The Unbearable Life of Black people in BELOVED.

 

The unbearable life of Black people in BELOVED.

HUMAN MALICE. That word comes to my mind when reading BELOVED. For Toni Morrison introduces us to the cruel history of slavery through an intense and very detailed narrative of our main characters who were slaves and lived in the same home called “Sweet Home”. Yet there is no sweetness to this home, as it is rather the place where inhuman and horrific events were conducted by white people and at the expense of black people’s freedom and free will.

 For instance, Toni Morrison shows the cruelty of slavery through our main character Sethe. By white standards, she is worth more than black men since she can be a potential mother who could breed future slaves. Putting an economical value to people as if they were mere objects, shows already the kind of mentality needed by white people to not falter at their atrocities or at the fact they own slaves. Hence, such objectification of black people happens from white people’s perspective, which can produce inhuman acts and violations of morality and human sense. Thus, this is the reality that our black characters are thrown into, one in which they have no option but to be enslaved, kill, or commit suicide, and these things make them regard life as “unbearable”. And to such an extent that one like Sethe can be “emancipated” and still suffer from the haunting memories of slavery, and such memories are used by Toni Morrison to testify “the nastiness of life” to which she refers to throughout the novel.

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  1. Cintia OsorioMay 20, 2021 at 1:17 AM

    Beloved
    In Beloved, the role of a person who is beloved is transformed into a negative connotation. The possessive quality of Sethe’s love reflects the slavery that the beloved attracts. In the past, I thought that the role of the beloved was more desirable but in this reading I realized that this role entails a sort of addiction that harms the lover but mainly the beloved. Seth’s love is so powerful that it has no limits, and is compulsive. Both Seth and Denver possess this quality of obsessing over the Beloved in a way that traps them and the beloved. For the beloved to be loved so strongly by both Seth and Denver creates a possession that suasses emotional love to a physical possession of her. When Seth and Denver act on their intense love it becomes so strong that it becomes a way to enslave the Beloved. When Beloved is possessed, the dead baby overcomes her. The facts that the dead baby represents Sethe’s and Denver’s pasts prove that not only do they enslave her physically but emotionally. When the Beloved represents herself by her sexuality, she showcases a deep desire to be seen and wanted. Her need to be desired physically by another being reveals her need to be seen but also felt, revealing that there is a sense of distrust in her own sense of self. For another person to acknowledge her as a sexual being they give her a sense of experiencing her own physicality. Her need to be loved causes the beloved to be unable to attain a sense of peace because that feeling of her physical presence is only felt momentarily through another person. In turn, it turns the beloved into a possessor by seeking men to appreciate and acknowledge her presence. Yet, the need to possess for Sethe, Denver, and Beloved reveal that they all are in possession of each other. In one way or another, they are all seeking to fill a void through physicality which is only momentary.


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