Beloved Character Analysis

In Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved there is a mother-daughter relationship in which Sethe out of motherly love, murders her daughter Beloved to free and protect her from the harshness of slavery. Through this, the ghost of her deceased daughter haunts her conscience and later further haunts Sethe about her act of love. From the time she slits the throat of her infant daughter and until the end of the novel, Morrison presents justifications of Sethe's actions and understanding of her use of this conflict to recreate history in relaying the harshness of slavery in this time period. Morrison uses tactics which incorporates Beloved and slavery making them synonymous and depicting the importance of the bittersweet ice skating scene.

Sethe kills Beloved because she wants to protect her from a vicious life of slavery. Moreover, Sethe sees killing Beloved as an act of love because she saved Beloved from a strenuous life of enslavement. Sethe thinks that death is better than a life of bondage. Paul D cannot understand her reasoning and leaves her after he finds out the truth. He wonders, “This here Sethe talked about safety with a handsaw. This here new Sethe didn’t know where the world stopped and began” (193). This illustrates a contrast between men and women in the novel since Paul D lacks the maternal instincts that Sethe possesses. Paul D is incapable of being a mother and experiencing that bond, so he cannot quite come to terms with Sethe’s choice. However, one can argue that Sethe’s choice is based on rationality and logic, instead of emotions, which would be the stereotypical response of a woman. Paul D actually experiences this womanly response because he responds emotionally to Sethe’s murder. Therefore, Paul D responds in a traditional feminine way and Sethe responds in a traditional masculine way, which demonstrates a reversal of conventional gender

Toni Morrison’s classic novel, Beloved, can be briefly summarized as a story with woman who is living in both the horrible aftermath of slavery, as well as her action of murdering her baby child in an attempt to save her from slavery. This story is based on the true story of Margaret Garner, who killed her own child and attempted to kill her other children instead of willfully letting them all return to lives of slavery. While slavery is today clearly classified as wrong by the vast majority of civilized society, as is infanticide, the event that takes place in this book is not as black and white. These instances of a grayer side of morality represent a sort of moral ambiguity that runs rampant throughout the entire novel. The example that is of paramount importance is when Sethe, the protagonist of the story, murders her child in order to save the child from a life of slavery. While at first glance, this act may seem wrong to modern readers, there is actually some evidence that, when thought about, justifies Sethe’s actions.

Paul D, a fellow ex-member of Sweet Home, the same place Sethe was stationed in during her slavery years, is a character who was a victim of cruelty done by a society and a communtiy and was forced to act cruely himself. Schoolteacher, the man who represents slavery, hurts Paul D by making him realize that he has less worth than a rooster named Mister. This makes Paul D question how much exactly he is worth, and where he belongs as can be seen as he travels the states based on the advice of a Cherokee member. Paul D eventualy finds that place in 124, with Sethe. One of the most obvious scenes of Paul D committing a cruel deed is when he

Through character development, the story also portrays the theme of escaping the past. Sethe’s actions are influenced heavily by her dead child, Beloved. When the “human” form of Beloved arrives while sleeping

Sethe and her friends and family both witness and experience the atrocious institutionalized wrongs and unethical societal norms of slave culture. However, Sethe eventually escapes Sweet Home plantation, hoping to provide a better life for her and her children. She finds a home at 124 Bluestone Road with her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs. Like Sethe, Paul D escapes Sweet Home, but he subsequently suffers jail time and further mistreatment. Morrison explains how slavery destroyed Paul D’s ability to love and express himself, “Saying more might push them both to a place they couldn’t get back from. He would keep the rest where it belonged: in that tobacco tin buried in his chest where a red heart used to be. Its lid rusted shut” (Morrison 86). The metaphorical replacement of Paul D’s heart with a rusted tobacco tin illustrates how slavery removed a human quality from him, almost giving him attributes of a machine rather than a person. Slave owners, Mr. Garner and Schoolteacher, reduced Paul D to a worker without a heart. However, Paul D finds an escape from this with Sethe at

Sethe is not simply attempting to kill her children just for the sake of doing it; she sees no other option for the betterment of their lives. Sethe is attempting to take the lives of her children out of pure love and the opportunity to not drag them through a life of suffering.

Sethe slit her own baby girl’s throat. Did Sethe make the right or wrong decision by doing so? In retrospect, it was a tough decision. Sethe had to choose between allowing her family including herself to be taken to Sweet Home by school teacher so avoid this commotion by killing her children before school teacher gets the chance to abduct them. Sethe’s choice was to whether or not to kill her children before they get taken to Sweet Home can be argued as a reasonable choice. Sethe’s actions can be due to her motherly instincts trying to protect her children, the fact she knows what it is like to grow up as a slave, and how she never knew what it was like to have a family until she made one of her own. These are the reasons as to why Sethe did what she believe was the right choice.

