The novel summary is as follows: 1) Beloved is a 1987 novel by Toni Morrison about a former slave named Sethe living in post-Civil War Ohio. 2) Sethe escapes from a brutal plantation known as "Sweet Home" but is later recaptured. To prevent her children from returning to slavery, she kills her baby daughter. 3) The novel takes place years later, as Sethe lives with her daughter Denver. Their home is haunted by the ghost of Sethe's murdered daughter. 4) A mysterious young woman named Beloved appears, who Denver and Sethe believe may be the reincarnation of the murdered child. Beloved's presence has dramatic

1. PROJECT
PRESENTATION
By: MUHAMMAD SHEHROZ KHAN

2. “BELOVED” By Toni Morrison
 Beloved, novel by Toni
Morrison, published in 1987
and winner of the
1988 Pulitzer Prize for
fiction.

3. About the novel “BELOVED”
 Beloved is Toni Morrison's fifth
novel. Published in 1987 as
Morrison was enjoying increasing
popularity and success, Its
reception by critics was
overwhelming, and the book is
widely considered Morrison's
greatest novel to date.

4. About the novel
 Mythic in scope, Beloved is an attempt to
grapple with the legacy of slavery. Morrison
based her novel on a real-life incident, in
which an escaped slave woman who faced
recapture killed her children rather than
allow them to be taken back into slavery.

5. About the novel
 In the novel, the protagonist's near-
recapture follows the Fugitive Slave Act of
1850, part of the Compromise of 1850,
which stated that escaped slaves, as
property, could be tracked down across
state lines and retrieved by their old
masters

6. About the novel
 In Beloved, Morrison explores themes of
love, family, and self-possession in a world
where slavery has only recently become a
thing of the past. Beloved is the ghost of
Sethe's murdered child, returned for unclear
reasons, embodied as a full-grown woman at
the age that the baby would have been had it
lived

7. About the novel
 Beloved also presents a powerful account
of the foundation of black America. The
memories of the characters, even the
strange, supernatural race-memory of
Beloved, extend back no farther than the
beginnings of American slavery.

8. Social Background of the Novel
 The institution of slavery destroyed much of
the heritage of the Africans brought to the
Americas; the novel partially recounts the
creation of a new people and culture, a people
displaced and forced to forge a new identity in
the face of brutality and dehumanization.

9. ABOUT “TONY
MORRISON”

10. About the Author “Toni Morrison”
 Toni Morrison was an
American novelist, essayist,
editor, and professor. Her
contributions to literature
were recognized worldwide
when she received the 1993
Nobel Prize in Literature.

11. “Toni Morrison”
 Born Chloe Ardelia Wofford in Lorain, Ohio,
Morrison attended Howard University and
Cornell University in the 1950s before becoming
the first black woman fiction editor at the
publishing giant Random House. In 1970 she
published her first novel, The Bluest eye,

12. Toni Morrison’s Early Life
 Morrison's writing was greatly influenced by her family. Her
grandparents had relocated to Ohio during the national movement of
black Americans out of the South known as the Great Migration. After
leaving their farm in Alabama, Morrison’s mother’s parents moved to
Kentucky, and then to Ohio.
 They placed a high value on the education of their children and
themselves. Morrison was a gifted student, learning to read at an
early age and doing well at her studies at an integrated school.
Morrison attended Hawthorne Elementary School, where she was the
only African American in her first-grade classroom.

13. Toni Morrison’s Writings
 One of the most critically acclaimed American
writers, Morrison is considered a major architect of
a literary language for African Americans. Her
work often features black vernacular, black
settings, and is focused on blackness—unusual for
her time. Her writing is considered to have formed
a distinctly black literary sensibility, while drawing
a reading audience that cut across racial
boundaries.

14. Toni Morrison’s Writings
 Morrison’s first book, The Bluest Eye (1970), is
a novel of initiation concerning a victimized
adolescent Black girl who is obsessed by white
standards of beauty and longs to have blue eyes. In
1973 a second novel, Sula, was published; it
examines (among other issues) the dynamics of
friendship and the expectations for conformity
within the community.

