Tiffany

Tiffany Chung

Set in the Reconstruction era of the mid to late 1800s, Beloved is placed in an era of social upheaval, uneasy compromise and anger. During this time, the USA was a country trying to rebuild after a civil war that had originated from a bitter conflict of ideology and values with the abolition of slavery as one of the underpinning principles the victors stood for. Toni Morrison uses this background of anger and hatred to plant the seeds of a novel that explores the importance of freedom and love towards an individual, but also the impact on the society as well by contrasting the characters Beloved, who represents the past through her constant references to past events and Denver, who represents the future through her symbolic reaching out to the wider community by symbolically leaving 124 and using this to symbolize the need for the balance between overcoming the past and engaging the future.

Morrison stopped work on Beloved to work on the play ‘Dreaming Emmett’, based on the brutal murder of Emmett Till and ensuring judicial farce, focusing on the limitations of race even in events far after the passing of the Emancipation Act. The two pieces document two different times in the fight for equality for blacks but have a similarity in the nature of the characters: Emmett’s Mother and Sethe are both single mothers that endure the loss of a child because of racist sentiments and policies that turn the judiciary against them, which gives the reader a clear indication of the lack of progress between the two times.