Slavery/ no slavery/The author

I have been reading beloved for the past few weeks, and I have to admit that it does not retain my attention, as I expected. I am not that excited by the plot. In addition, I realized that the main focus of the book is not only about slavery, but it is about a Ghost: sethe’s dead daughter. Apparently, she was not yet two years old when she died. From this day, she is haunting sethe house. Through the beginning of the book, she manifests her presence mysteriously. Sometimes, she would move the tables, close the door and hit the men who would come to the house 124.

This is the summary I found from a website:

After Paul D. finds his old slave friend Sethe in Ohio and moves in with her and her daughter Denver, a strange girl comes along by the name of "Beloved". Sethe and Denver take her in and then strange things start to happen

I felt it was necessary to provide a summary of the book, because I don’t want to confuse anyone who read the book. The book is mostly about Sethe’s daughter who will personify herself through another woman’s body. However, I am not focusing on this side of the story because I am analyzing woman slavery. My main interest is the sufferings sethe went through as a slave.

Talking about the book structure:

First of all, the reason I am having some difficulties to really get into this book is because of the author’s style. Toni Morrison’s style is not modern, therefore, I feel like it requires an extra attention, in order to really get into the story. Well, it’s only the beginning so I am certain that by the end of this book I might change my mind.
This book is very descriptive. Morrison provides a lot of details. This I believe helps the readers understanding the plot better. Through the details she provides - step by step – the readers combine them to get a summary of the protagonist’s past life. What I dislike about the book’s structure, is that through the end of the book, the author still provides details about sethe past life. In my opinion, she should have talked about sethe past life only in the beginning of the story, and follow through with the other part of the story. However, it feels like she is going back and forth, creating two stories that is only one. One of these stories is sethe’s slave life and the other part is her daughter’s arrival.

Biography (quoted from another website)

Born Chloe Anthony Wofford, in 1931 in Lorain (Ohio), the second of four children in a black working-class family. Displayed an early interest in literature. Studied humanities at Howard and Cornell Universities, followed by an academic career at Texas Southern University, Howard University, Yale, and since 1989, a chair at Princeton University. She has also worked as an editor for Random House, a critic, and given numerous public lectures, specializing in African-American literature. She made her debut as a novelist in 1970, soon gaining the attention of both critics and a wider audience for her epic power, unerring ear for dialogue, and her poetically-charged and richly-expressive depictions of Black America. A member since 1981 of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has been awarded a number of literary distinctions, among them the Pulitzer Prize in 1988.
Next Chapter will only focus on Sethe. We will definitely witness her suffering, and how she escaped slavery.