House 124 Is Haunted by a Baby in the Novel, Beloved by Toni Morrison

This topic is the most highlighted one throughout the story. All of the children were deprived from everything they had; the world they lived in, the people they knew, and the memories of all of those things. To clarify, the main character Thomas states that “his memory loss was baffling in its complexity” (Dashner 44). Each boy in the Glade was full of knowledge, but no origin of it. Conversely, society today has not experienced much loss in self identity, but the idea of it is one of the most chilling concepts to ponder. By means of social commentary, Dashner demonstrates this exact concept of one’s loss of self

Stamp Paid, a former slave who ferries Sethe and Denver across the Ohio River, tried to take Beloved’s corpse from the mother’s clinging hands and give Denver to her. A mother killing her own child is an act that subverts the natural order of the world. A mother is expected to create life, not destroy it, but with Sethe’s case, she was insane and out of control at that specific moment when she imagined that her child might face the same assault in future. Thus, she prefers to put an end to this situation. On the other hand, we notice that she was very anxious about the feeling of Beloved, her murdered child. She stated, “Do you forgive me? Will you stay? You safe here now”

Different events, positive and negative, changed his thoughts and helped him become more mature, and a responsible person. Watching his home going to the work made him realize he should do something in his life. Once he started working, he learned to be respectful and reliable even if it took a while for him to change. Once he became more familiar with Penny, she starts to trust him. She starts to give more responsibility. With that in mind, the accident that Penny had changed everything. It ended the relationship between him and Kentucky. However, he moved on without much difficulty. At the end, he was still thinking about his father's words and what he said about the white boys. He never forgot him. Perhaps, the father also had a positive effect on

Sethe’s relationship is in a balance at the beginning. She has the two poles of attraction, Paul’s desire to settle down and start a family, and Beloved’s desire to draw Sethe back into the past. Throughout the novel, acts of cruelty wind into her life and alter the outcome of her days. Cruelty in Beloved affects both the perpetrator and victim in that the perpetrator becomes consumed by such acts, and the victim simply devolves to be more and more vulnerable to such acts. In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Beloved’s acts of cruelty reveal how one’s inner desires can overcome the perpetrator, and dehumanize victim in the long term.

Imagine a man held against his will. Ethan Frome thinks of himself as a “prisoner” (Wharton 74). He is detained from a life he has always imagined because of the accident with Mattie Silver. “The inexorable facts closed in on him like a prison-warder handcuffing a convict” (Wharton 74). Ethan Frome has realized he has to face the consequences of being infatuated with Mattie Silver forever. He becomes entwined with two “sickly “controlling women, a “warped right side” and life full of regrets. Edith Wharton shows Ethan “checking each step like the jerk of a chain” (Wharton 1). Every step Ethan takes into getting into the right path, trouble gets in his way. Starkfield being “being in an exhausted receiver” (Wharton 13) makes him feels he will be stuck in the darkness for eternity. For

Morrison uses the voices of two people, lost from each other in remembrance, and brings them together by juxtaposing memory against memory until finally their recollections converge in the same episode. After a sexual encounter, Sethe and Paul D reflect on their shared experiences in slavery at the Sweet Home plantation. It is against this backdrop that both characters struggle to tackle their feelings of inadequacy. Although Sethe and Paul D share their memories, there is only so much that they are willing to divulge since "[s]aying more might push them both to a place they couldn't get back from" (Morrison 72). While Paul's coping mechanism is to place all of his painful memories in the tobacco tin buried in his chest, Sethe's coping mechanism is prevention. The characterizations of Sethe, Paul D, and Sethe's daughter Denver continue through the use of flashbacks. By juxtaposing memory with scenes from the present, Morrison offers a better understanding of Denver and her reaction to Paul D. Lonely and troubled, she finds solace inside her own small world and connection to the memories her mother has shared with her regarding her birth. Denver feeds her hunger through these memories as well as through perfume and the boxwood arbor. It is in this first trimester that Morrison begins to connect imagery with the retrieval of past events. For all, the baby ghost acts as a catalyst for remembering the past.

