The Choice

Perhaps one of the best fifty books written in the 20th century, Beloved immediately presents itself as a great work with its richness of language.

From the dedication, "Sixty Million and more," which is the figure of the Africans who died on the middle passage, we know that this book will deal with serious subject matter.

The story itself is based on the true story of Margaret Garner, an escaped slave who killed her child rather than have the child return to slavery.

Morrison weaves a story involving fact and fiction and comes up with the epic tale of Sethe, an escaped slave living in Ohio in the 1870's-80's with her daughter Denver. Her two sons are driven off by a ghost that haunts Sethe's house which turns out to be the spirit of their other sister whose throat was cut when she was a small child by Sethe who, at the time, believed that her former master was going to send them all back into slavery.

Sethe and Denver run into and take in a mysterious young woman named Beloved, the grown manifestation of Sethe's murdered child. As the child slowly makes herself known, still basically communicating and acting in a child-like state, she almost overtakes the spirit of Sethe.

This is a complicated, rich and oftentimes disturbing chronicle of the life of an escaped slave and the choices that she felt that she had to make. Beloved in a way symbolizes the constant reminder of the pains that slavery inflicted upon Sethe and how slavery itself defined her personage.

This is a must read!!!