Demoralization and Dehumanization of African Race: A Study of Toni Morrison’s Beloved

ABSTRACT

The objective of the paper is to look at the ways, Afro-Americans had been dehumanized, demoralized and marginalized in the trade of slavery by means of which they questioned their identity, culture, genealogy and their selves. Slavery was the curse deliberately forced on them which had left unendurable scars on their psyches. Eventually, this had aroused serious traumatic effects on their psyches. Worse than this, its cultural history and customs had been demolished which had left Afro-American race to suffer inexorably. Moreover, the paper will analyze racism, sexism, and classicism to highlight, how the Afro-Americans had been degraded and forced to live cannibal lives. Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved deconstructed the problems of demoralization, dehumanization, marginalization, slavery, racism, sexism, classicism, uncanny, pathological mourning, ethnic cleansing and haunting to delineate the dehumanized and demoralized selves of Afro-American race. The author spoke the unspoken and unbearable truths of Afro-Americans who were victimized and had remained the worst sufferers in the history of the world. People of Afro-American race had been torn physically, emotionally and psychologically throughout the ages. The paper will study the anguish and psychological disorders of Afro-African race delineated by Toni Morrison in Beloved. The concept of dehumanization and demoralization from psychoanalytical perspective will be applied on the text.       

FULL TEXT