Beloved, a novel written by Toni Morrison in 1987, is mainly about a girl named Sethe and how she escaped from slavery but is haunted by its heritage. In this novel, she must deal with this haunted life on every level, from the fires of the flesh to the heartbreaking challenges to the spirit. Morrison used numerous themes to show her views on modernism and two important themes she discusses is irony and flashbacks. (73)
             In this novel Morrison had used many ways of showing irony. For example, Sethe kills Beloved and then tries to kill the rest of her children thinking that it's out of love and there was nothing wrong with that because she was keeping them away from the horrors of slavery. Ironically, it is Paul D. who reveals the contradictions that Sethe refuses to see in her own logic: "This here Sethe talked about love like any other woman; talked about baby clothes like any other woman, but what she meant could cleave the bone. This here Sethe talked about safety with a handsaw. This here Sethe didn't know where the world stopped and she began. Suddenly he saw what Stamp Paid wanted him to see: more important than what Sethe had done was what she had claimed. It scared him"(164). This shows Paul D.'s character suggests that although the killing act might have been committed out of a irrational, hysterical, loving mother's need to "protect" her children, Sethe's "claim" that she was!
             and is justified in those actions can not be accepted. This also shows Paul D. recognizes what Sethe can not; her act of supreme love is also an act of insurmountable selfishness. (204)
             Morrison used many techniques of flashbacks in this novel. For example, As the Bodwin approaches in a cart with his horses to pick up Denver, Sethe is triggered by a flashback of when the schoolteacher and the slave catcher came to get her children 18 years ago. Racing towards the cart, Sethe releases the hand of Beloved and runs toward to crow...