Critical Lens Experts

The two essays that look at Beloved through the New Historical Lens both give different perspectives on what Toni Morrison was thinking when she was writing Beloved. In one of the essays the writer says Toni Morrison borrows from Frederick Douglass’s 1845 narrative. When Frederick Douglass wrote his novel it was during a time when slavery was still going on and he had to be careful about what he wrote in the novel because he did not want to offended the white readers of his novel because of the time period it was written. This writer also talks about how Douglass is able to use facts to inform readers rather than offend them, and how Morrison was able to more freely write about slavery without causing too many problems. The author also says Morrison tells a more emotionally telling story than Douglass does. They also say “Morrison’s treatment of song in Beloved provides the reader with a testimony that is significantly different from the testimonies set forth from slave narratives.” It is saying that what Morrison wrote is different from what other stories that have been told by previous slaves. The thing that stuck out to me in this paper the most was when it talks about how Morrison explores the relationship between song and humanity using her description of Beloved’s unique origin. I had never realized that Sehte is basically banished from society for murdering her one of her children and it is the reason why no one talks to Denver or Sethe. It went into a deeper reasoning of why no one talks to Denver or Sethe. Her neighbors think of her as inhumane because she murdered one of her children. It also says “If Sethe had acted less barbarically, her personhood would have been recognized by the spectators and “the singing would have begun at once.” This is saying the root of Sethe's problems are because she murdered her child, had she not done that she would have been better off. This part of the paper made the most sense to me, it made me think something different from then what I was thinking before.