Beloved: Theme through race lens.

In the novel Beloved by Toni Morrison we see how slavery impacted the lives of those who lived as slaves due to their race. One character in Beloved that was put into slavery due to her race and was forced to live a harmful and unsafe life and ended killing her baby was Sethe. We can see the theme throughout this novel using my lens, the race lens, is that sometimes you will be put through a tough situation and you will end up making a decision and the decision we end up taking might not always be the best choice, and we might end up regretting it. In this case for Sethe it was to either let Beloved live a life of slavery and go through what her mother, Sethe, went through or kill Beloved and not put her through the harmful life of slavery that could damage her, her whole life. We find out that Sethe ends up killing the Beloved due to the fact that Sethe does want her child to go through what she went through. 

Throughout the novel we find out that Sethe does indeed end up regretting her decision to kill Beloved due to the fact that she the baby she killed is reincarnated and Sethe feels that she has come back to haunt her. In an article on Beloved  it describes the feelings of Sethe after what she had done, they describe it as “Sethe is still haunted by the traumatic memories of slavery and of the ensuing events; additionally, the baby-ghost of her murdered daughter, Beloved, haunts her house. When Beloved physically returns as a young woman to taunt her guilt-ridden mother, Sethe faces a turning point and is required to address her past and exorcise the ghost.” (2) We can gather some important from the article and we can come to the conclusion that maybe Sethe did not choose the best decision, she is seen through the novel to develop strong feelings towards what she did, the article describes these memories of Sethe as “traumatic” and that Sethe feels “haunted” after the decision to kill Beloved. Sethe's decision to kill Beloved can be compared to many slaves during the time where the novel is placed, they had to choose either to kill their kin. We can see this in the article “ Sethe’s personal story is merely one of many similarly traumatic and horrific stories, and Beloved draws attention to a collective trauma of slavery that requires legitimization.” (3) the article describes Sethe life to many slaves during that time and the traumatizing life that many of the slaves had during slavery.

Theme in Race/Cultural Lens

Beloved by Toni Morrison is a complex novel that explores the issues of race, gender, class, and the history after Slavery. Through the novel, race is seen in various parts of the story. It has a big impact on the characters development and the people surrounding them. Race and Slavery tie in with each other because their own race made them who they are and how they as looked as in this particular time period. During these times, African Americans were looked at differently as all the other different types of races. The whites were always more superior in than them and the African Americans were put to work for them. Through the novel, Morrison conveys the theme of Slavery and how their past comes back to haunt them.

    Sethe did have a reason for killing her own daughter. Many people thought it was the wrong thing to do, but to her she was doing what's best for her daughter. When explaining herself to Paul D she says, "It ain't my job to know what's worse. It's my job to know what is and to keep them away from what I know is terrible. I did that" (194) . This quote is telling us that the reason she killed her daughter was because she did not want her to go through slavery. She did not want her to go through any of the hardships that Sethe went through like harassment. She was trying to protect her own daughter. Now that beloved is here, the past comes to haunt her and she is reminded of all the experiences that she has had. Reminding her of what she did to her daughter. A huge symbol to reveal this theme of slavery is Beloved herself. She is a symbol because it shows all the cruelty that happened in the past that Sethe does not want to acknowledge.

    In an article that I read about beloved called, “Hush, Little Baby-Ghost: The Postcolonial Gothic and Haunting History in Toni Morrison’s Beloved” by Ruth Van Den Akker, also states that slavery is one of the themes in this novel. A quote from the article is, “As Punter explains in “Arundathi Roy and the House of History”, history and its presence in the present is a “recurrent sense in Gothic fiction (...) the past can never be left behind, (...) it will reappear and exact a necessary price” (2003: 193)”. This quote is saying that Sethe’s past won't be able to be forgotten about. She won't be able to escape it because Beloved is here and it reminds her of the past. All of the experience of Slavery will be in her mind as well and how it affected her as person.