Beloved by Toni Morrisson

Slavery is the novel’s core theme and plays a critical role in the lives of each character. Slavery and its horrors are what led Halle to pay for Baby Suggs’ freedom, sentencing himself to a crushing debt to Mr. Garner. Later on, slavery and the concomitant sexual abuse drive Halle insane. Furthermore, slavery and the abuse Sethe suffered under it compelled her to commit infanticide rather than see her children also suffer. These examples all demonstrate slavery’s powerful hold over the enslaved.

Slavery also caused devastating emotional and psychological wounds in the enslaved, and Beloved is one of the first novels to explore this aspect of slavery. Similar to the schoolteacher’s comparison of Sethe to a horse that needed to be tamed, most novels gloss over the inner workings of an enslaved person. By delving into the consciousness of slaves and former slaves, Morrison exposes slavery’s crippling legacy beyond its physical impact. Sethe’s complicated decision to kill her children shows that slaves were far from the mindless cattle or livestock their masters took them to be. Rather, they were complex human beings capable of making bitter decisions in the name of love. Similarly, after his experiences at Sweet Home and the chain gang, Paul D suffers from PTSD. To cope, he replaces his heart with a metaphorical tin box where he locks away his traumatic memories. Again, this contradicts the stereotype of slaves as beings with no emotional or psychological sentience.