Dehumanization Exposed In Toni Morrison's Beloved

For a society to accept the gross mistreatment, murder, or enslavement of a group of people, that society must first dehumanize their victims. If a society were to truly consider the individuals with whom they are at war, or enslaving, or torturing and see them as human beings with all the good and bad that it entails, it would be difficult for the victimizers to continue with their actions. Without dehumanizing black slaves, American society would not have been able to continue the culture of violence and supremacy that is necessary to keep an economy based on slavery intact. So, in an attempt to keep both themselves guiltfree and enslaved Africans submissive, American slaveholders made an effort to dehumanize their captives and treat them like cattle. They did this by assaulting the bodies and minds of the enslaved, which exposed their captives to both physical and psychological trauma. The horror of this dehumanization and its lingering effects on a person’s psyche make up many of the motivations of the characters in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. According to Fredrick Douglas, the dehumanization of slaves is carried out in multiple ways. He presents a major component of the

For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child’s affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child.” This breaking of the mother and child relationship disturbed Sethe more than nearly any other treatment she received. She grows to understand how tenuous her role in her children’s lifes are after realizing that the “game of checkers” continued despite her love for them. She becomes desperate to keep them safe, and to not have them taken from her. She cannot bear to see her children suffer and will do whatever she can to protect