The analysis of senses in Toni Morrison's 'Beloved'

Essay from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 10 (A), University of Bucharest (Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures), course: English Literature, 3 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Though legally abolished in 1807, slavery was not entirely stopped until the Civil War; black people were tormented, forced to give up their languages, names and religions, that is, their own identities. 'Throughout the history of the New World, African American women were among the most oppressed, because they suffered the double jeopardy of being black and female, experiencing racism and sexism at the same time.'1 Set during the Reconstruction era in 1873, Beloved presents the period of slavery and its aftermath, describing the fate of some former slaves to whom their past represent a burden they desperately try to forget. Sethe, the protagonist, is a young woman who freed herself, but whose life remains haunted by the shadows of the past, symbolized by the spirit and flesh of her deceased daughter, Beloved, whom she murdered eighteen years earlier, 'in an attempt to spare her the experience of her own sufferings'2.