A Comparison Of Pasts In Macbeth, And The Book Thief

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What happens when people have to face their pasts in order to live in the present? Authors Toni Morrison, William Shakespeare, and Markus Zusak give different examples of characters facing their pasts in their books Beloved, Macbeth, and The Book Thief. Morrison does this by using a ghost to represent characters past mistakes, Shakespeare does this by plaguing his characters with ghosts and choices to make based on a prophecy, and Zusak does this by making Liesel face her fear of abandonment. In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, characters are forced to deal with their pasts when a young woman named Beloved comes to stay with them. Sethe’s past is riddled with the abuse she faced as a slave and the murder she committed. When Beloved shows up outside her doorstep, Sethe decides to take care of her. After being abandoned by her lover, Sethe comes to the conclusion that Beloved is the baby she murdered 18 years in her past. Sethe did this to save her child from a life of slaver. After escaping for a mere 28 days, slave catchers came to take Sethe and her children back to Sweet Home, the place that she had escaped from. In order to save herself and her children, Sethe decided to kill her them and commit suicide. She was …show more content…

She gives Beloved al the attention she wants, all the food she wants, and all the clothes she wants. Sethe does this, even though it ends up hurting her. She loses weight and barely eats anything, she’s constantly telling Beloved that she is sorry and that she loves her, and she does everything Beloved wishes of her. This brings Sethe to the brink of insanity. When she faces a situation similar to the one she faced 18 years in the past, she makes a different choice. This time, Sethe decides not to kill her children, but to go after the slave catcher, or in this case, the white

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