15. Toni Morrison’s Writings
 Song of Solomon (1977) is told by a male
narrator in search of his identity; its
publication brought Morrison to national
attention. Tar Baby (1981), set on a
Caribbean island, explores conflicts of race,
class, and sex

16. Toni Morrison’s Writings
 The critically acclaimed Beloved (1987), which won
a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is based on the true story
of a runaway slave who, at the point of recapture,
kills her infant daughter in order to spare her a life
of slavery. A film adaptation of the novel was
released in 1998 and starred Oprah Winfrey. In
addition, Morrison wrote the libretto for Margaret
Garner (2005), an opera about the same story that
inspired Beloved.

17. Toni Morrison’s Writings
 In 1992 Morrison released Jazz, a story of violence
and passion set in New York City’s Harlem during
the 1920s. Subsequent novels were Paradise (1998),
a richly detailed portrait of a Black utopian
community in Oklahoma, and Love (2003), an
intricate family story that reveals the myriad facets
of love and its ostensible opposite.

18. Toni Morrison’s Writings
 A Mercy (2008) deals with slavery in 17th-century
America. In the redemptive Home (2012), a
traumatized Korean War veteran encounters racism
after returning home and later overcomes apathy to
rescue his sister. In God Help the Child (2015),
Morrison chronicled the ramifications of child
abuse and neglect through the tale of Bride, a Black
girl with dark skin who is born to light-skinned
parents.

19. CHARACTERS
“BELOVED”

20. “Sethe”
 Born on a distant plantation that she barely remembers,
Sethe is the child of an African-born slave woman whose
name she never knew. As a young teenager she was brought
to Sweet Home, where she took a man named Halle Suggs
for her husband. She had four children, pregnant with the
fourth when she fled Sweet Home on foot and alone. When
schoolteacher, the brutal master at Sweet Home, tracked
her down, Sethe attempted to kill her children rather than
see them returned to slavery

21. “Beloved”
 Beloved is the ghost of Sethe's third child, murdered
to protect her from schoolteacher. Her real name is
never known. She is the embodiment not only of the
baby's ghost but also the legacy of slavery. She
represents the power of the past to intrude into the
present.

22. “Paul D”
 Paul D was one of the Sweet Home men. He has also
suffered horribly, and has reacted by shutting away
any deep feelings. He shows up at 124 and tries to
make a life with Sethe. He is powerless against
Beloved, who seduces him as a way of controlling
him and dividing him from her mother. After nearly
twenty years of freedom, he is still unsure of the
source of his manhood and his humanity.

23. “Denver”
 Sethe's daughter. She is the grown up daughter of Sethe
who was born during Sethe's flight to the North. Denver is
eighteen years old and terribly lonely. She has not left the
yard of 124 by herself for twelve years. She has a possessive
need for Beloved, and initially will do anything to please
her. But she is also a very dynamic character; by the end of
the novel, she is transformed into a strong and independent
young woman with a new understanding of her mother.

24. “Baby Suggs”
 Halle Suggs mother and Sethe's mother-in-law. Halle
bought her freedom, which she accepted because she saw
how much it meant to him. She did not expect how much it
would mean to her, feeling while still a slave that she was
too old to enjoy freedom anyway. But freedom transformed
Baby Suggs, giving her a new understanding of what it
meant to be alive and transforming her into a kind of holy
woman for Cincinatti's black community. Sethe's tragedy,
however, broke Baby Suggs' spirit, and she spent her last
days bed-ridden and somber.

25. “Hale Suggs”
 Halle Suggs was Sethe's husband and the father of
all of her children. Halle vanished at the time when
he was supposed to flee to the North with Sethe;
later, it is discovered that he witnessed Sethe's
brutalization at the hands of schoolteacher and his
nephews. When Paul D last saw Halle, he had gone
insane.

26. “Schoolteacher”
 Mr. Garner's brother-in-law. Schoolteacher was a cruel and
sadistic master, interested in ways to break the wills of his
slaves. He conducted a pseudo-scientific study of the slaves,
treating them in his study the way a biologist treats lab
animals. His nephews held Sethe down and stole her milk
while schoolteacher took notes. When it was discovered that
Sethe told Mrs. Garner what they had done, schoolteacher
had one of his nephews whip Sethe, giving her the
distinctive scars on her back.

27. “Amy Denver”
 A former indentured servant, Amy helped Sethe to
escape to the North, saving Sethe's life and helping
to deliver her baby. Amy was trying to get to Boston
so she could buy carmine colored velvet. Sethe's
daughter Denver is named after her.

