Beloved Research Paper

In Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved is a character whose identity is primarily unknown. She retains some of her memories, although they are mostly obscure and symbolic. Even though she become increasingly obsessed with Sethe, her true objectives are only later revealed, when Sethe realizes that she is most likely the reincarnation of the daughter she killed to protect from slavery. Beloved uses Sethe’s guilt to subjugate her, she forces her mother to give, and then forfeit, everything she has to her, including her own sanity. “Beloved didn’t move; said, ‘Do it,’ and Sethe complied. She took the best of everything – first” (Morrison 277). Beloved starts wearing her mother’s clothes and mimicking her behaviors; Beloved becomes the mother, and Sethe the child. “The bigger Beloved got,

Within that time period the issue of dehumanization seemed common for people of color, making the topic of human rights limited. Morrison introduces Sethe as a mother who has to undergone psychologically torturous experiences of sexual assault and rape from her treatment as a piece of property. Even when injured Sethe was viewed as discounted being compared to injured livestock. “When she hurt her hip in Carolina she was a real bargain…” (Morrison 79). Sethe represents the unique writing style of Morrison, being seen as a direct victim of dehumanization. Throughout the novel however Sethe tries her best to try to humanize herself and the people around her ultimately becoming a consistent internal conflict. She tries to do so through her role of being a mom and establishing a family. Sethe understands the horrors of having a family in slavery from her own experience hurt severely by her mother's inability to care for her because of the slave environment in which they lived. Yet unlike her mother she vows to raise her children right determined that they own children will not endure the treatment she has received at the hands of white slaveholders. She overall understand that the love she has for her children is above all else willing to sacrifice it all rather than seeing them grow up in

After reading Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, I could not help but feel shocked and taken aback by the detailed picture of life she painted for slaves at the time in American history. The grotesque and twisted nature of life during the era of slavery in America is an opposite world from the politically correct world of 2016. Morrison did not hold back about the harsh realities of slavery. Based on a true story, Toni Morrison wrote Beloved about the life of Sethe, a slave and her family. Toni Morrison left no stone unturned when describing the impact slavery on had the life of slaves. She dove deeper than the surface level of simply elaborating on how terrible it is to be “owned” and forced to do manual labor. Morrison describes in detail, the horrors and profoundly negative impacts slavery had on family bonds, humanity of all people involved and the slaves sense of self even after they acquired their freedom.

Sethe divulged to Paul D the catastrophic events that caused her to run away from Sweet Home, and then she surrendered her sons and daughter to a woman in a wagon because she was worried about the family’s future under the Schoolteacher’s reign. Her description of the assault was straight forward. She told Paul D and very succinctly the roughness and cruelty of those white people especially the two white boys who beat her while she was pregnant with Denver injuring her so badly that her back skin had been dead for years. She refers to the situation as

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.

Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved, allows for one to experience slavery through three generations of women. The complex development of the horrors of black chattel slavery in the United States intertwined with a story a freedom helps the reader to understand the ongoing struggle of the Afro-American population after emancipation. Denver, although never a slave, is at first held in bondage by her mother's secrecy about her past and only sets herself free when her mother is forced to cope with her memories.

Sethe understands that her history, filled with the pain of slavery, grief over losing her children, and guilt over Beloved's death, and tries to hide from all the anguish. However, she admits that the past seems to "always be there waiting," thereby emphasizing the idea that past horrors of life continue to haunt forever. It appears as though the power of her experience in slavery influences her so greatly that the memory triggers great pain, causing the horrifying incidents to "happen again." Even though Sethe understands that she cannot ever fully escape her history as it will come back to trouble her, she still tries to avoid them and thus attempts to shield her daughter from the horrors of history: "As for Denver, the job Sethe had of keeping her from the past that was still waiting for her was all that mattered" (45). It seems as though Sethe tries to deny the fact that history does not simply disappear. She still tries to protect Denver "from the past" even though history "waits," prepared to cause trouble and inflict the pain Sethe tries to repress. It appears as though Sethe continuously tries to fight against her memories and ignore her past in part one. For example, after she wakes, she begins "Working dough. Working, working dough. Nothing better than that to start the day's

