Beloved (novel)

Beloved is a 1987 novel by American novelist Toni

Beloved
Morrison. Set in the period after the American Civil
War, the novel tells the story of a dysfunctional family
of formerly enslaved people whose Cincinnati home is
haunted by a malevolent spirit. The narrative of
Beloved derives from the life of Margaret Garner, an
enslaved person in the slave state of Kentucky who
escaped and fled to the free state of Ohio in 1856.

Garner was subject to capture under the Fugitive Slave

Act of 1850, and when U.S. marshals broke into the
cabin where she and her children had barricaded
themselves, she was attempting to kill her children—
and had already killed her youngest daughter—in
hopes of sparing them from being returned to slavery.
Morrison's main inspiration for the novel was an
account of the event titled "A Visit to the Slave Mother
who Killed Her Child" in an 1856 newspaper article
First edition cover
initially published in the American Baptist and
reproduced in The Black Book, an anthology of texts of Author Toni Morrison

Black history and culture that Morrison had edited in Language English
1974.[1] Publisher Alfred A. Knopf Inc.
Publication September 1987
The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction a year date
after its publication, and was a finalist for the 1987
Publication United States
National Book Award.[2][3] A survey of writers and
place
literary critics compiled by The New York Times ranked
it as the best work of American fiction from 1981 to Pages 324
2006.[4] It was adapted as a 1998 movie of the same ISBN 1-58060-120-0
name, starring Oprah Winfrey. OCLC 635065117 (https://www.world
cat.org/oclc/635065117)
Dewey 813.54
Background Decimal
Preceded by Tar Baby
Followed by Jazz
The book's dedication reads "Sixty Million and more", referring to the Africans and their descendants
who died as a result of the Atlantic slave trade.[5] The book's epigraph is from Romans 9:25 (King James
Bible): "I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved."

Plot summary
Beloved begins in 1873 in Cincinnati, Ohio, with Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman, and her 18-year-old
daughter, Denver, who live at 124 Bluestone Road. The site has been haunted for years by what they
believe is the ghost of Sethe's eldest daughter. Denver is shy, friendless, and housebound. Sethe's sons,
Howard and Buglar, ran away from home by the age of 13, which she believes was due to the ghost. Baby
Suggs, the mother of Sethe's husband, Halle, died soon after the boys fled, eight years before the start of
the novel.

One day, Paul D, one of the enslaved men from Sweet Home, the plantation where Sethe, Halle, Baby
Suggs, and several others were once enslaved, arrives at Sethe's home. He forces out the spirit, receiving
Denver's contempt for driving away her only companion, but persuades them to leave the house together
for the first time in years for a carnival. Upon returning home, they find a young woman sitting in front of
the house who calls herself Beloved. Paul D is suspicious and warns Sethe, but she is charmed by the
young woman and ignores him. Denver is eager to care for the sickly Beloved, whom she begins to
believe is her older sister come back.

Paul D begins to feel increasingly uncomfortable in the house and that he is being driven out. One night,
Paul D is cornered by Beloved, who tells him to touch her on her "inside part." While they have sex, his
mind is filled with horrific memories from his past, including the sexual violence inflicted upon him and
the other men while in a chain gang. Paul D tries to tell Sethe about it, but cannot. Instead, he says that he
wants her pregnant. Sethe is afraid to have to live for a baby. When Paul D tells friends at work about his
plans to start a new family, they react fearfully. One, Stamp Paid, reveals the reason for the community's
rejection of Sethe by showing Paul D a newspaper clipping of an article about a fugitive woman who
killed her child.

Paul D confronts Sethe, who tells him that after escaping and joining her children at 124, four horsemen
came to return her children and her to a life of slavery. Sethe, terrified of returning to Sweet Home and its
vicious manager Schoolteacher, ran to the woodshed with her children to kill them, but only managed to
kill her eldest daughter. Sethe says that she was "trying to put my babies where they would be safe". Paul
D leaves, telling her her love is "too thick" and chastising that "you've got two feet, not four." Sethe
retorts that "thin love is no love", adamant that she did the right thing.