I did that” (Morrison, 194). Cruelty takes a huge part in Sethe’s murder, she didn’t want her children to be sold to slavery and experience the cruelty she experienced. She’d rather kill them than to have them live through slavery. Remembering the past affects Sethe’s future especially when a girl name Beloved comes to 124 and attaches herself to Sethe.

Sethe says she believes she won't even have to explain her motives for killing her (a love so great she can't let her be taken into a life of slavery). "I don't have to remember nothing," Sethe tells herself on page 183. "I don't even have to explain. She understands it all." Sethe believes the one true way she will find restitution and understanding with Beloved, is by knowing the mark she has left on her daughter. "I only need to know one thing. How bad is the scar?" Sethe feels that by knowing the scar, by touching the "memory of a smile under her chin," she can feel her daughter's pain and connect with her.

While Morrison depicts myriad abuses of slavery like brutal beatings and lynching, the depictions of and allusions to rape are of primary importance; each in some way helps explain the infanticide that marks the beginnings of Sethe’s story as a free woman. Sethe kills her child so that no white man will ever “dirty” her, so that no young man with “mossy teeth” will ever hold the child down and suck her breast (Pamela E. Barnett 193)

This passage is perhaps one of the most revealing of Sethe’s character. Sethe has seen it all; slavery, loss of her children, death of her loved ones, mystery at the disappearance of her husband, etc. She is a strong woman. When Paul D comes into her life and shakes it all up, giving her new information of her husband, she is lost. Sethe wants to put her mind to something else but she cannot. As shown earlier in the book, the author expertly combines present time thoughts with a look to the past to fully encompass the characters emotions. Sethe struggles to think. She wishes she could simply smash cold lumpy butter into her face as her husband did when he broke. But Sethe can’t do that, she is far too strong. The author employs several devices

By escaping, it keeps her family together and prevented from her children being separated from her. According to Nancy L. Chick’s article, “Toni Morrison: Overview” writes, “She [Sethe was] determined to escape North to shield her family… and prevent her separation and estrangement from her children, the typical fate of slave families” (Par 8). Mothers were usually separated from their children, so in order to avoid that she makes the decision to escape. Another example would be when Sethe kills her daughter, Beloved, so she would not have to endure a life of slavery. Sethe’s choice was her way of refusing to comply and to protect her children from the life she lived. Nancy L. Chick also writes, “After escaping, she [Sethe] sliced her baby girl’s throat to prevent her from suffering the same violence that Sethe experienced as a female slave” (Par 8). By killing her daughter, she was protecting her from having to face what she faced.

First, she “moves” him to the rocking chair in the kitchen, then to Baby Suggs’ old room, then to the storeroom, and then finally to the cold house. Her “moving” of Paul D meant that he wasn’t physically near Sethe as much as he once was, fulfilling Beloved’s selfish intentions to have Sethe for herself. For Paul D, the fact that Beloved was “moving” him meant that he was being controlled once again, as shown in the passage, “he had come to be a rag doll—picked up and put back down anywhere any time by a girl young enough to be his daughter” (Morrison 148). Being controlled like this, much like he once was by the hands of the schoolteacher, was a source of shame and humiliation for Paul D, for “there was nothing he was able to do about it” (Morrison 148), making him feel like he was back at Sweet Home and a “slave” once again. In addition to moving him, Beloved also requests that Paul D, “touch [her] on the inside part” (Morrison 137) and to call her by her name. For Beloved, this is sexual action symbolizes Paul D’s betrayal of Sethe and shows that he does not truly love her, perhaps giving Beloved the idea that the relationship between the two will eventually end and she will have her mother to herself. Paul D, on the other hand, wants to believe that the requests mean absolutely nothing. However,

The community didn’t sing for her being taken off to jail, and they didn’t sing for the death of her child. The community simply hummed, and only once Sethe was out of earshot. The community looked upon Sethe with wide eyes, and so does the reader upon first look. It’s with a deeper understanding that one can begin to wrap their minds around what has happened. Sethe is no mere person, she is almost portrayed in that moment as a mythological creature, brought to her brink and returning vengeance. She is also a heroine, doing something unthinkable just in the hope to keep her children safe. One often does not associate heroine with someone that has just murdered their child, but in this case one must. Sethe knows of the dangers and horrors of slavery and knows she must keep her children from that. A reader from the outside, or a community member may not be able to understand her circumstances and her psychological struggles, but with further understanding one