Prompt:
Reflect on what you, personally, have learned from Beloved so far as the result of reading it through your particular lens, and how that connects (or does not connect) with your own previous knowledge or beliefs.

It has always been painfully clear what divides society, and history has only proven the roots of these divisions. While slavery is not a legal institution in this society any longer, that does not mean that it has not left a huge mark on the progress of society’s function. From only reading the first few chapters of Beloved, it is clear that slavery left a permanent scar on all those involved, on all of the 19th century, and caused conflicts too deep and inhumane that people could never forget. Beloved made it clear that no normal person would be able to forget being slave, nor erasing the memory of owning a slave. This classist divide is quite obvious, but what was not as obvious to me before was the extent to which these seemingly horrific roles would continue on to form today’s social ladder.

I had always believed that Marxism mostly referred to the times after industrialization when classes all moved to the city and agriculture was considered its own entire sector. However, reading through Beloved, although not direct there are some very vivid descriptions tying back to Marxism. I’ve been able to have a fresh perspective on the deep impact of slavery, not just on the past, on history, but also on the evolution of society afterwards. Imagining the abuse, sexual, emotional, and mental that slaves such as Sethe and Paul D underwent completely coincides with the unflattering truth the lowest class is generally considered the least human. And they recognize it and consistently and naturally desire to rebel against that norm.

Marxism claims that tension in the lower class attempting to rise up and revolt against the lower class is a cycle, and while the primary content of  slavery is race it can be closely tied to class as slaves were considered the lowest class in all of society at the time, they struggled and struggled to gain freedom and therefore gained a large amount of resentment from upper class whites. Sethe is a runaway slave, she was put at the bottom of the barrel, abused and used and even if she was freed, she would never in her lifetime be looked upon as equal to her upper-class counterpart. It’s ironic how those with money are able to control the world, but the power of dirt poor slaves across the country were able to change national law. That is the basis of Marxism at its prime, a build-up of conflict until a new society is formed.

Essentially, Beloved helped me see that while the lower class always suffers the worst conditions of society, such as slavery, child labor, homelessness or whatever it may be, conflict between all classes exists in every age and time, even today.