TONI
MORRISON
-
BELOVED
TONI
MORRISON
-
BELOVED
Toni Morrison
•
An
American
novelist,
editor, and professor.
Toni Morrison
– early life and career
•
Born Chloe Anthony Wofford in 1931, in Lorain, Ohio.
•
Grew up during the Great Depression of the 1930s in a poor
family of a long history of migration. They left the deep rural
South to escape racism and find more opportunities in the
more industrialized, urban North.
•
She attended Howard University where she was awarded
her BA in English and continued her education with
graduate studies at Cornell University which she
concluded with a Master of Arts degree also in English.
•
She later returned to Howard to teach English.
•
In 1958, she married Harold Morrison, an architect from
Jamaica whom she divorced six years later.
•
In 1965 she became a senior editor at Random House, a
position that enabled her to bring the publications of African
American and Caribbean authors into the mainstream.
Toni Morrison
and her writing
●
As she became an editor she also began building a body of creative
work that, in 1993, would make her the first African-American
woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature for her novel Beloved.
●
At home she heard many songs and tales of Southern black folklore
Morrison´s works, therefore, deal with the black experience and
celebrate the black community.
●
Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and
richly detailed characters.
Among her best known novels are:
The Bluest Eye
Sula
Song of Solomon
Beloved
BELOVED
●
Beloved was published in 1987 and was a bestseller by many
regarded as Morrison´s most successful novel.
●
It was influenced by the true story of the African-American slave,
Margaret Garner, who temporarily escaped slavery during 1856 in Kentucky
by fleeing to Ohio, a free state, with her children and killed her two-year-old
daughter rather than allow her to be recaptured and ”suffer as she had
done“.
●
In Beloved, Toni Morrison:
-
Looks back to the era after the end of the Civil War and tells the story of
Sethe, a woman who had been a slave and who, after escaping from a
Kentucky plantation, comitted infanticide to protect her baby from a
lifetime of slavery, who later comes back to remind her of the times of horror
-
Intends to show the reader what happened to slaves working in a slave
system.
-
Depicts the emotional impact slavery has had on individuals and their
families
The effects of slavery on the characters of
Beloved
SETHE
the physical effects:
the scar of a tree on her back
“School teacher made one open on my back, and
when it closed it made a tree. It grows there still.”
The pain of her body after being raped and tortured
The pain of her feet after she runs through the woods
The psychological and spiritual effects:
killing of one of her own children
she lived an isolated life in the black community
being unable to create a love bond with a man
feeling dehumanized
the memories of the past make her daily life unbearable
and make her feel exhausted
The effects of slavery on the characters of
Beloved
HALLE (Sethe’s husband)
the physical effects:
He lost his life
The psychological and spiritual effects:
He went mad
PAUL D
alienation
becaming depressed
feeling insecure about his sense of self
emotional fatigue/pain
DENVER
- lives a secluded life
BABY SUGGS
-
feels alone
- ---
spiritual
fatigue
-
cannot move on with her life
Slavery has lead to the break up of many families.
•
Baby Suggs
-
lost all of her eight
children due to slavery,
four children were taken
from her and four were
chased away.
•
Sethe
-
did not have any
parents
-
lost her husband when
she ran away to Ohio
trying to free herself
-
Killed her child Beloved
-
the ghost of that dead
child led to both of her
son’s running away.
THANK YOU !