The person-as-symbol element in fiction can be a very powerful one, and few uses of this device are more prominent or more powerful than Toni Morrison's in Beloved. This also comes with certain elements of fantasy -- misconceptions and/or misunderstandings based on a simplified view of the character Beloved. Sethe comes to treat Beloved as the sole purpose in her life, a being who deserves everything and is essentially above judgment due to the suffering caused her. This is just as incorrect a view of Beloved, it turns out, as the view of the narrator in Baldwin's short story by the Americans is. Whatever Beloved is, she is not simple, and not being granted the full life of responsibility ad freedom, she stagnates, and causes Sethe to stagnate along with her. The fantasies held in these works are not productive, but instead hold characters back from fulfilling their true potential....
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