28. “Howard & Buglar”
 Sethe's sons and her two older children, she tried
and failed to kill them when schoolteacher came.
The two boys fled years ago after particularly
frightening encounters with the ghost. Sethe has
recurring dreams of her boys walking away from
her, unable to hear her as she calls for them to come
back.

29. “Mr. Garner”
 The old master of Sweet Home, Mr. Garner was
generous by the standards of slave owners, and
insisted that his slaves were the only male slaves in
Kentucky who were real men. His "enlightened"
slavery, however, proves to be a sham after his death
and was full of contradictions and hypocrisy even in
his life.

30. “Mrs. Garner”
 Mr. Garner's sickly wife. She brought schoolteacher
to Sweet Home after Mr. Garner's death. She spent
the last months of her life bed-ridden and very ill.

31. “Sixo”
 One of the slaves at Sweet Home, Sixo was one of the
planners behind their flight to the North. He
regularly visited a woman who lived thirty miles
away, dubbed the Thirty-Mile woman. He was close
to Paul D during the time of Sweet Home, but was
killed during their escape attempt.

32. “Paul A, Paul F”
 The brothers of Paul D. All three brothers were
at Sweet Home for most of their lives, until
Paul F was sold and Paul A died during the
escape.

33. “Ella”
 A woman who was an agent on the Underground
Railroad. She took Sethe on the final leg of her flight
to the North. When Ella was a girl, she was shared by
a white man and his son. After Sethe killed her child,
Ella becomes one of her harshest critics. Later, she
softens her opinion, and organizes the woman to go
and exorcise Beloved from 124.

34. “Stamp Paid”
 Born with the name of Joshua, Stamp Paid changed his
name after his wife was taken to the bed of their master's
owner. Stamp felt he had paid all of life's debts in that year.
Stamp worked as an agent for the Underground Railroad for
many years. When schoolteacher came for Sethe, it was
Stamp who saved Denver's life. He is a friend to the family
and also to Paul D.

35. “Lady Jones”
 Lady Jones teaches the black children of Cincinatti
how to read and write. She is mixed-race, with
yellow hair that she despises. She was once Denver's
teacher. When Denver flees 124 looking for help, she
turns to Lady Jones.

36. “Nan”
 Nan was the one-armed woman who nursed children
back at the plantation where Sethe was born. Sethe
has more memories of Nan than of her own mother.

37. “Janey”
 Servant to the Bodwins. She spreads the story of
Beloved's return through the black community. She
was working for the Bodwins when Baby Suggs first
arrived, and she is still working for them when
Denver is looking for work decades later.

38. “Edward Bodwin & Miss Bodwen”
 Brother and sister, they are former abolitionists and
try to be helpful to the black community. They own
124, which they allowed Baby Suggs and her family
to use. Edward Bodwin witnesses the exorcism of
Beloved.


39. SUMMARY
“BELOVED”

40. “Summary”
 The novel is based on the true story of a Black slave woman,
Margaret Garner, who in 1856 escaped from a Kentucky
plantation with her husband, Robert, and their children.
They sought refuge in Ohio, but their owner and law officers
soon caught up with the family. Before their recapture,
Margaret killed her young daughter to prevent her return to
slavery. In the novel, Sethe is also a passionately devoted
mother, who flees with her children from an abusive owner
known as “schoolteacher.” They are caught, and, in an act of
supreme love and sacrifice, she too tries to kill her children
to keep them from slavery

41. “Summary”
 These events are revealed in flashbacks, as the novel
opens in 1873, with Sethe and her teenage daughter,
Denver, living in Ohio, where their house at 124
Bluestone Road is haunted by the angry ghost of the
child Sethe killed. The hauntings are alleviated by the
arrival of Paul D, a man so ravaged by his slave past
that he keeps his feelings in the “tobacco bin” of his
heart.

42. “Summary”
 He worked on the same plantation as Sethe, and the two
begin a relationship. A brief period of relative calm ends with
the appearance of a young woman who says that her name is
Beloved. She knows things that suggest she is the
reincarnation of Sethe’s lost daughter. Sethe is obsessed
with assuaging her guilt and tries to placate the increasingly
demanding and manipulative Beloved. At one point, Beloved
seduces Paul D. After learning that Sethe killed her daughter,
he leaves.

