To convince oneself is hard enough; to convince others is sometimes near impossible. Convincing a person that they are free after a life of servitude and slavery will probably never truly happen, yet a person’s identity is still shaped by their experiences and their mind may change as their lives transform. So, is there elitism in a person’s identity? Being elite and being a freed slave or a descendant of one seems to be a juxtaposed idea when thinking about the times of slavery in the United States, yet Toni Morrison’s book Beloved seems to take on this idea of a person’s elitism within understanding their identity.
With the arrival of the character Beloved, the ghost of a murdered baby in human form, the mother, Sethe, sacrifices everything to keep Beloved happy. Sethe’s identity is shaped around her life as a murderer of her own child, and Beloved takes advantage of this fact, making Sethe feel guilty when she is not playing with, feeding or helping Beloved. Why then does Sethe continue to shape her identity around Beloved’s needs when she convinced herself that she sacrificed Beloved to keep her safe? Does Sethe actually believe that her actions were justified, or did Sethe convince herself of this? Sethe’s struggle to overcome her identity as a murderer is ultimately conquered when she abandons 124 along with her past, manifested in Beloved, falling into open arms of the townspeople that were so afraid of her for so long.
Does Sethe’s ability to finally release her from the grip of Beloved make her identity any more elite than others identities? Every person’s identity is shaped by many different factors in life, many of which cannot be controlled, so can we really judge who each of us are, or what we do with our identity?
