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  • Magic Realism in Beloved

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    Suman Kousik
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    The ghost of Beloved in Toni Morrison's novel Beloved is a primary example of magic realism. Beloved appears as a young woman who is revealed to be the reincarnation of Sethe's daughter who was killed. Her appearance forces the characters to confront their traumatic pasts as slaves. Beloved serves two main functions - she triggers the characters' memories of oppression and brings the history of black slavery in America to life through references to the slave ships. While challenging to read due to its nonlinear narrative and depiction of tragic events, the novel creates a gloomy, mysterious atmosphere through magical realist elements that involve the reader from the beginning.

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    MAGIC REALISM IN BELOVED

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    The ghost of Beloved in Toni Morrison's novel Beloved is a primary example of magic realism. Beloved appears as a young woman who is revealed to be the reincarnation of Sethe's daughter who was killed. Her appearance forces the characters to confront their traumatic pasts as slaves. Beloved serves two main functions - she triggers the characters' memories of oppression and brings the history of black slavery in America to life through references to the slave ships. While challenging to read due to its nonlinear narrative and depiction of tragic events, the novel creates a gloomy, mysterious atmosphere through magical realist elements that involve the reader from the beginning.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    288 views3 pages

    Magic Realism in Beloved

    Uploaded by

    Suman Kousik
    The ghost of Beloved in Toni Morrison's novel Beloved is a primary example of magic realism. Beloved appears as a young woman who is revealed to be the reincarnation of Sethe's daughter who was killed. Her appearance forces the characters to confront their traumatic pasts as slaves. Beloved serves two main functions - she triggers the characters' memories of oppression and brings the history of black slavery in America to life through references to the slave ships. While challenging to read due to its nonlinear narrative and depiction of tragic events, the novel creates a gloomy, mysterious atmosphere through magical realist elements that involve the reader from the beginning.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 3

    MAGIC REALISM IN BELOVED

    The fantastical object- the ghost that appeared in Beloved reigns above
    all the other mystical elements existing in Toni Morrison’s. While the
    ghost is naturally fearsome enough and naturally could be used to scare
    the reader, the ghost in Beloved did not appear as a scary ghost from
    the horror stories, it holds a number of remarkable features. Mystical
    atmosphere of the Novel involves the reader from the very beginning of
    the by drawing a fragile line between dead and the living ones. This
    strategy reflects the one of horror in the way it violates limits of natural
    events. Although the narrative is considerably different from the
    structure of traditional horror stories. Usually any type of monsters
    from the horror story enters a secure space driven by chaotic force
    eventually being followed by a detective figure who examines
    monster’s emergence and approaches to eradicate it. However, the
    ghost in the novel Beloved infuriates the space that is stable and there
    is no distinct detective figure tracking the ghost.

    The author seeks to tell the story about Sethe,


    a slave, who gained freedom and cannot bare to live with the fact that
    she murdered her baby girl that she would not experience life as a
    slave. Her grief is so powerful that her dead daughter reincarnates into
    a human being- a woman named Beloved, who appears to be the same
    age as a dead baby would have been if she was alive. Ghost usually are
    central characters in magic realist fiction. However, the ghost in this
    Novel is described as a real human being and it needs deeper
    familiarization with the story to notice the magical elements which links
    the character with the story.
    The Novel is full of the unique, mystical and gloomy
    atmosphere which involves the reader from the first page of the Novel.
    However, this Novel is quite challenging to read not only because of the
    time overlaps but also because of the tragic events which are described
    as natural, everyday cases people face every day. Furthermore, from
    the very beginning of the book the reader tends to feel mostly gloomy
    and mysterious atmosphere which is created with the help of the
    elements of magic Realism.

    CONCLUSION
    The main and the most significant case of magic realism is the ghost
    Beloved. She appears to carry a number of functions in the story. The
    first one is to force other characters to free the oppressed memories by
    triggering them and force to remember all the traumatic past
    experiences and live in the present without a sorrow in their hearts and
    minds. The second function of Beloved is to bring the black history to
    life as she could be considered as dead and reincarnated woman slave.
    She is making references of the slave ships by describing the conditions
    in them.

    Beloved is a tough nut to crack, due to the fact that to reach a


    full understanding of the novel, a baggage of historical knowledge is
    necessary. Also, the author’s African-American roots should be taken
    into consideration while reading the novel. Although, Toni Morrison
    resists the label of magic realist, the present research showed the
    contribution of magic realism in this Novel.

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