43. “Summary”
 The situation at 124 Bluestone worsens, as Sethe loses her
job and becomes completely fixated on Beloved, who is
soon revealed to be pregnant. While the lonely and largely
housebound Denver initially befriends Beloved, she begins
to grow concerned. She finally dares to venture outside in
order to ask the community for help, and she is given food
and a job.

44. “Summary”
 As the local women attempt to stage an exorcism, Denver’s
employer arrives to take her to work, and Sethe mistakes
him for “schoolteacher” and tries to attack him with an ice
pick. The other women restrain her, and during the
commotion Beloved disappears. Paul D later returns to the
grieving Sethe, promising to care for her, and Denver
continues to thrive in the outside world.

45. “BELOVED” THEMES

46. “Dehumanization through Slavery”
 Dehumanization of the African American community in the United
States before and shortly after the Civil War is one of the major themes
of the novel, Beloved. Almost all the major characters have gone
through dehumanization from the white community. However, the
instinct to live in honor runs deep in them. Paul D flees to live an
independent life and begins to feel human. Sethe, the protagonist of
the novel, too, runs away and even kills her own daughter to save her
from slavery. Sethe and Halle have gone through severe beatings at
different plantations. For example, the Schoolteacher’s nephews give a
heavy thrashing to Sethe for complaining against them. The use of
different animals to describe this beating show the dehumanization
process.

47. “Naming Process”
 Naming process or process of naming individuals for certain
characteristic is another major theme of the novel, Beloved.
The whites used this process to dominate and exploit the
African-American community and make them work under
their domination. The purpose was to identify their slaves
with their personalities. That is why one of the children born
to Baby Suggs is named Paul. As Paul D was an intelligent
one and was aware of his true identity in his slavery. He feels
that they are exchanged and sold like properties

48. “Slavery”
 Slavery is another overarching theme of the novel, Beloved. Most of the
characters had to bear the burden of being from the African American
community, a traditional community of slaves with no human rights.
The novel presents the cruelty and barbarism meted out to the slaves.
They were treated even worse than animals. Schoolteacher, the owner
at Sweet Home, abuses them and doesn’t see the community as human
beings but as currency and animals. Paul D is treated like an animal
when he was chained with an iron bit. Schoolteacher physically abuses
Sethe after she complains of his nephews of stealing her breastmilk.

49. “Destruction of Identity”
 The novel explores how slavery was institutionalized, which
broke down the personalities and identities of the
individuals. The naming of individuals as Paul D, Baby Suggs
and even Denver point to the fact that individuals lost their
identities due to the slavery and they were also treated like
animals. Because of Schoolteacher’s cruelty, Sethe suffers
and loses her identity. Also, Baby Suggs and Paul D suffer at
his hands. Halle and Aunt Phyllis lose the sense of their
being due to the suffering. Stamp Paid thinks slavery of
having changed them entirely.

50. “Home”
 Home is another interesting theme because slavery snatched
away the concept of home from the African Americans until
they were freed. Though they married and produced
children, they did not have a concept of home. When Sethe
reaches 124, she settles down and tries to reconcile with Paul
D to make a home. However, Paul D has become habitual of
living even in difficult situations. Therefore he wanders away
and only returns when he finds the situation convenient.

51. “Moral Ambiguity”
 It is truly immoral to mistreat and abuse the black
people because they are slaves. It is also true that it
is not morally right to kill a child. Sethe kills her
daughter, Beloved, on the fear that she would be
enslaved. However, the novel does not resolve
this moral ambiguity anywhere in its storyline to
explain if Sethe’s act was punishable or justifiable.

52. “Concept of Freedom”
 The concept of freedom and enjoyment of its fruits is
also another theme of the novel. Sethe wins freedom
by the end of the novel. Halle tries to win freedom for
his mother. Paul D, too, comes to Sethe at 124 after
becoming free. All of them are enjoying freedom
from slavery which makes up another minor theme
of the novel.

53. “BELOVED”
ANALYSIS

54. “Analysis”
 Beloved offers a harrowing look at slavery and its lasting
impact. The intensely shocking and moving narrative was
written in a variety of voices and lengthy fragmentary
monologues, which, like the character of Beloved herself,
are sometimes ambiguous. Morrison’s beautiful language
and intense imagery, however, were rightly celebrated in
this classic work. A film adaptation starring Oprah
Winfrey was released in 1998.

55. THE END