The Infanticide in Toni Morrison's "Beloved"- A Mother's Desperate Cry

Abstract

This thesis explores Toni Morrison’s ability to put into words the most dreadful and spiteful situation of the infanticide narrated in Beloved . Morrison’s skilled usage of words arouses to induce the reader to be empathetic with the main character of the novel –Sethe–, as well as confronting her past actions. The goal of this essay is first, to ponder the miseries a slave had to go through throughout their life, and the diverse types of love represented in the novel: thin, healthy and thick love. What is more, to confront whether love is a right for those enslaved or not. Secondly, the picturing of motherhood in Beloved is going to be analysed, under a female slave’s point of view. Finally, the issue of ownership is going to be depicted with the aim of resolving on the limits of the rights of a parent and the issue of the infanticide as a desperate cry of a mother trying to sabe her children from a life in slavery. Toni Morrison brings up more than a moral dilemma.