Memory in Beloved Essay

In the book “The Memory Keeper's Daughter” by Kim Edwards a doctor and his wife have twins and the first child is a healthy boy but then the second child that comes out is a little girl with the signs of down syndrome and he asks his Nurse to take the baby away to an institution while he tells his wife the baby girl died. Through out the entire book it is a struggle for Dr. Henry's wife Norah to have closure with the fact that her baby girl is said to be dead and she never saw her, held her, or cared for her. Kim Edwards shows through the whole book that we are only human, the themes that life is beyond our control and through the connection between suffering and joy.

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.

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”

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

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.

Beloved is consumed by her cruel acts, and simply drains more and more of Sethe’s health. In the beginning of the novel, Beloved appears to be a pretty, young, and lost girl that wanders into Sethe’s house. However, as time passes, she began to display signs that she is Sethe’s past daughter, the daughter that was killed. As Beloved is induced more and more into the family, she begins to feel

In this chapter, we learn that Sethe was already pregnant with Denver when she ran away from Sweet Home. By the time when Sethe collapsed her feet in the woods, a white girl Amy Denver had found Sethe. Due to Sethe’s fear about Sweet Home, she told Amy Denver a false name- “Lu”, because if she were caught, she would be returned to Sweet Home, and she would continue experiencing her previous painful daily life again. Amy Denver helps Sethe by massaged her feet and release her pain. Later, Sethe gave birth to her baby successfully with Amy’s help and Sethe also naming the child after Amy Denver.

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.

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

A comparison of the ways that the dead affect the living in the novels Beloved by Toni Morrison and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.

Beloved, like many of the other books we have read, has to deal with the theme of isolation. There was the separation of Sethe and Denver from the rest of the world. There was also, the loneliness of each main character throughout the book. There were also other areas of the book where the idea of detachment from something was obvious. People’s opinions about the house made them stay away and there was also the inner detachment of Sethe from herself. The theme that Toni Morrison had in mind when the book was written was isolation.

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

“Beloved, she my daughter. She mine” (236). If only Sethe had realized that Beloved was a replacement for her baby earlier in the novel – Beloved

Beloved’s blood mixing with milk represents the contamination of Sethe’s motherhood. The milk acts as the representation of motherly connection and support, the blood portrays the destruction of family, the spilling of kin’s blood. The blood mixed with the milk signifies the sacrifices that need to be made to survive in a world of slavery, the death that Sethe believed was necessary to protect her children. Milk is a symbol made to be acted upon, to be corrupted, stolen, saved; it shows the perils and importance of Sethe’s motherhood. When analyzing the importance of milk to the theme of motherhood, Mock reiterates the importance of breastfeeding and asserts that the act of breastfeeding to Morrison is more than just nurturing, but the creation of a bond, “Within the theme of the maternal sphere, Morrison stresses breast-feeding as essential to the natural unity of the mother-child bond; she exemplifies more fully the mutilation of this sphere by depicting the enslavement of mother and child within as they are separately and individually buffeted by the forces of slavery, belonging not to each other, but to their captors” (Mock). The system of slavery enacts its atrocities upon Sethe’s capacity to be a mother by taking away her sense of maternal ownership. Slavery made it so that her daughter was not her own, that