Toni Morrison's Art. A Humanistic Exploration of The Bluest Eye and Beloved

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Chapter 3: Quest for abode in Beloved:
Beloved, like most black fiction, is about the troubled question of identity and liberty, the agony of social alienation, the longing for a real or, at times, a mythical home. The story focuses on the reappearance of the ghostly character Beloved whose throat was slit open under appalling circumstances eighteen years before, when she was two years old, by her own mother, Sethe. Morrison, through the pages of her fiction brings forth the agony, pain and trepidation of a mother while giving birth to her children in this cruel, inhuman and cold-blooded world. A mother for whom her children is her extension, is ready to cut that chord so that she could save her children from the atrocities which are a part and parcel of this world. It is through the narration of the circumstances leading to her death that the story of Sethe, the central character, and of Paul D and Denver, besides that of other victims of slavery, unfolds before us. It is Beloved's presence that functions as a crypt that hides the truth and meanings of the text. The misery of man in both physical and psychological chains comes forth through the fabric of the novel. Beloved becomes, like the preface which is taken from the biblical book of Hosea, and which reads "I will call them my people which are not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved." It is a crypt to reveal the past, and conjoin it with their present and future. Toni Morrison uses the primary tool of "memory that creates the chain of tradition, which passes a happening on from generation to generation." Beloved, a crypt, a rememory, helps unfold the catastrophe of history, full of injustices and the unfathomable destruction of the oppressed. Beloved ends in change, a change born in anger and commitment of the oppressed. It is nourished by the image of enslaved ancestors rather than that of liberated grand children.3 Toni Morrison, through Sethe's rememory of Beloved, halts the

Sumedha Bhandari is working as an Assistant Professor of English at Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana. She has teaching experience of more than 10 years and research experience of more than 15 years. Punjab Agricultural University is a premier agricultural university, working toward the dissemination of scientific knowledge to farmers of India. The PAU has played a key role in increasing the food grain production in the Punjab State and, thus, ushering in an era of Green Revolution in India.