Toni Morrison's Beloved: Haunted by the Ghosts of History

Toni Morrison's Beloved is a novel about the ghosts that haunt American history. In Beloved Morrison examines the ways that people and even nations can be haunted by the past. Morrison's Beloved uses the gothic genre -- the ghost story -- in order to examine how traumatic histories can plague the present, how the crimes of the past can influence future generations. In this way Morrison's Beloved explores the contradiction at the core of the American experiment: a nation dedicated to freedom and liberty that perpetrated horrendous and gruesome crimes against freedom -- a world historical crime. Is it possible for America to exorcise its demons? This is really the question at the core of Toni Morrison's greatest novel.

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Photo of Toni Morrison by Angela Radulescu, 2008
CCBY-SA 2.0

[Aaron]

If you have to ask whether it's the greatest American novel of the 20th century, it's probably not, at least for you.