni Morrison

    1970 Words  | 8 Pages

    Slaves faced extreme brutality and Morrison focuses on rape and sexual assault as the most terrifying form of abuse. It is because of this abuse that Morrison’s characters are trapped in their pasts, unable to move on from the psychological damages that they have endured. “Morrison revises the conventional slave narrative by insisting on the primacy of sexual assault over other experiences of brutality” (Barnett 420). For telling Mrs. Garner what they had done, she was badly beaten by them, leaving a “chokecherry tree” (16) on her back. But that was not the overriding issue.

    Read More

  • Sethe Exposed In Toni Morrison's Beloved

    848 Words  | 4 Pages

    As a parent, you know how important it is to keep your kids safe. You won’t think twice in your decision if you know in your heart it will protect your children right? This is the exact situation Sethe was in when she killed her baby girl, Beloved. In the book Beloved Sethe took her daughter’s life by slicing her throat while attempting to murder the rest of her children. When I first read this I thought she was insane.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Names In Toni Morrison's Beloved

    1233 Words  | 5 Pages

    The character Beloved is an anomaly in the story, and is the whole crux of the plot of the story as well. Her name, or lack thereof, is allegorical and the most defining character trait that she has throughout the whole book. As a character, she is a mysterious entity who latches onto Sethe and her family who feeds off their attention, and reveals little to nothing about who she is. Besides these traits, her name leaves most readers to believe that this character is the ghost of Sethe’s unnamed baby that she murdered; as we know the baby’s headstone has the word “Beloved” written on it due to Sethe misinterpreting what the pastor said

    Read More

  • Two Narrative Perspectives In Toni Morrison's Beloved

    843 Words  | 4 Pages

    Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel Beloved is a multiply narrated story of having to come to terms with the past to be able to move forward. Set after the Civil War in 1870s, the novel centers on the experiences of the family of Baby Suggs, Sethe, Denver, and Paul D and on how they try to confront their past with the arrival of Beloved. Two narrative perspectives are main, that of the third-person omniscient and of the third person limited, and there is also a perspective of the first-person. The novel’s narrators shift constantly and most of the times without notifying at all, and these narratives of limited perspectives of different characters help us understand the interiority, the sufferings and memories, of several different characters better and in their diversity.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Rememory In Beloved

    1751 Words  | 8 Pages

    Beloved is a major reason why Sethe is unable to live for the future, and why she stays with her past. While Sethe would do anything for her babies, including killing them, to in a way save them from slavery, Sethe still felt guilt for what she had done to Beloved. She felt the need to stay with Beloved, who got pleasure from keeping Sethe in her past. Sethe gravitated towards Beloved, and shut everyone and everything out for her. Sethe saw Beloved as her own, saying “Beloved, she my daughter, she mine” (236).

    Read More

  • The Role Of Feminism In Toni Morrison's Beloved

    2515 Words  | 11 Pages

    The characters in Beloved, especially Sethe and Paul D are both dehumanized during the slavery experiences by the inhumanity of the white people, their responses to the experience differ due to their different role. Sethe were trapped in the past because the ghost of the dead baby in the house was the representation of Sethe’s past life that she couldnot forget. She accepted the ghost as she accepted the past. But Sethe began to see the future after she confronted her through the appearance of her dead baby as a woman who came to her house. For Sethe, the future existed only after she could explain why she killed her own daughter.

    Read More

More about Theme Of Revenge In Toni Morrison's Beloved

Open Document