Trauma In Beloved
Beloved , a novel written by Tony Morrison and published in 1987, follows the story of a family of fromer slaves who live in a house haunted by a spirit named Beloved. The story was inspired by the life of Margaret Garner. Garner was a slave in kentucky that escaped from slavery and fled to Ohio in the mid 1800’s. There, she was caught by slave catchers and, in an attempt to save her young children from the horrors of life as a slave, ended up trying to kill them. Beloved provides a nuanced depiction of the trauma that families affected by slavery experience through each of the characters we meet throughout the novel. The trauma that each character in Beloved experiences is, in some way or another, a result of their lives as slaves. However, despite their trauma stemming from the same experience, each of the characters has experienced that trauma differently. This is why although Paul D and Sethe both have trauma from their lives as slaves, they experience and process it differently.