The reader knew that everything Douglass described in his story was true, making the cruelties of slavery evident and unmistakable to the reader. .
Morrison wrote "Beloved" in such a way that she went into detail about everything Sethe went through, but even with this incredible detail, the story still remains fiction. Douglass did not go into detail about his experiences, making the reader imagine the details, but the reader knows that what he or she imagined was probably not as bad as the reality because the story was not fiction, it was all real. "The Narrative of Frederick Douglass" could easily replace "Beloved" on any reading list because it is a novel about slavery, like "Beloved," but all of the information presented is credible and the author himself is a national treasure.
"Beloved" contains instances within the novel that make the reader cringe and put the book down for a few minutes in order to recover from what he or she just read. Brutal rape scenes, instances of bestiality, and tragic infanticide are presented in the book, but none of these scenes actually happened. Toni Morrison is a fantastic writer which allows her to imagine and describe all of these occurrences, but the fact that none of them are true and that they are all figments of her imagination further withdraw from the novels credibility. There are other novels, such as "The Woman Warrior," by Maxine Hong Kingston, that include instances of infanticide, but they are not depicted in such a way that turns the reader away. "The Woman Warrior" is a novel that includes a mixture of an autobiography of Kingston's life and traditional Chinese folklore. There are multiple scenes depicting infanticide, but the way in which they are written makes the reader more interested, not nauseous. This novel has credibility because the reader knows that infanticide was common in China, and because the novel was depicting scenes from her mother's life as a nurse in China.
