The Importance Of Identity In Toni Morrison's Beloved

In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Morrison highlights the importance of identity, the formation of the 'self', in addition to the influence of an individual’s environment and society on that development. Identity-formation, which is a person’s understanding of themself, other people, and the world around them during the course of development, is a concept that characters victimized by slavery in Beloved struggle with throughout the novel. More specifically, the characters in the novel experience a cultural traumatization, which is a dramatic loss of identity and value that inevitably manifests some degree of unity among the slavery victims. In essence, African-American slaves were not only victimized by their destructive environment and society’s racial oppression, they were ultimately united as result of slave culture.

In the case of Morrison's characters in Beloved, the trauma of slavery is not only regarded as an institution or an experience, it is acknowledged as a collective remembrance that formed an identity among a group of people. Toni Morrison’s Beloved extends beyond the physical, emotional, and spiritual anguish that was created by slavery. Beloved explores the significance of identity-formation as well as slavery’s influence on the deconstruction and reconstruction of African-American slaves’ collective identity through the characters’ experiences and interactions throughout the novel.

In addition to discrimination for associating with their racial group, African-American slaves were victimized for being slaves and ultimately belonging to that social group. Since this concept of collective identity-formation assists individuals in defining themselves and others, it is clear why the characters in Morrison's Beloved find i...

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...ntity as a slave owner.

The dehumanization of the slaves in Beloved extends beyond sexual identification; it progresses into the categorization of slaves as animals. At one point during the novel, Sethe overhears schoolteacher during a lesson with his nephews. During this lecture, schoolteacher instructs his students to list slave characteristics and then place them into two categories, human and animal: “No, no. That's not the way. I told you to put her human characteristics on the left; her animal ones on the right. And don't forget to line them up” (193). During this scene, schoolteacher explains to his nephews to ignore the slaves’ humanity by deconstructing their human identity and replacing it with an animalistic identity. By enlightening his nephews with the idea that slaves are subhuman, schoolteacher is setting the racial attitudes of the next generation.