Abstract
This paper elucidates the structure of Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, using the framework of human emotions in response to grieving and death as developed by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Through her studies of terminally ill patients, Kubler-Ross identified five stages when approaching death: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. These stages accurately fill the process that the character Sethe experiences in the novel as she learns to accept her daughter’s death.
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Notes
Bouson, Quiet As It's Kept, 131.
Morrison, Beloved, 1987, 4. All subsequent references to this work are included in the text.
Kubler-Ross, On Death and Dying, 16. All subsequent references to this work are included in the text.
Bouson, 136.
Kubler-Ross, On Children and Death, 99.
Bouson, 150.
Peach, Toni Morrison, 125.
Harris, Fiction and Folklore, 151.
Samuels and Hudson-Weems, Toni Morrison, 131.
Samuels and Hudson-Weems, 131.
Kubler-Ross, On Children and Death, 167.
References
J. B. Bouson, Quiet As It's Kept: Shame, Trauma, and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison. State University of New York Press, Albany, 2000.
T. Harris, Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison. U of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1999.
E. Kubler-Ross, On Death and Dying: What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy, and Their Own Families. Simon & Schuster, New York, 1969.
E. Kubler-Ross, On Children and Death: How Children and their Parents Can and Do Cope with Death. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1983.
T. Morrison, Beloved. Plume, New York, 1987.
L. Peach, Toni Morrison. St. Martin's Press, New York, 1989.
W. D. Samuels, C. Hudson-Weems, Toni Morrison. Twayne, Boston, 1990
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Pass, O.M. Toni Morrison's Beloved: A Journey through the Pain of Grief. J Med Humanit 27, 117–124 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-006-9010-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-006-9010-0