Beloved Rhetorical Analysis

In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Sethe describes at length the lack of love slave owners and whites have for slaves. Sethe says, “They do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck…” (104). Sethe does not specifically describe those who do not love slaves (she is presumably referring to whites, especially slave owners) but instead uses the pronoun “they,” emotionally distancing herself from them and implying the widespread presence of this kind of treatment. Her remark that “they” do not love “unnoosed and straight” necks not only emphasizes the frequency of lynching, but also seems to suggest that those who lynch slaves find it enjoyable; Sethe only points out that they do not love unnoosed necks, a negation seeming to imply they love hanging slaves. Sethe continues, saying, “…your inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them” too (104). The animalistic and hyperbolic image of “slop[ping]” insides for hogs expresses the common dehumanizing treatment of slaves. This phrase follows the pattern of Sethe’s entire description, with a separate mention of slaves’ individual body parts as opposed to descriptions of the slaves themselves. Mentioning individual body parts separately in succession reflects the number of ways slaves suffered at the hands of slave owners, enumerating each type of pain a slave could experience, and also, coupled with the repetition of the phrase “you got to love it” describing each part, repeatedly enforces that a slave is often loved only by him or herself. Sethe’s use of the second person makes her message unspecific to her and thus a more general description of the hardships of slaves like herself, commenting on the ubiquity of this experience in slavery.