like animals erasing their dignity Physical Violence and Punishment White people kept power through brutal punishment Sethe remembers being whipped until scars grew into a tree-like mark on her back Morrison describes in Part One Ch It was as though a whole tree sprouted on her back This chokecherry tree is a symbol of slavery s cruelty Violence was the language of white masters It left scars on both body and spirit Sexual Exploitation and Humiliation Morrison also shows how white men abused Black women Schoolteacher s nephews held Sethe down and stole her breast milk In Part One Ch Sethe bitterly recalls They used cowhide on you And they took my milk Stolen milk from Setahe s breast is not only rape but also theft of motherhood White men robbed Sethe of her ability to feed her baby Their racism was mixed with sexism which created double pain for Black women Breaking Families White people destroyed Black families by selling children and separating husbands and wives Baby Suggs lost all but one of her children to the slave trade Sethe in terror of Schoolteacher s return tried to protect her children She explains in Part One Ch I stopped him I put my babies where they d be safe She kills her baby girl because she believes slavery is worse than death White cruelty forced a mother into this unthinkable act Psychological Control and Fear Slavery also attacked the minds of Black men Paul D remembers being chained in Georgia with forty-six others He was locked in boxes and treated worse than animals He even thought a rooster named Mister was freer than him In Part Two Ch he admits Mister he looked so free Better than me Paul D This shows how white oppression destroyed identity and manhood Slavery reduced human beings to less than animals Lasting Scars of Racism Even after slavery ended white people s attitude left deep scars Sethe Paul D and Baby Suggs cannot escape trauma Beloved herself becomes a ghostly reminder of slavery s violence In Part One Ch Morrison writes Anything dead coming back to life hurts This line shows that remembering slavery is painful but forgetting is impossible White people s cruelty continues to live in memory In short in Beloved Morrison shows that white people s attitude was built on cruelty racism and domination They treated slaves as property whipped their bodies stole their dignity and broke their families Even after slavery its memory haunted lives The novel proves that the scars of cruelty that whites have left on blacks have not ended