The main characters in Toni Morrison's “Beloved” are former slaves; their main struggle, after being stripped of their humanity and identity by the white men who owned them, is to reclaim their property and forge identities independent of those that their owners imposed on them under the system of slavery . Morrison uses the themes of naming and renaming to demonstrate the power of defining that slavery allowed white people to dominate black people, to argue that slavery as an institution rather than individual slave owners are responsible for the crushing of the identity of those who suffered from it, and to illustrate the struggle of black people to claim an independent identity after slavery. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original EssayThe institution of slavery grants Mr. and Mrs. Garner, the owners of Sweet Home, the power to name their slaves . Although Morrison depicts the Garners as generally harmless compared to other slave owners, their behavior is largely irrelevant; it is not the slave owners as individuals, but slavery as a system that oppresses and exploits the main characters, undermining their ability to form their own identity. Whatever the Garners' intentions, their stance on slaves meant that Paul D and his brothers inevitably lacked self-ownership. The names Paul D, Paul A, and Paul F - as well as the shared surname Garner - constantly remind each of these characters that they exist as property rather than as men. For years, Paul D believed that the schoolteacher transformed people Garner. were resurrected as men and became children again. And that's what made them run away. Now, tormented by the contents of his tin of tobacco, he wondered what difference there really was before and after school. Garner called them and told them about men – but only during Sweet Home and with his permission. Was he naming what he saw or creating what he didn't? Questioning here whether he was ever truly a man under Garner, Paul D makes a point that had been obscured by the obvious differences between the two owners: slavery under any owner. has the same psychological effects on the slave and still renders him incapable of becoming an independent identity. Mr. Garner's attempt to raise his slaves as "men" by granting them more responsibility and outward respect than most slave owners is inherently futile because, as Paul D now realizes, "manliness" or the "personality" of slaves in these circumstances is not self-determined, but bestowed by their owner: "Oh, he did manly things, but was that Garner's gift or his own will?" (220). As long as they are slaves, Paul D and the other men of Sweet Home will never be able to define themselves independently, and their manhood will always exist at the whim of the white man who owns them. After Mr. Garner's death, this underlying feature of slavery becomes apparent when the schoolmaster demonstrates his unconditional power to deprive slaves of their manhood or humanity. Paul D's sense of his own independent manhood under Garner was an illusion: whether he used it or not, Garner had the power to rob Paul D of his manhood. Former slave Joshua, after gaining his freedom, establishes a new identity by renaming himself Paid Stamp. Paul D, on the other hand, has no plans to give himself a new name oncetime he escaped from Sweet Home. Psychologically, a part of him still seems under the control of the slave system: even after years of "freedom", he continues to recognize as legitimate the dehumanizing name that slavery gives him. As she does with many other characters. and the overall themes of the novel, Morrison uses Paul D.'s struggle for independence to illustrate a larger historical problem - one that reverberates through American society today. Paul D.'s inability to free himself from white oppression after slavery demonstrates to the reader the struggle that black people faced after slavery. Howard Zinn, in his People's History of the United States, quotes former slave Thomas Hall's testimony to the Federal Writers' Project: Lincoln received praise for freeing us, but did he do it? He gave us freedom without giving us any chance to live on our own and we still had to depend on the white man of the south for work, food and clothing, and he kept us out of necessity and need in a state of bondage but hardly better than slavery. Like Thomas Hall, Paul D always remains dependent on the “white man of the South”; since he still retains the identity imposed on him by his former owners, he is not completely freed from the bonds of slavery. Another connection between the fictional character Paul D and the history subject Thomas Hall can be found in the role white men play in their incomplete “freedom” – in Hall's case, physical and economic freedom; at Paul D, psychological. Hall criticizes Lincoln for freeing slaves legally, while leaving them dependent on Southern whites, forcing them into a kind of unofficial serfdom that, for many blacks, was in reality much the same as slavery. From one perspective, Morrison's use of Mr. Garner can be seen as a criticism of the U.S. government's treatment of slaves after the Civil War and the idea that Lincoln should be given all the credit. deserves to have “liberated” the blacks of the South. While Lincoln “freed” slaves legally while allowing them to remain under white control, Garner granted Paul D his “manhood” – what Paul D, at the time, believed to be his psychological freedom – while retaining in reality control of one's own life. humanity and ultimately prevent it from forming a self-determined identity. This dynamic in many ways carries over into American society today, where black people remain economically and socially oppressed by white people. By showing Paul D's inability to define himself independently to the detriment of his character, and by only allowing Paul D to reconcile with himself after having sex with Beloved (which, on the level figuratively, should be understood as an act of embracing one's past), Morrison reminds contemporary readers of the similar struggle black Americans face today in a society where white people control the definitions and set the standards. As Allan Johnson describes it: “On most college campuses, for example, black students feel pressured to talk, dress, and act like middle-class whites in order to fit in and be accepted, what some have called being “Afro-Saxon”. Similarly, most workplaces define appropriate appearance and manner of speaking in terms that are culturally associated with being white... Racial and ethnic minorities are marked as outsiders, in the as many navigate the social world by consciously changing the way they speak. from one situation to another. By purchasing an apartment.