Describe Beloved as an allegorical figure.

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Describe Beloved as an allegorical figure NU In Beloved by Toni Morrison the character Beloved is not only a ghost or a young woman She works as an allegorical figure She represents memory history and the legacy of slavery that refuses to disappear Beloved as the Past Made Flesh Beloved is the murdered child of Sethe She returns in physical form Morrison writes in Part One A fully dressed woman walked out of the water Her strange arrival shows she is more than human She is the past rising again to haunt the present Symbol of Memory and Trauma Sethe identifies Beloved as her daughter In Part Two she says Beloved she my daughter She mine These words show how Beloved embodies memory She forces Sethe to relive the pain of slavery her escape and the infanticide As an allegory Beloved is the memory of all enslaved lives Voice of

the Dead Slaves Beloved also speaks in strange voices of suffering souls She recalls the dark watery place where many died This connects her to the millions lost in slavery s violence She is not only Sethe s ghost but the collective spirit of forgotten victims The Allegory of Obsession Beloved consumes Sethe s life She demands all her attention food and love This shows how the past destroys the present Morrison shows memory as both necessary and dangerous Community Healing and Disappearance At the end thirty women gather to pray at Beloved vanishes in confusion In Part Three the narrator adds It was not a story to pass on As an allegory Beloved reminds us that trauma must be faced but also released In conclusion Beloved is an allegorical figure of history memory and slavery s wounds On one side she is the daughter of Sethe other side a symbol of millions of dead slaves Through her Morrison shows how the past lives on until a community joins to heal and move forward

Beloved

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Describe Beloved as an allegorical figure.

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Toni Morrison

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