Denver: The New Generation Confronting Anonymous 11th Grade

It is a universal desire to crave knowledge about where you come from. To not only want to know what preceded you, but how you, well, became you. It is no coincidence that people who are adopted seek to find their biological parents, or why orphaned children struggle to understand their role in the world. The same is true for Denver in Beloved. She experiences internal strife trying to understand who she is and her role in the African American community relative to slavery, whose atrocities are incomprehensible to the future generations that did not experience it. At a time when the African-American community is still looking to gain equality in America, Morrison presents Denver’s progression across the novel as an introspection for reconciling the past of slavery as part of the African-American individual identity and as access to uniting and strengthening the African-American community for the future.

Initially, Denver’s yearning for a connection with Beloved demonstrates the isolation experienced by African-Americans who desire to self-identify within their community and its past, but have no access to understand through that community. Denver first display’s her desire for a connection to the past through her constant...