Human Emotions In Toni Morrison's Beloved

The novel, Beloved, by Toni Morrison, examines both the distinction and commonality between the characteristics of humans and those of animals. Thorough her poignant description of slavery: a machine that operates on the basis familial destruction and dehumanization, in which women and children are treated like cattle and calves, Morrison illustrates its distortion of the line between man and beast, driving Sethe and those chained within its influence through the full spectrum of the human emotions even long after they have escaped. Sethe struggles to classify herself after escaping slavery and crossing the Ohio river to the relative safety of the North; after all, “definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.” In Beloved the past isn’t
Denver, Sethe’s (living) daughter is at first delighted that she no longer has to be alone, but as Beloved becomes increasingly obsessed with Sethe, Denver grows concerned for her mother’s safety. As Beloved becomes more and more attached to Sethe, she begins to consume Sethe’s life, devouring her stories and attention while growing larger and larger. At the same time, Sethe wastes away, becoming frail and decrepit, constantly devoted to convincing her long lost daughter that she killed her not in an episode of animalistic barbarity, but rather a moment of intense caring. Beloved takes advantage of Sethe’s need to dispel her own doubt that she is no better than an animal by refusing her apologies and refuting her justification. Through these actions, Beloved becomes a literary vampire, extricating the life force and Sethe consuming it in the entirely selfish interest of revenge. In actuality, Beloved, as a result of her merciless manipulation of Sethe, is the one who crosses the line between man and beast, highlighting the vindictiveness of death and the tendency of tough decisions to pry at one’s conscious until they are put to