The term "magic(al) realism" initially juxtaposes opposite concepts: "realism," which depicts events of real life, and "magic," which includes mythical events and elements of imagination. This conceptual construct of magical realism was originally presented as a subject of academic study and is now widely used in various art forms, including cinematography. The conceptual framework of magical realism, first introduced as a topic of academic inquiry, now sees extensive employment in diverse artistic disciplines, including the realm of cinematography.

A key characteristic of magical realism is the inclusion of myths, legends, and folklore. Toni Morrison used the term "magical realism" to highlight the folk tales and culture of African Americans in a very beautiful and exquisite manner. Instead of presenting the dominant ideas of Western culture, she demonstrates a consistent inclusion of magical and mysterious elements. Through the skillful use of fantasy, she elevates her work to a captivating level [3].

Toni Morrison, a popular novelist, editor, and professor at Princeton University, is one of the leading figures in contemporary African American literature. Born Chloe Ardelia Wofford in Lorain, Ohio, in 1931, she grew up in an atmosphere where reading was loved and where her father told African American folk tales. Her parents, George and Rama, moved from the South to escape racial oppression and find economic and social opportunities. Early reading experiences led her to stand out as the only black child and the only child able to read in her first grade class. She recalls her mother's resistance to racism in Lorain.

Morrison received widespread recognition in 1978, winning the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for her novel Song of Solomon. She made history as the first African American woman to appear on the cover of Newsweek magazine. Her novel “Beloved” earned her the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1988. In 1993, Morrison's literary contributions were recognized with the Nobel Prize in Literature, making her the first and only African American writer to be awarded this high honor. Her works consistently demonstrate a deep and insightful understanding of both historical context and contemporary issues [1].

In the novel “Beloved”, magical realism plays a key role and can be seen as an instrument of decolonization in a postcolonial environment. By using elements of both realism and magic, the novelist depited colonial views. This allows for the presentation of the experiences of African Americans who survived slavery in the United States as a powerful act of liberation from colonial oppression. Furthermore, the novel offers an alternative view of history, different from the Eurocentric perspective, thereby challenging its dominance and giving a voice to numerous generations of African American slaves whose stories were hidden [4].  

The novel “Beloved” is based on real events, which makes its narrative particularly chilling. The writer drew inspiration from the story of Margaret Garner, who in 1856 took the life of her two-year-old daughter to save her from the horrors of slavery. Slave hunters, who took away her knife, prevented her from dealing with the rest of the children and herself. Against the backdrop of this tragic story, Morrison unfolds the action of Beloved - a novel about an infant haunting her killer, her own mother [2].

The narrative from the very beginning of the novel creates an atmosphere of negativity, as in the original work words like "spiteful," "venom," and "victims" are used. Also, elements of magical realism are immediately felt when it comes to the shattered mirror that Buglar looked into "...looking in a mirror shattere dit..." and the traces of tiny handprints that appeared on the cake for Howard "...as soon as two tiny handprints appeared in the cake..." After this, the two boys took these signals to mean that they should leave this mystical house, what they did one by one, leaving three women in the mysterious house: Sethe, her younger daughter Denver, and Baby Suggs (Sethe's mother-in-law). The teenagers Buglar and Howard were Sethe's sons, whom she would never see again. Soon, Baby Suggs also dies, leaving Sethe and her daughter Denver alone in the house with a malevolent ghost."

The main character of the novel is Sethe, a young woman who has already experienced a lot in her life. Through this character, the writer wanted to depict the lives and difficult fates of all black women in America at that time. A woman who had a "chokecherry tree on her back" - this is how the scars from the whippings inflicted on Sethe when she tried to escape from the farm were described:

"A chokecherry tree. Trunk, branches, and even leaves. Tiny little chokecherry leaves. Could have cherries too now for all I know."

"Schoolteacher made one open up my back, and when it made a tree. It grows there still."

