Black Narrative or Slave Narrative in Morrison's Beloved

The first hand narrative of the fugitive black slaves is generally known as black narrative or slave narrative. In slave narrative, the nonwhite slaves records their past slave life in the South America. They mention their miserable life in the south, their identity less life, the inhuman treatment, animal like behavior, the back breaking work in the plantation under scorching sun, separation of family members and many heart touching details.

Like as H.B. Stowe's Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Toni Morrison's Beloved also contains the features of black narrative by the narrations about the prevailed situation of blacks. Uncle Tom's Cabin contains the single aspects of black sufferings whereas Beloved touches the different aspects of black culture. Sethe, as an ex- slave presents the whole historical background of the blacks. The course of slavery and racism, both have haunted the main characters and all other members of the black community. All the characters worked hard to avoid their bitter past in the entire novel. Sethe is extremely trying to hide her past and by taking the lesson from the past, she is trying to keep their children safe from the brutality of the slave owner. From the beginning to the end Morrison narrates only about the position of blacks and their activities together with the outcome of it.

The novel contains the qualities of black narrative not only from the perspective of the protagonist, but other characters are also equally important to depict the qualities of black narratives. For e.g. Sixo, he is a slave who was known as a wild man. He is known as a wild man because, on one hand, he was black and on the other he was a slave. When he tried to escape from the slavery, caught and burnt alive. How cruel behave has been done? In this sense, the entire novel is about black narrative and obviously a slave narrative. If we see the position of Beloved it is also the spiritual celebration of black narrative. At this point Morrison is very conscious about the spiritual aspects of blacks.

Thus, the whole narration moves around the black's social, economic, political, physical, personal, communal and spiritual aspects under which the entire novel or the entire narrative of Toni Morrison is rolling. One can get the actual vision of the black culture and their reality by seeing the narrative technique of Toni Morrison. In this sense the novel is filled with the characteristic of black narratives.

In this sense Toni Morrison's Beloved raises the realistic vision of different cultures regarding the cultural positions, their identity, political, economic, social as well as spiritual aspects of the black culture. By the same token the cultural aspects regarding to the different aspects of black cultures have also been reflected. It also includes the qualities of black narratives by narrating the past situations of slaves together with the consciousness of present and future. After all, the holistic formation of the novel is about the features of black narratives.