Toni Morrison brings another surprise to the story of Beloved. The addition of character Beloved conceals whole meaning Morrison tries to conduct to the readers. So far, character Beloved is portrayed as an innocent, pure, yet egotistic girl. Beloved also presumably the incarnation of Sethe’s dead baby, whose tomb is engraved Beloved. Morrison offers supernatural element in the story to create mysterious and spooky atmosphere, which raise curiosity and excite readers even more.

Krumholz argues that Beloved is a mind healing recovery process that forces the characters to remember and tackle their past. In her essay, “Toni Morrison”, Jill Matus regards Beloved as a form of cultural memory that analyzes vague and possibly removed history. Furthermore, in his book, Fiction and Folklore: the Novels of Toni Morrison, Trudier Harris focuses on the issue of ownership and slavery in Beloved. In all, historical background is a huge player in understanding Beloved. Morrison set the novel during the Reconstruction era, after the Civil War, which sets the entire tone and plot for the main character, Sethe.

A few slave stories were more compelling than Margaret Garner's. She and her family were owned by a Kentucky plantation farmer, but then one night they decided to escape to Ohio with other slaves. Although the story of Margaret Garner showed similarity within the novel Beloved there was also some differences. A runaway slave deciding whether or not she’d kill the ones she loved before letting them experience the suppressed memories she tried so hard to hide. There was some resemblance with the murdering of the youngest child in both stories which helped framed Toni Morrison’s intentions of Margaret Garner’s story. This story of Margaret Garner was one that sparked deeper interest and compassion.

Central to the thinking of Martin Luthern King Jr. was the concept of the “beloved community”. He had a vision of an integrated society with loving citizens and justice. In his mind, a community would also be the ideal corporate expression of Christian Faith. King thought that desegregation was the key negative root in communities. King believed a beloved community would need to have integration by having the community become a group as a whole.

Throughout the course of the novel we see that Sethe is fueled by her love for her children and her deep desire to avoid facing her past at all costs. In a sense, she spends a majority of her time trying to avoid the reality of her life as a black woman in a post-slavery America. Sethe believes that love is essential, and that if she loves her children with a "thick love", it will be enough to protect them. It isn't until Paul D and Beloved arrive that she is forced to face her past, and with it the truth. By the end of the novel she sees that she has failed to accomplish her goal of protecting her children by allowing Beloved to die and her boys to flee. Facing the past, though impossibly hard for her to do, forced Sethe to realize that she

In Sethe’s life she had always been a slave, moving from place to place as well as being treated brutally by her oppressors. When she had her daughter, Beloved, she realized that this would be her life, as horrific as her’s. So Sethe did what she thought would be the best course of action and killed her. By killing Beloved, it relieved her from being a slave and treated harshly.

Beloved’s monologue opens to an extract in which the voices of all three woman come together and mingle, repeating “you are mine.” In this passage Beloved tells Sethe that she “came back because of [Sethe],” whilst Sethe assures Beloved that the “men without skin... can’t hurt us no more”, and Denver “promises to protect” Beloved as her “sister”. This is a representation of both Sethe and Denver facing a fictional reconstruction of the past, and attempting to reconcile with it. As an emblem of the future, Denver is promising to nurture and protect the memories that Beloved

Sethe didn’t make the right choice and instead had to live with the fact she killed her own child. In Sethe’s view, “Beloved, she my daughter. She mine.... She had to be safe and I put her where she would be. But my love was tough and she back now. I knew she would be.... I won’t never let her go.” This means that Sethe wanted what she thought was best for Beloved and for her to be safe but she also knew that killing her was wrong and she wanted her back. This demonstrates how Sethe knew she had lost her child and now that she had her back she doesn't want to let her go again. Another example