The Theme of Slavery in Beloved: An Annotated Bibliography

Raynaud, Claudine.“The Poetics of Abjection in Beloved.” Black Imagination and the Middle Passage. MariaDiedrich, Henry Louis Gates and Carl Pederson(Eds.).Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999: 70-86.

               The writer criticizes the narrator of the novel and thinks that the theme of slavery is not very effective because the novel becomes a kind of opinion writing rather than showing a picture of a real life to the readers. According to the writer, Sethe (the protagonist of the novel) used to know a language whichshe is not able to communicate with it anymore, but the narrator shows the reader that Sethe can still understand it. She says that Sethe and Beloved’s eyes were expressionless in the slave ship when they were trying to escape; this expressionlessness is shown as the result of the narrator’s reality deviation.  

The whole article seems to be an opinion of the writer. Other scholars’ views about the narration in the novel cannot be recognized. It is worth reading to obtain some ideas for discussion, but it might not be very easy to use it to make a serious argument because there is no enoughevidences. It can be argued that slavery theme cannot be less effective by adding some extra features to the characters’ personalities.