Written nearly two hundred years apart, William Godwin's Caleb Williams and Toni Morrison's Beloved tell stories in which the characters attempt to find freedom by fleeing oppression unjust and the haunting vestiges of oppression. Caleb Williams, the titular protagonist of Godwin's novel, attempts to escape persecution from his cruel master, Falkland, while Sethe, the protagonist of Beloved, successfully escapes the imprisonment of slavery. It is important to note, however, that the Falklands' persecution of Caleb, while unjust, was based on Caleb's individual actions and could have been avoided. Ultimately, he is able to use legal action to free himself and escape the fate he once saw as inevitable and ends up finding himself haunted by nothing but a guilty conscience. Sethe, on the other hand, was born into her oppression, and even after escaping slavery, she is still haunted, figuratively, by it, by the negative perceptions of her race that permeate the nation, even in the free North , and literally by ghostly reincarnation. of the girl she killed to save her from a life of slavery. Even if Sethe is able to escape the literal haunting when the ghost is banished, she and her family will not be able to escape the lingering effects of racism throughout their lives. Comparing the two texts highlights the additional difficulty in the lives of African Americans, particularly in Sethe's time. Although Caleb and Sethe faced similar scenarios, Caleb was oppressed as an individual and by an individual, and had no system against him, while Sethe is trapped in a system that harms her even without abuse of slavery. She doesn't have the luxury of escape. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay As Caleb and Sethe find themselves in similar situations, Caleb makes it clear that he found himself in this situation because of his own actions. Even though his persecution is unjust and seems inevitable, he could have avoided it by acting differently. When Caleb begins to speculate on whether his master might be a murderer, he writes: "Doing what is forbidden has always had its charms...That there was danger in the job served to give it a spice seductive…The further I advanced, the more irresistible the sensation became” (Godwin 112-3). If he obviously does not work with the aim of being slandered and pursued across the country, he recognizes and explicitly declares that the task he has set for himself, the sole aim of which is to appease his curiosity, the endangers. He persists even after Falkland warns him, telling him "Go away and fear having to pay for the rashness you have already committed!" » (123). While Caleb doesn't necessarily deserve to face Falkland's extreme reaction, he finds himself in this situation by taking an inappropriate interest in the details of someone else's private life when he understands that it can have consequences. For Caleb, the onslaught of the seemingly inescapable force of the Falklands' wrath was entirely avoidable. Sethe, on the other hand, is powerless in the face of her inevitable destiny. As a black woman born to slaves in the American South, there was nothing she could have done to avoid becoming a slave. It was a role assigned to him at birth, due to the negative and damaging perceptions that white society of the time had towards black people. As Stamp Paid muses, "White people believed that whatever their ways, beneath every damp skin was a jungle... But that wasn't the blacks of thejungle brought with them to this place from the other (habitable) place. It was the whites of the jungle who were established there. And it grew. It spread” (234). He states here that even though there is nothing inherently savage about black people, white people of the time seem that way because they forced black people, through slavery, into a situation where they could not are permitted to appear in any manner.conventionally considered civilized. Although she is able to escape the slave plantation itself, Sethe is never able to escape these negative perceptions. They follow her and her family to the Free North and even come from characters who seem otherwise friendly. Even Amy, the young white girl who graciously helps Sethe when she flees the plantation, pregnant, is not free from racist sentiments and some of her comments, perhaps inadvertently, deny Sethe's individuality. While talking to him, Amy said, “We had an old black maid come to our house. She doesn't know anything... she can barely put two words together. She doesn't know anything, just like you. You don't know anything. Ending up dead, that’s what” (94). Amy thoughtlessly lumps her in with another black woman she knows and, even though she knows next to nothing about Sethe, automatically equates them with a lower level of intelligence, seemingly due solely to race. , judging by how nonchalantly the girl threw. the racial insult. As Sethe's daughter Denver considers later in the book, "any white person could take themselves entirely for anything that came to mind." Not just work you, kill you or maim you, but dirty you. You’re so dirty that you can’t love yourself anymore…you forgot who you were and you couldn’t think about it” (295). It recognizes the negative psychological effects that racism can cause, while also recognizing its other more serious effects, such as mutilation, death and at the hands of extremist racists. Stamp Paid considers that “entire towns were cleared of blacks; eighty-seven lynchings in a single year in Kentucky; four colored schools burned to the ground…black women raped…property confiscated, necks broken,” horrible examples of what racism can lead to. Because of their skin color, Sethe and the other black characters are unable to escape the racist forces of social constructs that exist across the country, in both free and slave regions. Caleb Williams, even while being pursued, is able to momentarily confuse seemingly inevitable events. anger which pursues him in disguise. Before attempting to leave the country for the first time, he realizes that his description is being circulated so that Falkland can locate him, so he "adopted with [his] beggar's outfit a particular gait, hunched and clownish, to use each time that it was necessary.” seem to have the slightest chance of being observed, with an Irish accent that he had the opportunity to study in prison” (247). In London, he writes “the exterior I was now led to assume was that of a Jew” (263). In both cases, his disguise fails only because of clumsy coincidence or the extreme diligence of Falkland's agents. He manages, however, for a time, to hide him from most of those who see him and who would otherwise recognize him based on the descriptions, because although he is successfully disguised, he does not match the description of the wanted individual. , on the other hand, does not have this option. Even if she is able to disguise herself enough to appear as someone different, she will still appear as a black woman, and even though this may help her escape from) »(201)..