"Unspeakable Thoughts, Unspoken". The Problem of Communicating Painful Past Experiences in Toni Morrison's "Beloved"

Essay from the year 2018 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: very good (CH: 5.5/6), University of Lausanne, language: English, abstract: In the fragmented novel Beloved Toni Morrison plunges the reader in the middle of 1873, eight years after the end of the Civil War. The readers discover the former black slaves' attempt to fight their haunting memories on the one hand and to find their own language to talk about their painful past on the other. The protagonists of the novel know that healing from the painful past is the key to a better future. Therefor, one of the ways to evacuate the painful past is to talk about it in order to get over it. However, due to their profound trauma the characters of the novel find their "speech blocked" (Wyatt) impossible to express their past experiences. Through the use of circumlocutions, the tropes, the songs, the dancing, the crying and the fragmentation of the novel, Morrison demonstrates that storytelling in Beloved is an important and a problematic issue thus drawing attention to the problem of speaking about things that are difficult or even impossible to communicate.

Autorentext

Bachelor degree (BA): Arts (English, German and History) at University of Lausanne, Switzerland.