Sethe comes to believe that Beloved is the daughter she had killed, as "BELOVED" was all she could
afford to have engraved on her tombstone. She is overjoyed, holding onto a hope that Halle and her sons
will come back and they will all be a family together. Out of guilt, she begins to spend all of her time and
money on Beloved to please her and try to explain her actions, and loses her job. Beloved becomes angry
and demanding, throwing tantrums when she does not get her way. Beloved's presence consumes Sethe's
life. She hardly eats, while Beloved grows bigger and bigger, eventually taking the form of a pregnant
woman. Denver reveals her fear of Sethe, having known that she killed Beloved, but not having
understood why, and that her brothers shared this fear and ran away due to it. Sethe and Beloved's voices
merge until indistinguishable, and Denver observes that Sethe becomes more like a child, while Beloved
seems more like the mother.
Denver reaches out to the Black community for help, from whom they had been isolated because of envy
of Baby Suggs' privilege and horror at Sethe killing her two-year-old daughter. Local women come to the
house to exorcise Beloved. At the same time, their White landlord, Mr. Bodwin, arrives to offer a job to
Denver, who had asked him for work. Not knowing this, Sethe attacks him with an ice pick, thinking he
was Schoolteacher coming back for her daughter. The village women and Denver hold her back and
Beloved disappears.

Denver becomes a working member of the community, and Paul D returns to a bed-ridden Sethe, who,
devastated at Beloved's disappearance, remorsefully tells him that Beloved was her "best thing". He
replies that Sethe is her own "best thing", leaving her questioning, "Me? Me?" As time goes on, those
who knew Beloved gradually forget her until all traces of her are gone.

Major themes

Mother-daughter relationships
The maternal bonds between Sethe and her children inhibit her own individuation and prevent the
development of her self. Sethe develops a dangerous maternal passion that results in killing one daughter,
her own "best self." Her surviving daughter becomes estranged from the Black community. Both
outcomes result from Sethe trying to salvage her "fantasy of the future," her children, from a life in
slavery.

In Ohio, Sethe fails to recognize her daughter Denver's need for interaction with the Black community to
enter into womanhood. At the end of the novel, Denver succeeds in establishing her own self and
embarking on her individuation with the help of Beloved. Sethe only becomes individuated after
Beloved's exorcism. Then, she is free to fully accept the first relationship that is completely "for her," her
relationship with Paul D. This relationship relieves her from the self-destruction she was causing based
on her maternal bonds with her children.[6]

Beloved and Sethe are both emotionally impaired, which comes from Sethe having been enslaved. Under
slavery, mothers lost their children, with devastating consequences for both. Baby Suggs dealt with this
by refusing to become close with her children and remembering what she could of them, but Sethe tried
to hold onto them and fight for them, to the point of killing them so they could be free. Sethe was
traumatized by having had her milk stolen, unable to form the symbolic bond between herself and her
daughter by feeding her.[7]

Psychological effects of slavery

Because of the suffering under slavery, most former slaves tried to repress these memories in an attempt
to forget the past. This repression and dissociation from the past causes a fragmentation of the self and a
loss of true identity. Sethe, Paul D., and Denver all suffered a loss of self, which could only be remedied
when they were able to reconcile their pasts and memories of earlier identities. Beloved serves to remind
these characters of their repressed memories, eventually leading to the reintegration of their selves.[8]
Slavery splits a person into a fragmented figure.[9] The identity, consisting of painful memories and
unspeakable past, denied and kept at bay, becomes a "self that is no self". To heal and humanize, one
must constitute it in a language, reorganize the painful events, and retell the painful memories. As a result
of suffering, the "self" becomes subject to a violent practice of making and unmaking, once
acknowledged by an audience becomes real. Sethe, Paul D, and Baby Suggs, who all fall short of such
realization, are unable to remake themselves by trying to keep their pasts at bay. The "self" is located in a
word, defined by others. The power lies in the audience, or more precisely, in the word—once the word
changes, so does the identity. All of the characters in Beloved face the challenge of an unmade self,
composed of their "rememories" and defined by perceptions and language. The barrier that keeps them
from remaking of the self is the desire for an "uncomplicated past" and the fear that remembering will
lead them to "a place they couldn't get back from".[10]

Definition of manhood
The discussion of manhood and masculinity is foreshadowed by the dominant meaning of Sethe's story.
Beloved depicts slavery in two main emotions: Love and Self-Preservation; however, Morrison does more
than depict emotions.

