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Side Effects Of Slavery In Beloved

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Beloved by Toni Morrison is a novel based on the aftermath of slavery. The main focus is around an ex-slave mother, Sethe, and her struggles. Since the book follows this specific character, the motif of slavery goes adjacent to motherhood. Nevertheless, the mixture of different characters and their backgrounds in slavery also contribute to the observation of the impact and aftermath of slavery as a whole. Morrison creates her focus around the emotional and social aspects, rather than on an economic level, and addresses some of the horrors and abuse of slavery. Throughout the book there is mention of not being able to love anyone or anything fully, and this is a side effect of being enslaved. When Paul D is first introduced, this ideology is shown with quotation A. Paul D’s thought process automatically goes to the fear of loving anything because of being an ex-slave, this shows that even after being out of slavery for an extended period of time this thought process …show more content…

Even a minor character like Ella who gives an account of what happened to her while being enslaved; she--or rather the narrator-- talks about being raped by her owners, and at one point has a child from them and lets it die by itself. One of the only memories Sethe has of her mom is standing below her mom while she’s being hung. The accounts of each character is a testament to the depth of hurt that was caused by slavery, although these characters weren’t real, the occurances in the novel were not out of the ordinary at the time set in the book. Sethe kills her own child in fear of the pain that white people would take them, and put them through the physical and emotional agony that she had to go through. This means that death, in Sethe’s mind, is better than what they would go through at the hands of a slave

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