Beloved :: essays research papers

Beloved   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In regards to the novel Beloved Toni Morrison says, “[The novel] can’t be driven by slavery. It has to be the interior life of some people, a small group of people, and everything that they do is impacted on by the horror of slavery, but they are also people.'; Critics argue that the novel is driven by slavery and that the interior life of the protagonists is secondary. This is true because most of the major events in the story relate to some type of slavery. The slavery that drives the novel does not have to be strictly physical slavery. Morrison’s characters are slaves physically and mentally. Although they are former slaves, they are forever trapped by horrible memories.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The type of slavery the novel initially depicts does not correspond to what really happened to slaves in the 1800s. At Sweet Home, Mr. and Mrs. Garner treated their slaves like real people. Mr. Garner is proud of his slaves and treats them like men, not animals.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  . . . they were Sweet Home men -- the ones Mr. Garner bragged about while other farmers shook their heads in warning at the phrase. [He said,] “. . . my niggers is men every one of em. Bought em thataway, raised em thataway. Men every one.';1 The things that occurred at Sweet Home while Mr. Garner is alive are rather conservative compared to what slaves actually suffered during this time period.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Under the management of schoolteacher, things change dramatically. He turns Sweet Home into a real slave plantation. He treats and refers to the slaves as animals. He is responsible for the horrible memories embedded in Sethe and Paul D.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Sethe feels the impact of slavery to its fullest extent. Slavery pushes her to kill her baby daughter. She feels that is the only way to protect her beloved daughter from the pain and suffering she would endure if she became a slave. The minute she sees schoolteachers hat, Sethe’s first instinct is to protect her children. Knowing that slave catchers will do anything to bring back fugitive slaves and that dead slaves are not worth anything, Sethe took matters into her own hands.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  On page 164 Sethe says, “I stopped him. I took and put my babies where they’d be safe.'; Paul D asks, “How? Your boys gone you don’t know where. One girl dead, the other won’t leave the yard.