Beloved

When Fredric Jameson said, in "Postmodernism and Consumer Society," that postmodern society has reached the end of its awareness of history, he stirred up a great controversy. Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved (1987) asks a similar question about the postmodern society's understanding of history.

Beloved is the story of one ex-slave's relationship with her children, herself, and the world around them. There are two considerations about the historical accuracy of the novel. The first is the use of contemporaneous accounts of slavery and the second, Morrison's imaginative recreation of the slave society. The conflict between these two arises from the concern that the version of slavery written by the ruling white class is flawed and that a fictional story is by definition unreal.

Two events in the novel raise this issue: the first is the moment Paul D sees the newspaper clipping of Sethe and remarks, "That ain't...