Beloved Chapter 3 Analysis

Destruction of identity, another theme of the novel, relates to the violent scenes. In the second part of Beloved, Sethe takes a stand and expresses her feeling on the violent acts being performed on her. “Nobody will ever get my milk no more except my own children. I never had to give it to nobody else—and the one time I did it was took from me—they held me down and took it. Milk that belonged to my baby” (Morrison 200). Sethe finally comes to terms with her past and vows to never let such a horrendous act happen to her again. Beloved’s reincarnation occurs because Sethe needs to face her dark past head on and free herself from living in shame. It took time, but, Sethe eventually overcomes the odds and begins to live freely and peacefully in her house.

The past comes back to haunt accurately in Beloved. Written by Toni Morrison, a prominent African-American author and Noble Prize winner for literature, the novel Beloved focuses on Sethe, a former slave who killed her daughter, Beloved, before the story begins. Beloved returns symbolically in the psychological issues of each character and literally in human form. The novel is inspired by the true story of Margaret Garner, a slave in the 1850s, who committed infanticide by killing her child. Barbara Schapiro, the author of “The Bonds of Love and the Boundaries of Self in Toni Morrison’s Beloved”, Andrew Levy, the author of “Telling Beloved”, and Karla F.C. Holloway, the author of “Beloved: A Spiritual”, present ideas of the loss of psychological freedom, the story being “unspeakable”, Beloved being the past, and the narrative structures of the story rewriting history.

Sethe lives in the shadow of her act of infanticide throughout the entire length of the book. This is because its legacy pervades itself throughout the entire novel, showing events leading up, and ways the future has been affected. The novel begins as such: “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom. (Page 1)” This baby refers to Beloved, who became a ghostly presence in Sethe’s house and continuously terrorizes the house

Even after she acknowledges Beloved's identity, Sethe shows herself to be still enslaved by the past, because she quickly succumbs to Beloved's demands and allows herself to be consumed by Beloved. Only when Sethe learns to confront the past head-on, to assert herself in its presence, can she extricate herself from its oppressive power and begin

Throughout Beloved, the past is continually brought forth in the present, both physically and mentally through visual images, particularly those relating to slavery. The life at sweet home is all too real to escape for Sethe, her family, and all the others who once lived there.

After Hester is released from prison Hawthorne leaves us wondering if her choice to stay in Boston was even a choice she could make. Chapter five opens with Hester coming into the light and leaving the cell in which she had been punished in for so long. However, once she is out, she decides to stay in Massachusetts, in the same community which has shamed her for so long. Hawthorne describes the decision when he writes, “it may seem marvelous, that this woman should still call that place her home… But there is a fatality… which almost invariably compels human beings to linger … the spot where some great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime” (71). In this quote Hawthorne is not only speaking of Hester, he is speaking of

Beloved is a novel by Toni Morrison based on slavery after the Civil War in the year 1873, and the hardships that come with being a slave. This story involves a runaway captive named Sethe, who commits a heinous crime to protect her child from the horrors of slavery. Through her traumas, Sethe runs from the past and tries to live a normal life. The theme of Toni Morrison’s story Beloved is how people cannot escape the past. Every character relates their hard comings to the past through setting, character development, and conflict.

The theme of isolation as in many of the other pieces of literature that we have read this year can been seen in this novel Beloved. The theme can be seen in the isolation of Sethe and her inner self. It can also be seen with Denver and her separation from society because of the children at school. There is also the detachment of Sethe’s family from the rest of the world because of her past and what people think of the house and

In Beloved, Morrison discusses the power that the past can hold over a person. Sethe murdered her daughter and was stopped before she had the chance to murder her other children. However, the murders did not occur out of malicious intent. After escaping her owner, Sethe is terrified that someone will catch her and her children and force them into slavery. She feels that the worst thing in the world is

In the novel, “Beloved” it is about a slave woman, Sethe, who before the book even begins kills her baby

When Sethe first meets Beloved, she welcomes her with a suspiciously large magnitude. Furthermore, it is clear that Sethe never revealed her past experiences to Denver, yet the moment Beloved asks about her lost earrings, it was “the first time she had heard anything about her(Sethe’s) mother’s mother”(61). This proves that Beloved, and not anyone else, is pulling Sethe to the past, by making her recollect of her days as a slave. In addition,“it is clear why she holds on to you(Sethe), but I just can’t see why you holding on to her,” Paul mentioned(67). This shows how Paul realizes that Sethe has taken in Beloved without much reasoning, and when Beloved hums a song that Sethe happened to make up, Sethe fully but blindly embraces Beloved as family. In fact, she “had gone to bed smiling,” anxious to “unravel the proof for the conclusion she had already leapt to”(181). This shows how consumed by Beloved she is.

The main focus of Beloved is the death of Sethe’s eldest daughter. When Sethe noticed the arrival of the four white horsemen, she made life-altering decision. The choice she made forever drove a wedge between Sethe and her children. She thought she was choosing the lesser of two evils, while her children were left to fear that their own mother would eventually kill them. The life of a slave was not something Sethe wanted her children to endure, so much so that she thought death would be an easier fate than slavery. The pain and suffering of slavery led Sethe to do the unthinkable, kill her own

In the novel Beloved by Toni Morrison the character Sethe is faced with the traumatic experience of having to return to slavery at Sweet Home, in order to save her children she attempts to kill them. She succeeds in killing one by cutting the infant’s throat with a hacksaw. This “rough choice” revolves around the novel on whether or not, the choice was right or wrong. Sethe’s tough choice between the right or wrong in the murder of her child is right and was necessary for her to insure the safety of her children, to express her motherly love, and to become a strong figure in her children's lives.

 Toni Morrison’s powerful novel Beloved is based on the aftermath of slavery and the horrific burden of slavery’s hidden sins.  Morrison chooses to depict the characters that were brutalized in the life of slavery as strong-willed and capable of overcoming such trauma.  This is made possible through the healing of many significant characters, especially Sethe.  Sethe is relieved of her painful agony of escaping Sweet Home as well as dealing with pregnancy with the help of young Amy Denver and Baby Suggs.  Paul D’s contributions to the symbolic healing take place in the attempt to help her erase the past.  Denver plays the most significant role in Sethe’s healing in that she brings the community’s support

In Beloved, Toni Morrison frequently alternates between telling stories from Sethe's past, to telling events in the present. Morrison introduces Beloved, who serves as the link between Sethe and Paul D's past at "Sweet Home" as slaves, and the present, living in Ohio as a free family of three: Sethe, Paul D. and Denver. The character of Beloved allows Morrison to explain the experiences and characteristics of the three characters, and how they are reactions to their pasts. Up to Beloved's arrival, Sethe and Denver lived in a "spiteful house.", which created a state of uneasiness. The ghost of Beloved had driven off Sethe's two sons, yet the mother and daughter continued to live at 124. With the arrival of Paul D., some of Sethe's