Sethe, a Slave to her Past Beloved by Toni Morrison

Essay by malokaHigh School, 12th grade December 2004

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Sethe , a Slave to Her Past

Beloved by Toni Morrison is a vivid picture of the crueltiy of slavery. It is a novel that depicts the horrifying practicies of enslavement in the early Nineteenth Century in the United States of America. It is a depiction of the horrible conditions under slavery and the dehumanization suffered by human beings when they are owned by other human beings. Beloved is a story of a black woman's struggle to overcome her past memories whish are bounded with torture, such memories didn't only runi her past ; but also spoilt her present life .

America during the Ninteenth was a place where all privilages were given to the white people , black people were brought from Africa by ships to cultivate lands and be slaves to the whites. That's why Morrison chooses Sethe as a character representative of a whole generation suffered from the set backs of slavery and of being blacks brought to a community where all rights are given to whites and no others.

In 1873 slavery was abolished in Cincinnati, Ohio for ten years. This is the setting where Morrison places the characters for her powerfully moving novel, Beloved. After the Emancipation Proclamation and after the civil war , Sethe , the mother who murdered her child in order to protect her from a lifetime of humiliation has yet to know the real meaning of freedom.

The novel startts with Sethe's life at 124, the house which is haunted by her murdered daughter's ghost. Although noticing this fact might shrills the reader, nevertheless you find out that the characters of the novel are coping with this ghost .So that you can see Sethe and her daughter Denver are leading theor lives normally , moreover they enjoy having this...