Tony Morrison's Beloved

Tony Morrison’s 1987 novel Beloved, is a modern interpretation of the African American experience under slavery. Using a highly stylized narrative structure, Morrison tells the story of Sethe, a runaway slave mother, who cannot escape from the horrifying and traumatic details of her past. The story takes place during the reconstruction era, but often shifts between past and present, detailing the lives of its characters both before and after the end of slavery.
Although Beloved is a work of fiction, it in many ways resembles the slave narratives of the 19th century. This effect is achieved through Morrison’s use of flashbacks throughout the novel, which illustrate in graphic detail various aspects of plantation life, and other brutal elements of slavery in the South. In these flashbacks, Morrison uses evocative imagery to create realistic scenes that bring to life the horrors of life as a slave. Many of these flashbacks involve instances of sexual and physical humiliation that help to explain the intense pain felt by the characters. Through these scenes, Morrison is able to expand upon the tradition of the slave narrative. As an African American author in the late 20th century, being unable to write about slavery from first hand experience, she instead creates realistic, graphic portraits that evoke the feelings of fear and humiliation experienced by slaves. Rather than providing a historically factual account, this allows the reader to experience the feelings of despair felt by African American’s during and after slavery.
Stylistically, Beloved is also interesting in that it shifts between different literary forms in ways that are often jarring and sometimes confusing. In addition to numerous flashbacks, which are often presented out of order, Morrison switches between moments of third person narration, to other moments of first person interior monologue. This is especially noticeable in the part II of the book, when Sethe becomes convinced that Beloved is her dead daughter. As she becomes convinced of this, the language moves from a stream-of-conscious monologue, to broken, unpunctuated lines, and eventually ends in a form that resembles poetry. Morrison seems to use this shifting style to represent Sethe’s deteriorating mind, and it works to great effect. These shifts in complex styles give this novel a very postmodern feel. Although this can be difficult at times, I think that the complex style of this book helped to evoke feelings of pain, suffering, and confusion in African American literature in a way that I had yet experienced. I think that in doing this, Beloved is a great example of postmodern literature, and helps to show how African American literary forms are constantly evolving.