3. About the novel
“BELOVED”
Beloved is Toni Morrison's fifth novel.
Published in 1987 as Morrison was
enjoying increasing popularity and success,
Its reception by critics was overwhelming,
and the book is widely considered
Morrison's greatest novel to date.
4. About the novel
Mythic in scope, Beloved is an attempt
to grapple with the legacy of slavery.
Morrison based her novel on a real-life
incident, in which an escaped slave
woman who faced recapture killed her
children rather than allow them to be
taken back into slavery.
5. In the novel, the protagonist's near-
recapture follows the Fugitive Slave
Act of 1850, part of the Compromise of
1850, which stated that escaped
slaves, as property, could be tracked
down across state lines and retrieved
by their old masters.
About the novel
6. About the novel
In Beloved, Morrison explores themes of
love, family, and self-possession in a world
where slavery has only recently become a
thing of the past. Beloved is the ghost of
Sethe's murdered child, returned for
unclear reasons, embodied as a full-grown
woman at the age that the baby would
have been had it lived.
7. The institution of slavery destroyed much
of the heritage of the Africans brought to
the Americas; the novel partially recounts
the creation of a new people and culture, a
people displaced and forced to forge a new
identity in the face of brutality and
dehumanization.
Social Background of the Novel
8. “Sethe”
Born on a distant plantation that she barely
remembers, Sethe is the child of an African-born
slave woman whose name she never knew. As a
young teenager she was brought to Sweet Home,
where she took a man named Halle Suggs for her
husband. She had four children, pregnant with the
fourth when she fled Sweet Home on foot and alone.
When schoolteacher, the brutal master at Sweet
Home, tracked her down, Sethe attempted to kill her
children rather than see them returned to slavery.
CHARACTERS “BELOVED”
9. CHARACTERS “BELOVED”
She is the grown up daughter of Sethe who was born
during Sethe's flight to the North. Denver is eighteen years
old and terribly lonely. She has not left the yard of 124 by
herself for twelve years. She has a possessive need for
Beloved, and initially will do anything to please her. But
she is also a very dynamic character; by the end of the
novel, she is transformed into a strong and independent
young woman with a new understanding of her mother.
“Denver”
Sethe's daughter
10. Beloved is the ghost of Sethe's third child,
murdered to protect her from schoolteacher.
Her real name is never known. She is the
embodiment not only of the baby's ghost but
also the legacy of slavery. She represents the
power of the past to intrude into the present.
CHARACTERS “BELOVED”
“Beloved”
11. CHARACTERS “BELOVED”
Paul D was one of the Sweet Home men. He has also
suffered horribly, and has reacted by shutting away
any deep feelings. He shows up at 124 and tries to
make a life with Sethe. He is powerless against
Beloved, who seduces him as a way of controlling
him and dividing him from her mother. After nearly
twenty years of freedom, he is still unsure of the
source of his manhood and his humanity.
“Paul D”
16. Born: Chloe Ardelia Wofford
February 18, 1931, Lorain, Ohio, U.S.
Died: August 5, 2019 (aged 88)
New York City, U.S.
Toni Morrison
17.
18. Credits
● "Toni Morrison, Profile." Biography.com. The
Biography.com website. Web. November 19, 2015.
<http://www.biography.com/people/toni-morrison-
9415590>
● "Toni Morrison - Facts". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media
AB 2014. Web. 19 Nov 2015.
<http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/
laureates/1993/morrison-facts.html>
● Videos are from YouTube
19. The presentation was prepared
by Mihaela Petrova,
a student from the 11th grade
in the EG "Acad. Lyudmil Stoyanov",
Blagoevgrad
