Narrative Therapy and Toni Morrison’s Beloved: Healing Through Storytelling

This paper explores Toni Morrison’s Beloved through the theoretical framework of narrative therapy. Narrative therapy proposes that individuals are not defined by their problems but are shaped by the narratives they construct within cultural and relational contexts. Applying this perspective to Beloved, the paper examines how Sethe, the protagonist, becomes trapped in a trauma-saturated story rooted in the horrors of slavery and personal loss. The analysis highlights key narrative therapy concepts—such as externalization, double listening, and re-authoring—demonstrating how Morrison dramatizes these processes through the externalized figure of Beloved, the role of community intervention, and the emergence of alternative narratives embodied by Sethe’s daughter, Denver. Ultimately, Morrison depicts healing not as the elimination of trauma, but as a continuous, collective process of rewriting one’s life narrative. By bridging literary analysis and psychological theory, this paper illuminates how Beloved serves as both a literary masterpiece and a powerful reflection on narrative identity, resilience, and the human capacity for renewal.