Essay Tragedy and Redemption in Toni Morrisons Beloved

Tragedy and Redemption in Beloved This is not a story to pass on.(1) With these enigmatic words, Toni Morrison brings to a conclusion a very rich, very complicated novel, in which slavery and its repercussions are brought into focus, examined, and reassembled to yield a story of tragedy and redemption. The peculiar institution of slavery has been the basis for many literary works from Roots to Beloved, with particular emphasis on the physical, mental, and spiritual violence characteristic of the practice of slavery in the South. A far greater shame than slavery itself is the violence that was directed†¦show more content†¦At the center of the novel is Sethe, a former slave who escaped to the North before the Civil War. When the novel begins, a dark, terrible secret hangs over Sethe that keeps her apart from the rest of the people in her neighborhood. As the novel progresses, the story of her life emerges in a complex patchwork. Sethes life for the most part, had been relatively sheltered; at fourteen, she was sold to Sweet Home, where she was a domestic servant rather than a plantation worker. She also had the amazing luck of six whole years of marriage to that somebody son who had fathered every one of her children(29) - a rarity for a slave in the South. Given these circumstances, the abrupt arrival of schoolmaster and his tyrannical methods was a shock to the sensitive Sethe. For the first time in her life, she is whipped; even worse, she is subjected to a forced suckling by schoolmasters nephews for no reason other than that her husband Halle might have unconsciously challenged schoolmasters domination - Maybe Halle made the mistake of saying my wife in some way that would put a light in schoolteachers eye.(276) Immediately after the incident, Sethe flees to the North to