There is a famous proverb in the Igbo and Yoruba tribes of Africa, “It takes a village to raise a child.” This quote signifies the importance of communal harmony and puts a profound emphasis on the necessity for a community to work together in order to provide for, nurture and create a healthy environment for children which will lead them to become caring and humble adults.
Beloved, a masterpiece of a novel by Toni Morrison insights these notions thoroughly. Written in the year 1987 and focusing on the backdrop of the post- civil war America, Beloved is known to be one of Morrison’s best works. Set in the period when slavery was a common economic practice, the novel puts forth the destructive legacy of the harsh and inhuman treatment faced by the Black people who were traded as slaves from the African continent.
One of the most important themes highlighted in the novel is the need for community in order for people to thrive in life and move forward from a difficult past. The concept of community is given quite a lot of value in the African culture because it is believed that community connects the past, present, and future, as well as the spiritual and material. It's also believed that all members of a lineage, whether they are dead, born, or unborn, form one community.
The African culture believes that the community nurtures a person while they are young, and when they mature they give back to the community. Through Beloved, Morrison has showcased this idea of the weight of togetherness which a community holds and how it became necessary for the African- American people to stick with each other in order to heal from their collective past. The process of healing has been showcased through various characters like Sethe, Denver, Paul D, etc., who are all fighting their own inner demons and are traumatised. But they still possess a hope for a better future.
The consequences of being shunned away by the community are also shown to be dire. Sethe is too proud to associate herself with the rest of the black community in her neighbourhood, resulting in her being almost arrested by the slave catchers. If only she would have been in good terms with her people, they would have had warned her about the slave catchers’ arrival.
It is only during the climax of the novel, when Denver (Sethe’s daughter) runs out of their house to ask for help from the women of the community pleading them to save Sethe from the ghost of her first daughter, Beloved. To everyone’s joy, the exorcism is successful.
Morrison has showcased how it became important as well as necessary for a minority group to stick together to save themselves from further annihilation, to have each other’s backs and support one another in times of need.
