Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What do ghosts typically represent in our culture?

Teaching Suggestion: Looking at ghosts throughout the American literary canon might be a useful place to start, but pop culture and film are also good resources to get students thinking about how literary tropes exist in the media they’re most familiar with.

• This essay from The New York Times Book Review on the meaning of ghosts provides a broad overview of the shifting nature of ghosts in American literature.
• This Indiewire list of ghosts in film provides a good overview of the types of ghost stories that have endured in film.

2. How do you think the first and second generations of freed slaves dealt with the effects of their enslavement?

Teaching Suggestion: This is an often-overlooked part of American history, since the post-Civil War era narrative is dominated by Reconstruction and predominantly white narratives. Grounding students in the nature of trauma recovery vis-à-vis the trauma and memory of slavery can get them in the mindset to think about Beloved as a psychological drama.