Essay --

Beloved The story in Beloved authored by Toni Morrison was centered on the aftermath experience of the protagonist; Sethe as a slavery escapee. The story which defied chronology was mirrored in flashbacks. The harsh experience of slavery was still patent and the memories of bitter struggles were still haunting the characters. There was an inhibition in the ability to move on. The ruination of identity by slavery and competence of language were two vital themes in the story and would be further analyzed. Ruination of identity by slavery as theme depicted the physiological, mental and spiritual burden of slavery which is inescapable as it continues to haunt the characters like Sethe and Paul D who experienced it. Slavery was accompanied with negativity on the true identity of oneself and this made story have several situations of self-denial and estrangement. For example, Paul D was unsure of whether the wailings and tears of grief, he was feeling were coming from himself or someone else: â€Å"In the boxes the men heard the water rise in the trench and looked out for cottonmouths. They squatted in muddy water, slept above it, peed in it. Paul D thought he was screaming; his mouth was open and there was this loud throat-splitting sound--but it may have been somebody else. Then he thought he was crying. Something was running down his cheeks. He lifted his hands to wipe away the tears and saw dark brown slime†. The slaves received endured inhuman conditions which included being traded as a normal good in exchange for paper money. Paul D always questioned his worth as a human and suffered from inferiority of being insecure of whether or not he was truly a â€Å"man†. Sethe also experienced the cruelty of slavery. She once intrude... ...ry when Paul D and prison inmates from Georgia sang about their past experiences and dream; â€Å"garbling the words so they could not be understood; tricking the words so their syllables yielded up other meanings†. In another case, Stamp Paid saw through the window, two backs and went to see for himself; believing that â€Å"the undecipherable language clamoring around the house was the mumbling of the black and angry dead†. The titling of the story comes down to what is regarded as language misunderstanding. At the burial of her daughter whom killed by her hand, Sethe misunderstood the minister’s address referring to the living as â€Å"Dear beloved† and interpreted it as referencing to the dead. The meaning of words depend heavily the changing interpretation of words: figures of speech rely on the capability of words to connect and disconnect with the definitions of words.