I Postmodern Approach to Evil and Human Wickedness in Toni Morrison's Beloved

contemporary African-American novelist is undoubtedly one of the extremely outstanding figures in the realm of postmodern literature. She achieved this position through her masterpiece, Beloved which brought her the 1988 Pulitzer Prize and the 1998 Nobel Prize for fiction. Beloved is the story of an emancipated slave woman named Sethe who killed one of her children named Beloved; and attempted at killing the others rather than allow them to be taken back into slavery. Greatly influenced by Garcia Marquez, Morrison created a great postmodern work in which she explores themes of love, family, self possession and the most significant of all, the evils of slavery, wickedness and cruelty. Her work is a brilliant postmodern work in terms of the techniques such as the powerful language which shapes its architecture, unique symbols, constant and sometimes very quick shifts between past and present, multi-perspective narration, fragmentary and different narrative voices extremely close to the consciousness of the characters and finally, realistic settings and characters and unrealistic events. Through an effective use of these techniques, Morrison proves her mastery over the postmodern features of the novel, which results in a unique and everlasting masterpiece