Steven McFarland

Secondary English Methods Education

Meg Goldner Rabinowitz
9/29/2015
Beloved: A Book That Influenced Me
When thinking on this matter of a book that influenced me, I had to spend much
time on the term influence. I feel that in some sort of way everything that one comes in
contact with or digests has an enlightens the way one sees the world. But the term
influences denotes a different kind of veneration; those things that have influenced me
are those that have caused me to rethink the world while also affirming those things that I
already thought. Those books that have held the most influence on me are thought that
completely reshaped my view of the world while giving me the language, the vocabulary
to express that new world view. These are the books after completing that one simply
feels renewed, one feels that invigoration that comes when one truly has been changed.
For me there are a few books that fall into this divine category those that have simply
gone from words on a page to words forever etched into the my consciousness. Doris
Goodwins Team of Rivals about the cabinet of Abraham Lincoln is on this list as it truly
opened my eyes to how deep leadership could be. Rousseaus Discourses on Inequality
gave me the realization and the vocabulary I needed in order to explain my own political
philosophy. These are books that I have not read in years yet when thinking back on them
I can take you to the page upon which my entire world was changed. This conception of
influence does not happen often but when it does it truly stays with you forever. That
book that embodies the essence of influence is Toni Morrisons Beloved, which not only
enlightened my path but changed the way I looked at my identity.

The novel takes place in post Civil War America where America after being
founded on the principles that All Men were Created Equal has outlawed the vile
institution of slavery. Our main character is a woman by the name of Sethe a former slave
who ran away from captivity in Kentucky and found a home in the free state of Ohio. She
settles into her freedom in Ohio only to be held by her past by a vile act brought on by the
same institution that she attempted to flee. Due to the Fugitive Slave Act, Sethe fearing
that she would be recaptured and sent back but more importantly that her two year old
daughter would be sent back slaughters her two year old in order to save her from a
lifetime as a slave. This act is left a mystery for most of the novel as the novel builds up
to the reveal, giving us only glances of what actually occurred. It isnt till this reveal that
the entire novel makes sense as the mysterious character whom the novel is named is
revealed to be the ghost of the unnamed two year old who Sethe felt she needed to shield
from the horrors of being a slave. My rehashing of the details does not do justice to the
narrative that Morrison pens in what has been declared a universal masterpiece. Though
for me this story brought it all full circle- how the institution of slavery forever robbed
African Americans of their worth, the psychological ramifications impacted generations
and how such things still occur to this day. I remembered reading the very last chapter of
Beloved almost in tears as the narrator tells us that this story of Sethe and her daughter
Beloved is not one to pass on, that it is seeped in a pain that cannot be expressed nor
explained. Beloved influenced me by telling that story, it allowed me to make sense of a
pain that persists to this very day, thats how this book influenced me.