The author accurately depicts the horrors of enslavement and its effects to communicate the morals of
manhood. It also distorts a man from himself. Morrison revealed different pathways to the meaning of
manhood by her stylistic devices. She established new information for understanding the legacy of
slavery best depicted through stylistic devices. To understand Paul D's perception of manhood, Morrison
deliberately inserts his half-formed words and thoughts, to provide the audience a taste of what is going
on inside his mind. Yet, throughout the novel, Paul D's depiction of manhood was being constantly
challenged by the norms and values of white culture. The author demonstrates the distinctions between
Western and African values, and how the dialogue between the two values is heard through juxtaposition
and allusions. Scholar Zakiyyah Iman Jackson has argued that Paul D's reduced manhood emerges in
relation to a discourse of animality.[11] Morrison maneuvered her message through the social atmosphere
of her words, which was further highlighted by the character's motives and actions.[12]

Paul D is a victim of racism in that his dreams and goals are so high that he will never be able to achieve
them because of racism. He thought he earned his right to reach each of his goals because of his sacrifices
and what he has been through, that society would pay him back and allow him to do what his heart
desired.[13]

After Reconstruction (1890–1910)

During the Reconstruction era, Jim Crow laws were put in place to limit the movement and involvement
of African Americans in the White-dominant society. Black men during this time had to establish their
own identity, which may seem impossible due to all the limitations put upon them. Many Black men, like
Paul D, struggled to find their meaning in their society and achieving their goals because of the
"disabilities" that constrained them to a certain part of the social hierarchy.

In Beloved, Stamp Paid observes Paul D sitting on the base of the church steps "… liquor bottle in hand,
stripped of the very maleness that enables him to caress and love the wounded Sethe…" (132).
Throughout the novel, Paul D is sitting on a base of some sort or a foundation like a tree stub or the steps,
for instance. This exemplifies his place in society. Black men are the foundation of society because
without their hard labor, the white men would not profit. They were coerced into the society where they
were deemed "lower-status" because of the color of their skin.[14]

Family relationships
Family relationships are an instrumental element of Beloved,
which help visualize the stress and the dismantlement of African-
American families in this era. The slavery system did not allow
African Americans to have rights to themselves, their family, their
belongings, or their children. So, Sethe killing Beloved was
deemed a peaceful act because Sethe believed that killing her
daughter was saving her.[12] By doing this, their family is divided
This print visualizes the
and fragmented, much like the time in which they were living.
Emancipation Proclamation.
After the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, formerly
enslaved families were broken and bruised because of the
hardships they faced while they were enslaved.

Since enslaved people could not participate in societal events, they put their faith and trust in the
supernatural. They performed rituals and prayed to their god or multiple gods.[15]

In the novel, Beloved, who was murdered at the hands of her mother Sethe, haunts Sethe. For example,
Sethe, Denver, and Paul D go to the neighborhood carnival, which happens to be Sethe's first social
outing since killing her daughter. When they return home, Beloved appears at the house. Throughout the
novel, Sethe believes that the person claiming to be Beloved is her daughter that she killed 18 years prior
- a scenario that shows how [fractured] family relationships are used to display the mental strife the
protagonist faces.

Pain
The pain throughout this novel is universal because everyone involved in slavery was heavily scarred,
whether that be physically, mentally, sociologically, or psychologically. Some of the characters tend to
"romanticize" their pain, in a way that each experience is a turning point in one's life. This concept is
played throughout history in early Christian contemplative tradition and African-American blues
tradition.

