Cruelty In Toni Morrison's Beloved

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Toni Morrison’s Beloved is dedicated to the “sixty million and more” slaves whose stories of cruelty have been forgotten and will never be told. The core of the novel follows the life of a mother and her children, with a strong focus on how cruelty can reveal the extent of a mother’s love. In order to protect her children, Sethe stops at no length in order to be the best mother to her children, even if this means that she must fight cruelty with cruelty. Sethe’s relationship with her children highlights how the mother-child relationship is the strongest bond even in the face of the savagery of an institution, in which Sethe’s love for her children proves to be the greatest motivator in her will to combat the cruel reality of slavery.
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During his time at Sweet Home, Schoolteacher treated the slaves as if they were mere animals; he constantly asks them questions, takes their measurements, and document their daily lives in a journal. In a particular incident, Sethe overhears Schoolteacher telling his nephews to list her animal characteristics and her human characteristics. This painful memory of dehumanization reinforces Sethe’s determination to keep her children away from cruelty inflicted by slavery so that “no one, nobody on this earth, would list her daughter's characteristics on the animal side of the paper” (251). Sethe only hopes that her children would never have to experience the same emotion and physical abuse that Schoolteacher had inflicted upon herself. In order to create a safer environment for young children, Sethe sends them ahead with an agent of the underground railroad. Sethe, however, makes her escape later; while journeying alone and pregnant, she is able to continue through the pain only because of her infant daughter. All Sethe could think was that she “had to get [her] milk to [her] baby girl”(16). Sethe’s baby daughter as her motivation emphasizes how maternal love proves to be stronger than Schoolteacher’s cruelty that is determined to overpower

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