Guilt In Toni Morrison's Beloved

As humans, we tend to run away from our pain. We’re scared of being vulnerable and showing others a sign of weakness. We suppress fear, guilt, despair, and practically any other emotion that fails to express “contentment.” We avoid talking about things in our past that make us feel uncomfortable. But if we don’t address our past, who will? History is created rather than destroyed. And in order to move on from the past, rather than lingering in it, we must be brave enough to speak about it. Past traumas need to be addressed, no matter how gruesome or hurtful they may be. Authors often carry this moral responsibility to spread knowledge amongst the ignorant, to wield their craft conscientiously, to impact others with their language, and last
The desperation of slaves was real! The protagonist of Beloved even kills her own baby! Inside of the woodshed at 124, “two boys bled in the sawdust and dirt at the feet of a nigger woman holding a blood-soaked child to her chest with one hand and an infant by the heels in the other”(Morrison 175). Morrison’s use of vivid imagery purposely makes readers uncomfortable to show the overwhelming power of maternal love that drove Sethe to kill Beloved. Sethe would much rather endure the emotional pain of killing her own child than allow her children to enter the immoral institution of slavery. As you can see, fugitive slaves lived with a constant fear of being returned to their slave masters. Imagine living a life where you're never at peace because you don't know what will happen next? Imagine living a life where you know you will be separated from your loved ones, and it’s just a matter of time? Sometimes death isn't the worst thing in the world. Question yourself-Is a life under servitude worth living? Sometimes, the horrors of slavery seem remote to us since we live in the “Land of the Free” in 2017. Without the written works of authors, how would we immerse ourselves into our history? How would we be able to empathize with the agony of