Beloved is a book of the systematic torture that people who had been enslaved had to deal with after the
Emancipation Proclamation. Therefore, in this novel, the narrative is like a complex labyrinth because all
the characters have been "stripped away" from their voices, their narratives, their language in a way that
their sense of self is diminished. Also, all the characters have had different experiences with slavery,
which is why their stories and their narratives are distinct from each other.

In addition to the pain, many major characters try to beautify pain in a way that diminishes what was
done. For example, Sethe keeps repeating what a White girl said about her scars on her back, calling them
"a Choke-cherry tree. Trunk, branches, and even leaves". She repeats this to everyone, suggesting she is
trying to find the beauty in her scar, even when they caused her extreme pain. Paul D and Baby Suggs
both look away in disgust and deny this description of Sethe's scars.[16] Sethe does the same with
Beloved. The memory of her ghost-like daughter plays a role of memory, grief, and spite that separates
Sethe and her late daughter. For instance, Beloved stays in the house with Paul D and Sethe. A home is a
place of vulnerability, where the heart lies. Paul D and Baby Suggs both suggest that Beloved is not
invited into the home, but Sethe says otherwise because she sees Beloved, all grown and alive, instead of
the pain of when Sethe murdered her.[17] At the end of the book, Beloved is gone and Paul D encourages
Sethe to love herself instead.

Heroism
Per her definition of heroism as the ability to do what one deems right in the face of opposition and to
inspire others to escape the pain of their past, the book may be trying to convey that societally, heroism is
not absolute but, rather, relative to past experience and the influence of the community; the literary
characterization of Sethe and Denver are written in a way that further support this.[18]

Developing Sethe not as a conventional hero but as an individual capable of allowing those she cares for
to break from the shackles of the past, Morrison depicts Sethe as a certain definition of heroism. Sethe's
decision to kill her own child, Beloved, is thoroughly scorned by the community, despite her fear that
Schoolteacher is coming to take her family back into slavery. Yet Sethe herself never doubts her own
veracity, justifying, “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). Sethe contrasts the role society proclaims for her, to
refrain from murdering her children and try to deal with the problem of Schoolteacher's arrival peacefully,
and the role she assumes for herself, to kill her children to ensure that they will not be forced to
experience the same venomous anguish of life as a slave. From Sethe's point of view, the only method
that would have resulted in the complete safety of her children was to kill her children and “keep them
away from what [she] know[s] is terrible,” because death is far more preferable to life back in the
confines of slavery. Beyond just having the courage to stand up for what she believes in, Sethe also
demonstrates her heroism by helping Paul D deal with his own painful past. When he visits Sethe near the
end of the novel, Paul D reminisces about “Her tenderness about his neck jewelry — its three wands, like
attentive baby rattlers, curving two feet into the air. How she never mentioned or looked at it, so he did
not have to feel the shame of being collared like a beast. Only this woman Sethe could have left him his
manhood like that. He wants to put his story next to hers” (322). Paul D's intimate experiences with the
iron bit have changed him forever, stripping him of his masculinity and contributing to a deep mental
storm tormenting him from within. Morrison utilizes metaphor to compare the iron bit to “three wands,
like attentive baby rattlers, curving two feet into the air,” underscoring that the venomous influence of the
iron bit, much like the bite of a rattlesnake, strikes in three different ways, damaging physical, cognitive,
and emotional abilities. Paul D draws support from Sethe “never mention[ing] or look[ing]” at his scars,
but more so, this allows him to retain his own manhood, which to Paul D defines the very basis of his
character.

