4th Analysis

Beloved 4^th Analysis

After attempting to visit Sethe at 124 for a second time, Stamp Paid begins to understand Baby Suggs realizes that blacks will never be able to escape the deep hatred and violence displayed by whites. He… that even in “Eighteen seventy-four… whitefolks were still on the loose” (212). Morrison uses a phrase “on the loose” that has connotations to wild animals. By depicting whites in an animalistic sense, Morrison inverts the popular views of blacks and whites of the time. Whites were seen as… while blacks were generally seen as wild animals. Morrison employs inversion again when she describes the punishment blacks received at the hands of whites. Morrison says that “grown men [were] whipped like children; children whipped like adults” (212). Morrison employs chiasmus, to reverse the roles of children and adults. This inversion shows not only the dominating, humiliating side of whites: grown men were treated as if they were children, but the sheer brutality the demonstrated: children were beaten as severely as grown men. Throughout the novel, Stamp Paid, Baby Suggs and other characters struggle, unsuccessfully, to release themselves from the grips of slavery, even after it has been abolished.