The novelist tries to reveal her character throughout the entire novel. Sethe does not live in the present; she constantly returns to the past, to events of eighteen years ago. How she ended up in Sweet Home, how she married Halle there, how she gave birth every year, and how she escaped from there to the South. Black women were tragically fated to bear children only to have them forcibly separated. Very often, the owners sold them or lost them in gambling debts, and subsequently the women never knew the fate of their children, where they were sent, whether they were alive or not. For example, Morrison reveals this problem through the character of Baby Suggs. Baby Suggs was Sethe's mother-in-law, with whom she lived in house number 124. In her old age, she was bought out by her youngest son, Halle. In her life, she gave birth to eight children and barely remembered them all, as they were all taken from her and sent away. The novel sadly illustrates that Black people were denied a place in society and viewed as property. The writer compares the life of African Americans to checkers on a chessboard:

"...in all Baby's life, as well as Sethe's own, men and women were moved around like checkers. Anybody Baby Suggs knew, let alone loved, who hadn't run off or been hanged, got rented out, loaned out, bought up, brought back, stored up, mortgaged, won, stolen, or seized."

Baby Suggs' eight children had six fathers. She calls it the "nastiness of life," that no one will stop moving checkers around the board just because children are now included in the game [6].

Women's lives were exceedingly difficult; they were often subjected to unspeakable cruelty by men, used for their own selfish needs, and forced to bear children who would suffer. Despite this, the maternal bond persisted, as seen in Baby Suggs' certainty that all her children were dead.:

"Same, but to listen to her, all her children is dead. Claimed she felt each one go the very day and hour."

Toni Morrison masterfully weaves magic into everyday life. Sethe and Denver live together with the ghost of a girl, either an angry ghost or an offended one...:

"We have a ghost in here …but sad, your mama said. Not evil… Rebuked. Lonely and rebuked."

The spirit of the little girl is another character in the novel. She is introduced into the work by the author as a separate hero because she does not allow the owners of the house to live in peace. She is angry at her mother for taking her life.

The passage that tells how Sethe slit her little girl's throat with "good intentions" is breathtaking... not only she have to live out her years in a house palsied by the baby's fury at having its throat cut… the baby blood that soaked her fingers like oil…" Having read these lines, the reader may feel disgust towards her, but if you think about it more deeply, you can understand without judgment the state to which the woman had been brought, tired of life and suffering, that she desired death for herself and her children.

Now this ghost lives with them in the house at 124, destroying everything when it's in a rage, but the residents of the house are used to it. Sethe, one day, tries to leave for another place, but never dares to, since all the houses in America were like that, as her mother-in-law says:

“Not a house in the country ain’t packed to its rafters with some dead Negro’s grief. We lucky this ghost is a baby. My husband’s spirit was to come back in here? Or yours?"

These lines provide so much information about the country and society of that period, about the fact that African Americans were dying en masse and no one cared.

Denver, Sethe's younger daughter, an eleven-year-old girl who lives with her mother and the ghost of her sister in the house at 124. She is emotionally very tired of  living like this:

“I can’t no more. I can’t no more.”

“I can’t live here. I don’t know where to go or what to do, but I can’t live here. Nobody speaks to us. Nobody comes by. Boys don’t like me. Girls don’t either.”

Using double negatives shows how author wants to accentuate the state of hero and     how she wants to live like all her peers, to have friends, but unfortunately, no one has come to their house for several years. Everyone avoids the house at 124. The girl's only consolation is cologne and her only friend is the ghost:

“Denver’s secrets were sweet. Accompanied every time by wild veronica   until she discovered cologne. The first bottle was a gift, the next she stole from her mother and hid among boxwood until it froze and cracked.”

The life of the women in the house at 124 changes when he appears: Paul D, a man from Sweet Home. There were six of them at Sweet Home, and they all secretly dreamed of Sethe, who chose Halle as her husband. All these years Paul D dreamed of  Sethe, and now he stands before her, and sees her eighteen years later:

“Halle’s girl– the one with iron eyes and backbone to match… And though her face was eighteen years older than when last he saw her, it was softer now”. 

Morrison describes teenage love, when Sethe was thirteen years old, she came to Mrs. Garner's farm in Sweet Home. Being in a closed space, the boys fell in love with the only girl on the farm and secretly dreamed of her:

“Sethe was thirteen when she came to Sweet Home and already iron-eyed… The five sweet Home men looked at the new girl and let her be… so she could choose in spite of the fact that each one would have beaten the others to mush to have her…”

After so many years, he sees a woman, the wife of his former friend, but his old feelings make themselves known.

In summary, “Beloved” is a complex and important work that successfully explores the historical, personal, and fantastical to give an overall compelling story to its readers. Through examining the literary style of Morrison, as well as the historical and social setting of America, “Beloved” can be regarded as a monumental literary work and the complex character system within the novel as a cornerstone to the telling of a crucial story.