Although Sethe defies opposition to her heroic acts of freeing others from their past, Denver defies the
confinements of her past, allowing her to help Sethe escape Beloved's parasitism that keeps her from a
livable life and foreseeable future. Feeling trapped by her isolation at 124 Bluestone Road, Denver is
challenged by the concept of leaving Sethe and Beloved behind, needing the courage to set foot beyond
the house to seek the aid of the community she was once a part of. As Sethe and Beloved remained
trapped in the house, the tipping point of heroism for Denver comes when she realizes “neither Beloved
nor Sethe seemed to care what the next day might bring. Denver knew it was on her. She would have to
leave the yard; step off the edge of the world, leave the two behind and go ask somebody for help” (286).
By using the metaphorical image of Denver “step[ing] off the edge of the world,” to describe Denver
leaving “the yard” in an effort to rewrite society's conceptions of her isolation and Sethe's horrible past
actions, Morrison elucidates her courage to leave the only world she knows to “ask somebody for help.”
Also realizing that Sethe and Beloved did not “seem to care what the next day might bring,” Denver
recognizes that she must free her mother from the past's reach to encourage her to plan for the “next day”
and for a future beyond Beloved's grasp. Overcoming her preconceptions of the outside community
allows Denver to surpass Morrison's threshold of heroism, rescuing Sethe from the suppressive grip of
the past through Beloved. When Beloved's influence becomes more and more detrimental to the
environment of 124 Bluestone Road and Sethe's outlook on life, Denver does not hesitate to thrust herself
into a motherly role and care for her mother. Her actions inspire Ella to form a group of women to
exorcise Beloved from the community, and she describes, “For Sethe it was as though the Clearing had
come to her with all its heat and simmering leaves, where the voices of women searched for the right
combination, the key the code, the sound that broke the back of words. Building voice upon voice until
they found it, and when they did it was a wave of sound wide enough to sound deep water and knock the
pods off chestnut trees. It broke over Sethe and she trembled like the baptized in its wash” (308).
Morrison refers back to the image of the Clearing to highlight how Denver has assumed the positive role
of Baby Suggs in the community, supporting and inspiring the people of the community to work towards
the greater good. Morrison then compares the voices of the praying woman to a wave of sound that could
even “knock the pods off chestnut trees,” highlighting the complete extent of power a united community
truly holds. In the wake of this spiritually pure experience, Sethe “tremble[s] like the baptized,”
showcasing how she has been, to some extent, cleansed of the taint of Beloved by Denver's courageous
actions.[19]

Through her characterization of both Sethe and Denver as unlikely heroes capable of surpassing
adversities in order to help their loved ones escape the haunting of their past, Morrison may be
emphasizing that heroism is defined not by supernatural powers or acts of unparalleled valor, but by the
courageous intent to overcome the assertive preconceptions of society in order to ensure the greater good
and positively influence on others in the process. As her experience in slavery came to define her life as a
free woman, Sethe wallowed in her past, becoming a hero only when she allowed those she loved to
escape their own burdens from the de-humanizing effects of slavery. Denver, on the other hand, breaks
free of her past isolation in order to help Sethe seek a future beyond the constraints of her past. Morrison
highlights that individuals have the ability to act with heroism, choosing to bring others out of the
desolation of their past burden. Such a phenomenon can be enacted in current society by resisting the
ideals of society, but rather, standing up for own beliefs to find heroism in the face of great opposition.[20]

Major characters

Sethe
Sethe is the protagonist of the novel. She escaped slavery from a plantation called Sweet Home. She lives
in the house named 124 (a house on 124 Bluestone Rd., but referred to only as "124") which is believed
to be haunted because she killed her infant child there. Her two sons have fled because of the haunting,
and she resides in the house with her daughter Denver. She is motherly and will do anything to protect her
children from suffering the same abuses she experienced when she was enslaved. She is greatly
influenced by her repression of the trauma she endured. She lives with "a tree on her back", scars from
being whipped. Her character is resilient, yet defined by her traumatic past. She was 19 years old when
Denver was born, making her birth year to be 1836.

Beloved
The opaque understanding of Beloved is central to the novel. She is a young woman who mysteriously
appears from a body of water near Sethe's house, and is discovered soaking wet on the doorstep by Sethe,
Paul D, and Denver, on their return from visiting the fair; they take her in. She is widely believed to be
the murdered baby who haunted 124, as the haunting ends when she arrives, and in many ways she
behaves like a child. As also mentioned, a young woman enslaved by a White man nearby had escaped,
and Beloved recounts stories of past slaves, including Sethe's mother. Morrison stated that the character
Beloved is the daughter Sethe killed.[21] The murdered baby was unnamed, so her name is derived from
the engraving on Sethe's murdered baby's tombstone, which simply read "Beloved" because Sethe could
not afford to engrave the word "Dearly" or anything else. Beloved becomes a catalyst to bring repressed
trauma of the family to the surface, but also creates madness in the house and slowly depletes Sethe.

