Morrison would grow past the pain and torment of an oppressive and racist society through the cultivation of her self through love and endurance. Like the father in August Wilson’s Fences, her father grew to hate because he was only subjected to hate in the environment around him. Sethe, the main character in Beloved, will also undergo a journey of exorcising hatred and violence from her soul in order to find love with Paul D. Morrison’s maternal influence also affected her development and work. From the women in her life Morrison learned authority of the self, one she says she felt in her mother’s, grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s relationships more than she does in her own:
The word ‘Comrade’ comes to mind in regard to the marriages I knew. I didn’t find imbalance or unevenness in these relationships. I don’t think that my mother’s talents were hidden from males or white society, actually—they were very much on display. So I don’t feel a tension there, or the struggle for dominance. The same was true for my grandparents—my mother’s parents—whom I knew. I remember my great-grandmother, too. Her husband died before I was born, but I remember that when my great-grandmother walked into a room her grandsons and her nephews stood up…Yes I feel the authority of those women more than I do my own.
This analysis of Beloved will demonstrate the three primary themes in Morrison’s works as discussed above: the burdens of the past/history; effects on the individual because of race, gender or class distinctions; the redemptive power of love.
Beloved is in the tradition of magical naturalism, like the works of Jose Luis Borges. Time, the past, the present and the future are all woven into one. Being is becoming and becoming is being. The here-and-now consciousness of the characters is only a place where they were not before, and, at the same time, represents their journey only temporarily...