Author(s): Dr. Poonam Rani

Abstract: In the enslavement story subgenre of African-American literature, which is the focus of this study, personal narratives are examined. In order to accomplish this, a close reading of Toni Morrison's 1987 book Beloved, which is about slavery, will use a psychological reading of slavery as trauma to reveal the themes that are present in both the narrative of enslavement and the therapeutic discourses about trauma and it’s after effects. The personal narrative serves as the foundation for the nineteenth-century narrative of enslavement and is crucial to comprehending the occurrence of psychological trauma. This study looks at the areas where these two discourses overlap.Toni Morrison depicts the devastation caused by slavery and its associated sins through the several generations of a single family in her 1987 book Beloved. Even years after their physical emancipation, those who were affected by slavery's anguish are unable to get past it. The of the book, Sethe, a former slave who now resides in Cincinnati after the Civil War, can attest to this. Sethe escaped from a life of slavery at Sweet Home, Kentucky, when she was a young woman and three months pregnant with her fourth child. After being recaptured by their cruel owner, Schoolteacher, Sethe makes an attempt to kill all four kids, killing her two-year-old daughter in the process, to protect them from all the violent existence she was all too familiar with.

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Download Full Article: Slavery and Trauma in Tony Morrison’s Beloved

Pages: 15-18