Paul D
Paul D retains his slave name; most of the enslaved men at Sweet Home were named Paul. He also
retains many painful memories from enslavement and being forced to live in a chain gang; he had been
moving around continuously before arriving at 124.[22] He has a "tobacco tin" for a heart, in which he
contains his painful memories, until Beloved opens it. Years after their time together at Sweet Home, Paul
D and Sethe reunite and begin a romantic relationship. He acts fatherly towards Denver and is the first to
be suspicious of Beloved. Despite their long past, he fails to understand Sethe fully because of her
motherhood and because of the many years that had passed since.

Denver
Denver is Sethe's only child who remains at 124. Isolated from her community after Beloved's killing,
Denver forms a close bond with her mother. Upon Beloved's arrival, Denver watches as her sister's ghost
begins to exhibit demonic activity. Although introduced as a childish character, Denver develops into a
protective woman throughout the novel. In the final chapters, Denver fights not only for her personal
independence, but also for her mother's wellbeing, breaking the cycle of isolation at 124. She is 18 years
old at the beginning of the novel.

Baby Suggs
Baby Suggs is Sethe's mother-in-law. Her son Halle worked to buy her freedom, after which she travels to
Cincinnati and establishes herself as a respected leader in the community, preaching for the Black people
to love themselves because other people will not. This respect turns sour after she turns some food into a
feast, earning their envy, as well as Sethe's act of infanticide. Baby Suggs retires to her bed, where she
thinks about pretty colors for the rest of her life. She dies at 70 in the beginning of the book, 8 years
before the main events.

Halle
Halle is the son of Baby Suggs, the husband of Sethe and father of her children. Sethe and he were
married in Sweet Home, yet they got separated during her escape. He is only mentioned in flashbacks.
Paul D was the last to see Halle, churning butter at Sweet Home. He is presumed to have gone mad after
seeing residents of Sweet Home violating Sethe. He is hardworking and good, qualities that Paul D sees
in Denver at the end of the book, but ones that Baby Suggs fears make him a target.

Schoolteacher
Schoolteacher is the primary discipliner, violent, abusive, and cruel to the people he enslaved at Sweet
Home, whom he views as animals. He comes for Sethe following her escape, but she kills her daughter
and is arrested, instead.[22]

Amy Denver
Amy Denver is a young white girl who finds Sethe desperately trying to make her way to safety after her
escape from Sweet Home, trying to get to Boston herself. Sethe is extremely pregnant at the time, and her
feet are bleeding badly from the travel. Amy helps nurture her and deliver Sethe's daughter on a small
boat, and Sethe names the child Denver after her.

Adaptations
In 1998, the novel was made into a film directed by Jonathan Demme, and produced by and starring
Oprah Winfrey.

In January 2016, Beloved was broadcast in 10 episodes by BBC Radio 4 as part of its 15 Minute Drama
programme. The radio series was adapted by Patricia Cumper.[23]

Legacy
Beloved received the Frederic G. Melcher Book Award, which is named for an editor of Publishers
Weekly. In accepting the award on October 12, 1988, Morrison said that "[t]here is no suitable memorial
or plaque or wreath or wall or park or skyscraper lobby" honoring the memory of the human beings
forced into slavery and brought to the United States.[24] "There's no small bench by the road," she
continued. "And because such a place doesn't exist (that I know of), the book had to."[24] Inspired by her
remarks, the Toni Morrison Society began to install benches at significant sites in the history of slavery in
America.[25] The New York Times reported that the first 'bench by the road' was dedicated on July 26,
2008, on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, the place of entry for some 40% of the enslaved Africans
brought to the United States. Morrison said she was extremely moved by the memorial.[24][26] In 2017,
the 21st bench was placed at the Library of Congress. It is dedicated to Daniel Alexander Payne Murray
(1852–1925), the first African-American assistant librarian of Congress.[27]

