Research Paper on:
Myth in Beloved by Toni Morrison

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
meaning or an implication of a myth that the standard ideological interpretation of the Western world refuses to consider (615). Therefore, drawing on Henry Louis Gates term,  minority writers, such as Morrison, "double-voice" myth through a process of repetition and revision (Jones 615). This process is applied by Morrison in her novel Beloved to the mythic  story of Cain and Abel in Genesis. Morrison explores the nature of being "marked" by sin in a manner that transposes the myth of Cain to a setting that  illuminates the emotional ramifications on the soul of Sethe, Morrisons protagonist. Rather than the mark of Cain, which has been connected by some to Ham, "the father of the  black race," Jones feels that the principal connection between the biblical Cain and Morrisons interpretation of this mythic story is Cains "complete refusal to remember and to mourn" (615).  Cain denied responsibility. In Genesis 4:9, he asks, "Am I my brothers keeper?" Concerned solely with himself, Cain does not acknowledge the repercussions of his act. This refusal  is the "mark" upon him. Similarly, Sethe is both sinned against and sinning, and she, like Cain, complicates her situation by refusing to acknowledge the role that her actions played  in her own tragedy. While Sethe is still enslaved, she is treated by Schoolteachers despicable nephews as if she were no more than an animal. They hold her  down and drink her breast milk. Then they whip her, which creates the "chokeberry tree" pattern on her back. Sethe, like Cain, is marked by her experience. Jones argues that  comprehending and overcoming this mark, which symbolize the experience of slavery, has to do with coming to terms with the past (616). Jones writes that memory is a "special and