A Collaboration Between Literary Experts and Myself - Nathaniel Moreing

Text: Beloved by Toni Morrison

Critical Lens: Marxist Lens

Beloved is a 1987 novel by Toni Morrison about the African-American society post-slavery and how this history stained the minds of U.S. society. Throughout the story, the reader is shown violent and disturbing flashbacks of former slaves who lived on a plantation in the South and all the humiliation and dehumanizing they experienced while living there. At the end of the book surfaces the realization that joining together helps both make the past much more bearable and the present and future more promising. Through Toni Morrison’s portrayal of community both as a bystander and as an indestructible ally, it is conveyed that social classes which succumb to hegemonic beliefs are destined to remain powerless in the face of oppression; however, once the population of these classes decides to act in unison and self dependence, they may be freed from their shackles, both metaphorically and literally.

The main plot point which I am analyzing first is when Sethe tries taking the lives of her children and successfully kills her youngest daughter when her former master visits to take her and her children back to Sweet Home (179). While the chaos ensues, many of the black community gather in front of the home to watch. After this event, the community begins to avoid any interaction with the family of 124 and many start to compare Sethe to a ferocious animal rather than both a fellow member of the community and a former slave. This represents the effects of stereotyping and dehumanizing by the whites on African-Americans through the spreading of similarly unrealistic and unfair beliefs about their own community. By believing in the same hegemonic perception of the white man, the community surrounding Bluestone Road is allowing and enforcing the oppressive treatment they have received all their lives. In support of my thesis, Heather Humann wrote similarly about how Morrison depicts racism in her article, “Bigotry, Breast Milk, Bric-a-Brac, a Baby, and a Bit in Beloved: Toni Morrison’s portrayal of Racism and Hegemony”: “In Beloved, Toni Morrison shows the effects of racism on its victims and its perpetrators by mapping out individualized types of racism, complicating them, and then showing how they collaborate (sometimes unwittingly) to create a cultural hegemony.” Though this statement’s use of “collaborate” is to describe the unity of racist ideologies to “create a cultural hegemony,” I processed this collaboration as a joint effort between both parties in the conflict. In this passage, the article is highlighting the fact that, while in reality there are no limitations on African-American which prove whites to be superior, different forms of racism such as dehumanization and physical abuse come together to cripple black communities into a state of diminishing self-worth, further empowering racism, resulting in a vicious cycle.

Recent generations in America, having lived with mixed races and ethnicities, understand that, while the existence of racism is still clearly evident, the past ideology of white supremacy has been struck down to a handful of hate groups with low social popularity. This means that there must have been some sort of societal change which shifted in favor of the African-American community. Did this change come from some sort of intellectual enlightenment in white culture, or through the pain and endurance of the black community in U.S.? Toni Morrison argues the latter, which she portrays through the community’s gathering and march upon 124 to confront Beloved, which many, including myself, believe symbolizes the tragedies and history of slavery, near the end of book (309). This community gathering, which results in the disappearance of Beloved from Cincinnati, conveys the theme that through the unison of a social class, entire class systems can be removed from society without any need for violent reinforcement.