Love It!

Love it!

Toni Morrison's Beloved, vividly illustrates the horrors of slavery by taking the reader on a journey deep into the darkness of captivity and the effects of slavery even once freedom is experienced. After their delivery into freedom the characters of the novel find it difficult to believe that anything is their own. Baby Suggs received her freedom after six years because of her son's hard work to pay for her freedom. When she gets to Cincinnati she finally found that she was her own. It was as if she was reborn. After "slave life had 'busted her legs, back, head, eyes, hands, kidneys, womb, and tongue,' she had nothing left to make her a living with but her heart- which she put to work at once... uncalled, unrobed, unanointed, she let her great heart beat in their presence" (Morrison 102). All of Baby's life she worked so hard worked her body to death because it simply was not hers. It was not hers to stop when she need to when she was hurt, tired, hungry, or thirsty. She stopped when the white man said stop. Baby Suggs was a light to those around her and seemed to glow with a strength that filled people with belief and while there was something terrifying within the house at 124, Baby Suggs', presence was still known. Baby Suggs presence was known and you could feel her in her room: "A breastplate of darkness hid all the windows except one. Its dim glow came from Baby Suggs' room" (35). Even thought some are strong and can endure a lot, even the strongest can not endure everything. The killing of her already crawling baby was the one of those horrors that she could not endure. After the killing of her granddaughter, she refused to go to the Clearing.

As a slave, they had no personal rights, no personal freedoms. Orlando Patterson defined a slave as "someone without a legal personality" (Patterson 22). He believed that no slave had a say in what they did or even what they thought. Slaves were to do what they were told and do it when told to them. The slave had no rights and as cruel as it is some felt that they did not even own themselves. They did not have their own heart, their own hands, or their own legs. Did everything their master asked of them. A slave was considered a "thing" to the slave owners and was used as a tool. They were used much like a garden tool or an animal.

The day that Baby Suggs was given her freedom, Morrison makes it clear that slavery, even slavery devoid of whips, hunger, and mistreatment, still denies what is essential to life. While on the road to freedom she discovers her beating heart and her hands and she learns that it is hers. As a slave, nothing belongs to Baby Suggs or the rest of the black folks and to know that it was her heart and no one else's was a blessing to her. Baby found that nothing was better to finally know after years of being a slave that she belonged to herself and when she finally discovers herself she thinks and says to her self this, "...Suddenly she looked at her hands and thought with a clarity as simple as it was dazzling. 'These hands belong to me. These my hands.' Next she felt a knocking in her chest and discovered something else new: her own heartbeat. Had it been there all along? This pounding thing? (166). To Baby Suggs freedom is life and feeling and knowing that her heart beats like any other white person. She realizes that it is her heart and her hands. She learned what it was like to own every part of her body and so she began to Call to all the rest of the black community to love themselves: "we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard... hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize"(103). She taught the community to love themselves for who they are no matter what they had done, what they look like, or how others would feel about them. They were just like every other person whether they be black or white.

Everyone is born with the knowledge of being an individual but most blacks were born into a life that was already not theirs. They had a life belonging to a white man that would use them as a tool in their household. As most blacks became free they struggled to realize that they were themselves. Ira Berlin states, "The search for the freedman's identity begins with the diverse conditions of free Negro life" (Berlin 251). She simply says this because every freed black lives differently. Some were freed to go start living in their own house and working for themselves. Some went and got work and would only work for white people and most lived out in the country in a little shack living off of what they made. But no matter what blacks were, they were still mistreated by some whites. Even scarier for them, they led a life in fear. Most believed that maybe someday some white man would take them away to become a slave once again. Once they got their taste of freedom, they did not want to go back to the terrible life of not owning your own self.