The novel received the seventh annual Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights Book
Award in 1988, given to a novelist who "most faithfully and forcefully reflects Robert Kennedy's
purposes—his concern for the poor and the powerless, his struggle for honest and even-handed justice,
his conviction that a decent society must assure all young people a fair chance, and his faith that a free
democracy can act to remedy disparities of power and opportunity."[28]

Critical reception
The publication of Beloved in 1987 resulted in the greatest acclaim yet for Morrison. Although nominated
for the National Book Award, it did not win, and 48 African-American writers and critics—including
Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Jayne Cortez, Angela Davis, Ernest J. Gaines, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Rosa
Guy, June Jordan, Paule Marshall, Louise Meriwether, Eugene Redmond, Sonia Sanchez, Quincy Troupe,
John Edgar Wideman, and John A. Williams—signed a letter of protest that was published in The New
York Times Book Review on January 24, 1988.[29][30] Yet, later in 1988, Beloved did receive the Pulitzer
Prize for Fiction,[31] as well as the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award, the Melcher Book Award,
the Lyndhurst Foundation Award, and the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award.[32]

Commentators have described Beloved as an exploration of notions of family, trauma, the repression of
memory, the restoration of the historical record and an attempt to give voice to the collective memory of
African Americans. Indeed, critics and Morrison herself have indicated that the controversial epigraph to
Beloved, "60 million and more", is drawn from a number of studies on the African slave trade, which
estimate that approximately half of each ship's "cargo" perished in transit to America.[33][34]

Scholars have additionally debated the nature of the character Beloved, arguing whether she is actually a
ghost or a real person. Reviewers, assuming Beloved to be a supernatural incarnation of Sethe's daughter,
have faulted Beloved as a confusing ghost story; Elizabeth B. House, however, has argued that Beloved is
not a ghost, and the novel is actually a story of two probable instances of mistaken identity.[35] Beloved is
haunted by the loss of her African parents, and thus comes to believe that Sethe is her mother. Sethe longs
for her dead daughter and is rather easily convinced that Beloved is the child she has lost. Such an
interpretation, House contends, clears up many puzzling aspects of the novel and emphasizes Morrison's
concern with familial ties.[32]

Since the late 1970s, the focus on Morrison's representation of African-American experience and history
has been strong. The idea that writing acts as a means of healing or recovery is a strain in many of these
studies. Timothy Powell, for instance, argues that Morrison's recovery of a Black logos rewrites blackness
as "affirmation, presence, and good",[36] while Theodore O. Mason Jr. suggests that Morrison's stories
unite communities.[37]

Many critics explore memory, or what Beloved’s Sethe calls "rememory", in this light. Susan Bowers
places Morrison in a "long tradition of African American apocalyptic writing" that looks back in time,
"unveiling" the horrors of the past in order to "transform" them.[38] Several critics have interpreted
Morrison's representations of trauma and memory through a psychoanalytic framework. Ashraf H. A.
Rushdy explores how primal scenes in Morrison's novels are "an opportunity and affective agency for
self-discovery through memory" and "rememory".[39] As Jill Matus argues, however, Morrison's
representations of trauma are "never simply curative": in raising the ghosts of the past to banish or
memorialize them, the texts potentially "provoke readers to the vicarious experience of trauma and act as
a means of transmission".[40] Ann Snitow's reaction to Beloved neatly illustrates how Morrison criticism
began to evolve and move toward new modes of interpretation. In her 1987 review of Beloved, Snitow
argues that Beloved, the ghost at the center of the narrative, is "too light" and "hollow", rendering the
entire novel "airless". Snitow changed her position after reading criticism that interpreted Beloved in a
different way, seeing something more complicated and burdened than a literal ghost, something requiring
different forms of creative expression and critical interpretation. The conflicts at work here are
ideological, as well as critical; they concern the definition and evaluation of American and African-
American literature, the relationship between art and politics, and the tension between recognition and
appropriation.[41]

