Family Life, Mother-Daughter Relationship, and Psychological Impact from Slavery in Toni Morrison’s, Beloved

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Thesis: In Beloved, Toni Morrison talks about family life, mother-daughter relationships, and the psychological impact from slavery.
The psychological impact on the slaves in this book was awful, mainly because of the abuse, discrimination, humiliation, sexual assault, rape, and embarrassment that they were served by their owners. The abuse, assault, humiliation, and rape were the worst, forty-six people of the chain gang were offered to eat semen from the guards for breakfast (Parker). The slaves in Beloved were treated as animals, the white people of the towns dehumanized blacks and from then on they look at blacks as animals, they had no value, no purpose (Heffernan). Schoolteacher, the slave owner looked at blacks as something way less than human, he look at them with talks of mating them with one another or whoever wanted to “mate” with them, he didn’t care, none of them cared (Heffernan).
Abuse, rape, humiliation, embarrassment, assault and all of the other things that came with slavery scarred and scared Sethe so bad that once she was freed she attempted to kill all four of her children, because she was so afraid that they would have to live a life in slavery like she did (Heffernan). When Sethe was a slave the Schoolteacher’s nephews held Sethe down and stole her breast milk, like she was a cow. Sethe was taken away from her mother at a very young age and she doesn’t remember her at all, many other families were broken up the same way also (Spargo). There were slaves owners who were kind to slaves at times, like Mr. and Mrs. Garner who would be nice until they got behind closed doors there they would treat their slaves as if they were wild animals that were trying to invade their property.
After Sethe and her family l...

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...b. 14 Jan. 2014.
Heffernan, Teresa. "'Beloved' and the Problem of Mourning." Studies in the Novel 30.4 (1998): 558. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 14 Jan. 2014
Jesser, Nancy. "Violence, Home, and Community in Toni Morrison's 'Beloved.'." African American Review 33.2 (1999): 325+. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 14 Jan. 2014.
Parker, Emma. "A New Hystery: History and Hysteria in Toni Morrison's Beloved." Twentieth Century Literature 47.1 (2001): 1. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 14 Jan. 2014.
Spargo, R. Clifton. "Trauma and the Specters of eEnslavement in Morrison's Beloved." Mosaic [Winnipeg] 35.1 (2002): 113+. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 14 Jan. 2014.
Vickroy, Laurie. "The Force Outside/the Force Inside: Mother-love and Regenerative Spaces in Sula and Beloved." Obsidian II 8.2 (1993): 28+. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 14 Jan. 2014.

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