Juan Gonzales

March 24th, 2019

AP Literature 8th Period
Beloved Perspective Essay

“The present changes the past, looking back you do not find what you left behind.” This

powerful quote by Kiran Desai can be very impactful to many people, as people strive based on

what's happening in their life in the present and in the future, rather than the past. The past

however, can also be a way people comprehend and move on, such as values and traditions. Toni

, Morrison's ​Beloved, ​tells us otherwise​. In everyone's life there is a moment so dreadful and

devastating that the best way to resolve these situations is to push it further and further into your

mind. An example of this is when you are traumatized by death. It comes naturally to turn off

your memory/past in order to try and fight back against the horrible emotional experiences. Very

often it is thoughtful that this neglecting and abandoning is the best way to forget. In Toni

Morrison’s novel Beloved, memory is depicted as a dangerous and deliberating factor of people's

consciousness.

One of the main themes in beloved is the past. It teaches us that some things from the past stay

with us no matter what. The past unfortunately is one of the things that does not go away in

Beloved,​ as is continues to influence the present in many ways. The most common example in

the book is Beloved​, which is the ghost of Sethe’s daughter. Throughout the book the baby

continues to be present and is involved in sethe and Denver's life. One of the more impactful

lines from the book is when Sethe explains to Denver that “Some things just stay”. The past

influencing the present can also be found later in the book when Pau D, Denver, and Sethe were
leaning towards creating a family. However there bond began falling apart because of

remembrance of the past. In the end of the book,

After slavery, how were African Americans supposed to leave the past? Even though African

Americans were granted freedom and the ability to make their own living, southern States were

furious and created the Jim Crow laws, in order to make African Americans inferior and still be

mentally, socially, and physically discriminated. Since african americans were financially

unstable, ​they were forced to stay working on plantations because southerns fear that African

Americans would become equal like themselves. To make matters worse, white people also used

housing discrimination as a tool to keep African Americans from buying houses in white

neighborhoods and preventing them to build generational wealth which is part of the reason why

African Americans lived in poverty areas today. An example from this comes from ​A Raisin in

the Sun,​ by Lorraine Hansberry. When Mr.Lindner arrives at the household of the Youngers, one

of the things he deliberately says is, “ I’m the chairman of the committee – go around and see the

new people who move into the neighborhood and sort of give them the lowdown on the way we

do things out in Clybourne Park” ( Hansberry 48). This hints at the fact that he thinks of himself

and his white neighbors as separate from the Youngers.

Slavery, which happened hundreds of years ago, was the most horrific time period ever to

happen in the United States was slavery, and another example of the past and the present can be

seen in ​The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass​, by none other than Frederick Douglass

himself, a former slave who escaped and became well educated. In his book, one of the most
impactful and eye catching moment was when he escaped slavery. People would expect slaves to

run away from the past and learn how to read and write, but that wasn’t the case. Once escaped,

Douglass had the opportunity to learn how to read and write. However, he was really deciding on

not learning because learning to read and write would cause him to remember and learn more

about slavery, which was something he feared. Going back to Desais quote, african americans

couldn't let go of the past, because it would always make there way back into their lives. What

was stopping Douglass from learning and becoming a better person was his past. It was keeping

him from growing. All of these different perspectives from different books ultimately show us

the same thing. Slavery haunts the present, and it is something that will always be known.

Ofcourse, it is easy for me to say how easy it could be to move on from slavery, but no one but

former slaves could have a true say, as we did not go through the brutality and horrors of slavery.
Work Cited
"Background and Criticism of A Raisin in the Sun." Chicago Public Library. 26 Mar. 2019 
<​https://www.chipublib.org/background-and-criticism-of-a-raisin-in-the-sun/​>. 
 
Bloom, Harold. T
​ oni Morrison's Beloved​. Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2009. 

Ira. "Slavery as Memory and History Library Co-Publishes Cultural Archives." Slavery as Memory and History 
(November 1998) - Library of Congress Information Bulletin. 26 Mar. 2019 
<​https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9811/slavery.html​>. 
 
"Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Revisited." Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Revisited | Harvard 
University Press. 26 Mar. 2019 <​http://www.hup.harvard.edu/features/frederick-douglass/​>.