1. Learning Journal Four.
Bennet and Royle are speaking of the ghosts in the context of history, as they state in their chapter on
ghosts, ghosts do not come from nowhere, they come from history.(Bennet and Royle 2004) When
discussing beloved, it is obvious that ghosts are present throughout this novel, the novel itself is about
the harsh world of being a slave. Beloved, the character is the ghost of a forgotten slave which
suffered and died from being a helpless victim in a cruel slave ridden world. The ghost in a literal
sense is a being which haunts others due to their history, a ghost in a metaphorical sense is one which
leaves a legacy. Throughout Beloved, these ghosts represent the un-dead versions of previous slaves,
as said in Beloved when the Sethe’s daughter is being discussed:
"I’ll be. A baby?" "No. Grown. The age it would have been had it lived."You talking about
flesh?""Whipping her?""Like she was batter.""Guess she had it coming.""Nobody got that
coming.""But, Ella-""But nothing. What’s fair isn’t necessarily right.""You can’t just up and kill your
children."(Morrison 255)
This is a direct example of the ghost leaving a legacy, and this is what they represent. As discussed in
Bennet and Royle, the United States is an untellable ghost story that must not, and wasn’t forgotten,
the legacy left by history created by previous people, namely slaves, undoubtedly were the ones who
corrected the present and future. Beloved is shown as the age she would have been, and this is to show
us, and the people that this is what she could have been had it not been for the cruelty she faced from
her mother. As all the ghosts in beloved do not directly and physically harm Sethe, they have an
emotionally affect which changes the course of history, just like this metaphorical ghosts that Bennet
and Royle discuss in their chapter on “Ghosts”. The ghosts represent the fallen, they represent the
mistreated, and they represent their deaths. The reason why they do this is to show the wrong in the
world, the ghost’s of slavery haunt us for the rest of civilisation in terms of us slowly correcting this
wrong and hopefully being a world in which slavery is completely abolished thanks to these “ghosts”.

2. Bibliography.
Bennet, A. Royle, N. (2004) An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory. Pearson Longman,
2004.
Morrison, T. (1987). Beloved: a novel. : Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.