In my opinion, I think Baby Sugg means that they are lucky that the ghost is a baby which would not be able to hurt the family in a huge and horrible way. Likewise, if the ghost is not a baby but an adult, then the ghost might easily kill them when it got mad. Thus, Baby Sugg thinks that there is no point of moving to another house because they baby has none of harmful impacts on them.

As Sethe's demise and Beloved's mischief become overwhelming, Denver assumes the responsibility to assure the survival of her family. Due to Beloved's presence, Sethe loses her job and soon all of her savings is spent. There is no food, however, Beloved's demands do not cease. Sethe begins to wither away from frustration and a wounded conscience and Denver becomes "listless and sleepy with hunger" (242). Denver realizes that, "she would have to leave the yard; stop off the edge of the world, leave the two behind and go ask somebody for help" (243). Denver must face her terror of a mundane society to keep her sister and mother from starvation.

It is shown that after the act of taking the life of Beloved and attempting the life taking of Denver, Howard, and Buglar, that Sethe truly does love her children. The way Sethe tried to go about saving her children seems unethical and horrible, but there did not seem to be all too many options for Sethe to save her children from the slave life. Howard and Buglar left Sethe and Denver to get away from Sethe, they had even warned Denver about what she had attempted to do to them. Although Howard and Buglar ran from Sethe and there was the attempted murder in the barn, Sethe still thinks of them because they are her children. Denver was tossed as an infant that day in the barn, and she clearly survives. Even after all the events and situations created from the presence of Beloved there is still a strong bond of love between Sethe and Denver. Sethe loves Denver very much, she is her one surviving child that is still with her.

Denver has to recognize her dependence on others and start to rely on herself so that she can become her own person and reach her full potential. Before Beloved, Denver had only left the house a few times and needed someone’s help to do something. As Beloved and Sethe grow closer, Denver has the chance she needs to realize the dangers of reliance on Sethe and Beloved. In order to survive, Denver is forced to fend for herself and become independent for the first time.

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

Beloved is seen as the resemblance of Sethe’s dead baby. Beloved is portrayed as a teenage girl, however she is different from other black teenager, “…and younger than her clothes suggested – good lace at the throat, and a rich woman’s hat. Her skin was flawless except for three vertical scratches on her forehead so fine and thin they seemed at first like hair, baby hair before it bloomed and roped into the masses of black yarn under her hat.” (Morrison 62). Beloved unexpectedly came to 124, the house where Sethe, Denver, and Paul D lived. However, Sethe became attracted to her, “Sethe was deeply touched by her sweet name; the remembrance of glittering headstone made her feel especially kindly toward her. Denver, however, was shaking. She looked at this sleepy beauty and wanted more.” (Morrison 63) represent Sethe’s fascination towards Beloved, because she made Sethe recall her dead baby, which also has the word Beloved engraved in the gravestone. The name Beloved itself makes Sethe sentimental from

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

Another example of how Sethe could have felt apart from herself as well as segregated from the rest of the world, could be of how other people thought of her and her family and what they did to show it. People are cruel, some just show it more than others. I felt bad for Denver and how she was teased at school. They would tease her and accuse her mother of being a witch, which we know is not true But what it shows is how Denver becomes isolated from the world during the years where friends are needed. I’m sure that at one point or another Denver told Sethe about what was happening at school, which pushed her more and more away from society. Something else that I noticed is that the public never had much interaction with the characters. Possibly this was the authors way of proving the theme of isolation or it is just how I see it.

The primary locations in this novel is in Sweet Home, a small farm containing slaves in Kentucky, and 124 Bluestone Road on the edge of Cincinnati, Ohio. Although the novel starts out in the home of Sethe and her daughter, Denver, Sweet Home is where Sethe’s experiences to the past begins. In Sweet Home, the slave system was taken over by Mr. and Mrs. Garner, a kind couple who treated their slaves like human beings. 124 becomes personified through the paranormal activities in the house, and through the chapter names; 124 was spiteful, 124 was loud, and 124 was quiet. Mr. Bodwin, the owner of 124, tells how the house has a history of paranoia, "Women died there: his mother, grandmother, an aunt and an older sister before he was born" (259).