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Themes In Toni Morrison's Beloved

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In Beloved, the remarkable novel for which Morrison won the 1993 Nobel prize for literature, this theme is explored in great depth. The novel is based on the real life case of a slave girl - Margaret Garner - who in order to protect her children from slavery, attempted to murder them and succeeded in killing her baby girl. Through the use of her unique and remarkable style Morrison presents us with glimpses of the past which creep through both the cracks in Sethe 's memory and the plot of the novel, revealing a desperate act of love more haunting than any baby ghost.
Sethe, in Beloved, by Toni Morrison, cuts her 2-year-old child’s throat to protect her from slavery, a desperation born of her own motherless childhood and her experience of the horrors of slavery. Sethe was beaten and molested when she was pregnant; she had to give birth on a boat and killed her child to save her from slavery. Even when she moves to Ohio, the ghost of Beloved follows her there and continues to torment the family. By virtue of being a slave, Sethe was bound to suffer. However, we see that having children greatly increased her burden. In a way, Sethe was enslaved by her own children and white masters. This makes her …show more content…

This element of the novel Sula can be seen as a pre-cursor to Beloved, the later novel in which the theme of the monstrous potential of love is central.
Morrison illustrates this ambiguous area of human love in which it is quite acceptable that 'parents who simply adore their children and really and truly do want the best for them may, in fact destroy them ' . Due to the horror of slavery Sethe 's murder of Beloved is transformed into what Morrison controversially deems 'the ultimate gesture of a loving mother ', whose action proclaims, 'to kill my children is preferable to having

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