In what way has your reading of ‘Beloved’ enhanced your understanding of what a novelist can achieve through fiction?

            The novel is based on a main focus, a character called Sethe. Through Sethes experiences we are introduced to the emotions of an ordinary black women. Through Sethes journey we witness experiences from her past that sees to haunt her in her newly found future. The past haunts her through her re-memory as Sethe and Paul D both carry the burdens of their pasts, Paul D says to Seth that they have “more yesterday then anybody. We need some kinda tomorrow” This shows that they could only hope for a better future, a future that they could call theirs. However Toni Morrision has introduced along side that for black people if was a struggle to get through each day. “ her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry foe more it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for the next day” The past is recreated in the form of a poltergeist as the character of Beloved symbolises the unforgotten pain from Sethes past. Beloved appearances make Denver more observant and she stimulate her maturity. However when Sethe find out that Beloved is her dead  daughter “ Sethe walks to work, late for the first time in sixteen years” She is described to be “ wrapped in a timeless presences” This shows the importance of time in the novel. The characters in the novel are trapped into a sequential pattern of the past and the present. Sethe acknowledging Beloved as her child makes her break free from this cycle and consequently she loses all recollection of time.

                   Toni Morrison has used memories in the novel to allocate Sethes experiences. Her memory emphasise the power of the past in the novel. Sethe explains her memories to Denver. She says “ some things you forget, other things you never do” Morrison emphasises that the pain and hardship that black people experienced will never go way. Through fiction she is able to make important points such as the fact that “ If a house burns down, its gone, but the place – the picture of it stays, and not just in [a persons re memory, but out there in the world” Morrison also uses Sethe to show people that memories become visual images “ I remember a picture floating around out there outside my head” She points out that nothing ever dies and that the pictures and images of things still remain, Sethe points out that things can only be “ disremembered”

                By adding elements of the past and the present, Toni Morrison attempts to change people’s attitudes of the past. She introduces new perspectives of the way slaves were treated.