In defining Morrison's texts as African-American literature, critics have become more attentive to
historical and social context and to the way Morrison's fiction engages with specific places and moments
in time. As Jennings observes, many of Morrison's novels are set in isolated Black communities where
African practices and belief systems are not marginalized by a dominant White culture, but rather remain
active, if perhaps subconscious, forces shaping the community.[42] Matus comments that Morrison's later
novels "have been even more thoroughly focused on specific historical moments"; "through their
engagement with the history of slavery and early twentieth-century Harlem, [they] have imagined and
memorialized aspects of black history that have been forgotten or inadequately remembered".[40]

On November 5, 2019, the BBC News listed Beloved on its list of the 100 most inspiring novels.[43]

Banning and controversy

Beloved has been banned in many U.S. schools, including at least eleven during the 2021–2022 academic
year. Common reasons for censorship include bestiality, infanticide, sex, and violence.[44]

In 2007, twenty years after its 1987 publication, the novel was abruptly abandoned by an AP English
class at Eastern High School in Louisville, Kentucky, at the order of the school's principal. The class had
nearly reached the end of the book when a parent complained about language on page 13.[45] Upon being
informed that the book was being immediately banned, the English teacher who was teaching the book
argued to the school's Site Based Decision Making Council that a college-level English literature course
should be taught. With the help of like-minded teachers and an outpouring from Eastern's alumni, the ban
was soon lifted, and the book continues to be taught at the high school today.

In Virginia, Beloved was considered for removal from the Fairfax County senior English reading list due
to a parent's 2017 complaint that "the book includes scenes of violent sex, including a gang rape, and was
too graphic and extreme for teenagers".[46] Parental concern about Beloved 's content inspired the Beloved
Bill, legislation that would have required Virginia public schools to notify parents of any "sexually
explicit content" and provide an alternative assignment if requested.[47][48] The bill was vetoed by
Governor Terry McAuliffe. When McAuliffe ran again for the governor's office in 2021, a major event in
the election was his statement during a debate that, "Yeah, I stopped the bill that—I don't think parents
should be telling schools what they should teach." His opponent, Glenn Youngkin, seized on the remark,
and produced a television commercial in which a parent recounted her effort to get the book banned. The
commercial did not mention the title, author, or subject of the book, but focused on the "explicit material"
in the unnamed work.[49][50]

Student activist group Voters of Tomorrow announced plans in February 2022 to distribute banned books
to students in Texas and Virginia, including Beloved.[51][52] Parents in the Katy Independent School
District responded to the book distributions by filing a request to review Beloved, resulting in the book's
removal from school libraries and restriction to 11th and 12th Grade students. Students and parents spoke
against banning the book during the public forum segment of the district's board meetings.[53][54] The
ACLU of Texas delivered a letter to school board members and the superintendent in April 2022 claiming
that the district's book removal of Beloved and other titles violated the First Amendment, the Texas
Constitution, and the district's own policies.[55]

Trilogy
Beloved is the first of three novels about love and African-American history, sometimes called the
Beloved Trilogy.[56] Morrison said they are intended to be read together, explaining: "The conceptual
connection is the search for the beloved – the part of the self that is you, and loves you, and is always
there for you."The second novel in the trilogy, Jazz, came out in 1992. The third novel Paradise, about
citizens of an all-Black town, came out in 1997.

Awards
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 1988[57]
Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, 1988[58]
Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award
Melcher Book Award
Lyndhurst Foundation Award
Elmer Holmes Bobst Award

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Wolf Book Award.

External links
Podcast of Toni Morrison discussing Beloved (http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldser
vice/wbc/rss.xml) on the BBC's World Book Club
Emily Temple, "75 Covers of Toni Morrison's Beloved From Around the World" (http://lithub.c
om/75-covers-of-toni-morrisons-beloved-from-around-the-world/)—In honor of the novel's
30th anniversary. Literary Hub, September 18, 2017.

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