Alyaa Hassoon Alwain, Dr. Zohreh Taebi Noghondari & Dr. Rajabali Askarzadeh Torghabeh
Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran
Toni Morrison has been considered as one of the most well-known black writers whose writings mostly revolve around the role of memory in showing how bottled-up and repressed memories can be reflected in the lives of her female protagonists. This study is an attempt to apply Freud’s ”theory of repression” in the analysis of Morrison’s Beloved. This study will examine how the main character of Beloved is under social and cultural pressure, and uses her past life to cope with her present situation. Freud’s theories of memory mean to focus on the manifestation of time, its effects and also the influence of the past memory on a character’s desires and behaviors. Since the obsession with the past is one of the main themes of Beloved, the present research tries to provide a detailed examination of memory and its repression in this novel. The present study also intends to discuss the role of the time and memory in this novel that is written by a female writer about a female character. Through investigating the reflection of time and reminiscence of the past in this novel, this article will show how memories, particularly the repressed memories, can affect the identity of the character.
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The Second International Conference on Current Issues of Languages, Dialects and Linguistics (WWW.TLLL.IR), 1-2 February 2018, Ahwaz.
