Cruelty In Toni Morrison's Beloved

Are the zookeepers of a zoo as inhuman as the animals that they imprison? The question is certainly played with in Toni Morrison’s historical metafiction Beloved, where the cruelty of whites traps her in her sorrowful past. As depicted by the novel, the actions of white slavers dehumanizes not only blacks but also themselves, instills a dangerously thick love for the past within Sethe, and exemplifies the slavers’ detachment from their actions.
One of Beloved’s major themes is that cruelty dehumanizes not only its victims, but also its perpetrators in an ironic sense. After Paul D reveals to Sethe that Halle silently witnessed schoolteacher and his nephews assault and dehumanize her, she steps out of the house in frustration, recalling the

Schoolteacher’s recording of the incident parallels a photojournalist documenting a wild animal. However, this analogy does not exclude the assailant nephews, who, in their attempt to animalize Sethe through cruel and unusual assault, resemble lawless animals themselves. Despite taking the position of a sophisticated human by documenting the event, schoolteacher’s lack of remorse and wanton promotion of interpersonal harm shatters any pretense of humanity, demonstrating how an slaver’s act of cruelty can adversely dehumanize themselves, as well. Stamp Paid, too, ponders the shared animality between tortured slaves and their torturous slavers. On his way out of the 124, Stamp Paid believes that the voices he hears from within the residence “[is] the mumblings of the black and angry dead” (198) upset by the unlivable lives white people had given them. He notes that out of fear for the chaotic jungle that they planted in blacks, whites themselves act chaotically and with an animal wildness: “The

One month into her arrival at 124, Sethe realizes that schoolteacher and his nephews are coming. Remembering the tortures she suffered in their presence, she quickly tries to murder all her children so that they do not have to endure the existence she suffered at their hands. The height of the scene occurs when Baby Suggs reenters the shack to see that “Sethe [is] aiming a bloody nipple into the baby’s mouth” (152). The sheer irony of having the sight of nursing gilded with blood serves to visualize how far the schoolteacher’s savagery has twisted Sethe’s sense of love. Having gone through such a defining ordeal, Sethe pours her entire sense of identity into her children. After Denver’s mob expels Beloved, Sethe tells Paul D, “I’m tired [...] So tired. I have to rest for a while” (271). She is unable move on and take care of Denver because she is too busy looking back on how schoolteacher’s spiteful actions ultimately led to the loss of her child. In this way, schoolteacher’s cruelty has replaced Sethe’s love with a toxic, unproductive obsession for the past. The eventual conquering of obsession over love within Sethe becomes apparent when noting her reaction each time Beloved dies: the first time, Sethe wishes to lie down with Beloved forever, but knows she must move on for Denver’s sake. The second time