Research Paper on:
Postmodern Techniques in Beloved by Toni Morrison

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
its most prominent and most powerful themes as it takes us through the hopes the desperation of one woman. Many argue that she utilizes experimental or postmodern techniques in communicating  the history of black slavery throughout her book. In doing this, however, she often presents us with a great deal of the fantastical as well, brining in elements of the  surreal. In essence, Morrisons manner of utilizing the experimental or postmodern approach in communicating her perspective on the history of slavery is offered to the reader through many various perspectives.  In the following paper we focus primarily on how Beloveds ghost serves to represent the history of her mother, Sethe, and then discusses how Beloveds ghost also serves to represent  the collective history of a people. The paper then briefly examines other ways in which Morrison offers us her history of slavery through experimentalism and postmodernism. Individual Sethe  is a woman caught in a world, and a social position, that leaves her feeling helpless and oppressed. She is a woman who is essentially existing in a world of  despair and depression. She sees no hope and she see no future. She feels that her children would be better off if they were dead, rather than face a fate  similar to hers. She is successful in killing only one, her infant Beloved. "Sethes murder of her infant daughter, although motivated by the conviction that slavery is worse than death,  is nonetheless reprehensible. Unrepentant, she chooses alienation from the Black community rather than admitting the heinousness of the murder and seeking forgiveness" (Mayer 192). Of course, the fact that "Sethe  suffers from guilt and hopes to assuage it...is evident in her submission first to the antics of the mischievous baby ghost and later to Beloveds destructive revenge" (Mayer 192). In