Dehumanizing of Slaves in Beloved

CXL

  Degrading of the nonwhite slaves is one prime theme of the novel Beloved. The slaves have a dependency upon their owners for all their existence. Their existence is not more appreciable than the existence of some farm animals. When Paul D runs away from his owner, he stole food from the pigs and fought with owls for the sake of food. He is not aware that he is a human being. Because of the animal like treatment of the white master, he thinks himself an animal. He meets one mindless black woman who thinks that the ducks were her children. Sethe, the central character of the novel, feels herself as a milking goat whose swollen breasts were sucked by the nephews of the schoolteacher. The schoolteacher describes that the slaves were his animal property under his care. He especially takes Sethe as a creature that the God has given to him for the maintenance. When Sethe kills her daughter in the woods, the nephews beat her and the excessive beating is referred to as the beating similar to the horse or dog. The word 'Horse' is mainly used to describe the slaves. Sethe's youngest daughter is called 'foul' by Amy Denver, a white lady who helped Sethe in the delivery of her youngest daughter. The nonwhite slaves were taken merely as the machine to reproduce other breeds in free of cost to the white masters. Once, Baby Suggs tells Denver that the slaves are not supposed to have pleasurable feeling rather they have to bear as many children as they can do to please their owners. All these instances in the novel prove that the inhuman treatment of the whites has caused the loss of self-identity of the nonwhite slaves.