Beloved: The Degradation of Slaves “Two boys bled in the sawdust and dirt at the feet of a nigger woman holding a blood-soaked child to her chest with one hand and an infant by the heels in the other.” This gruesome image is a result of the many degradations that black slaves face. The humiliation these slaves suffer is often too much to deal with, forcing them to take action, even taking the lives of their own children. In her novel, Beloved, Toni Morrison uses her writing to powerfully portray the physical, spiritual, and emotional degradation that American black slaves are forced to