Mental Trauma In Beloved

is a firm believer that too much love is bad for a person. In order to keep his brutal past behind him, he believes that one should only love a little. After Sweet Home, Paul D. attempts to kill his new owner and is forced into a chain-gang in which he is performs oral sex on white men. He realizes that even a rooster has more importance than him to white men. He has trouble committing to a woman who offers him shelter and eventually finds himself at 124, where he discovers Sethe’s overwhelming love and madness and Beloved’s presence. He keeps his memories and feelings in a rusted tobacco tin. When Beloved has sex with him, possibly in a vision or dream, the past comes rushing back to him. “He didn’t hear the whisper that the flakes of rust made either as they fell away from the seams of his tobacco tin. So when the lid gave he didn’t know it. What he knew was that when he reached the inside part he was saying, ‘Red heart. Red heart,’ over and over again” and then wakes himself up with his screaming (138). Beloved is both Sethe’s daughter and a symbol for the past generations of slaves. She opens Paul D. to love again, a cruelty in an already cruel world. Keeping love at bay has helped Paul D. and others like Ella feel safe from their pasts. At the end of the novel, when Beloved is gone, Paul D. goes back to 124 to help Sethe. Morrison shows the human capacity to love after so much has been taken or removed from the human

She is constantly reminded by the apparent ghost of her dead baby daughter which ironically she named Beloved. Beloved “also shows that past griefs hurt ranging from the atrocities of slavery to less hideous pains must be remembered but they should not control life” (House 10). The book uses the character Beloved to emphasize the past pains of slavery and allowing the past to never be forgotten. Sethe is constantly reminded of the agony she lived through the person Beloved. Ironically she is named after the child of Sethe, which gives readers the perception of being her daughter back from the dead. However through analysis she represents the symbolism of the troubling time slaves went through of pain, death and torture. Once Beloved came to 124 she brought the memories of Paul D and Sethe. Beloved to some may represent a ghost but overall she was a lover, daughter and sister who was looking for a supportive loving community. Even Beloved’s name mentions love, symbolizing the one feeling human freely can express to each other. Love also an obsession, especially it becomes a coping method for those ones stripped of their identity as a person. Though through hardships it is not what you are, or what you have experienced to hurt you, but what have you done with that

Towards the end of the first half of the novel, Paul D and Beloved are having a sexual relationship void of romantic feelings, despite the two having a strained relationship based on mutual-dislike. Overall, the two have a rather tension-filled relationship, with both vying for Sethe’s love and undivided attention. As seen by the statement, “But now—even the daylight time that Beloved had counted on…was being reduced, divides by Sethe’s willingness to pay attention to other things. Him mostly” (Morrison 118), Beloved is jealous of Paul D and resents the fact that Sethe pays him any mind. Likewise, Paul D resented Beloved and Denver, specifically due to the fact that Sethe seemed to give them more attention than him. Paul D was specifically

Sethe worries that the white man, whoever he is, is coming for “her best thing”, which is Beloved. Just like schoolteacher tried to take away her children from her 18 years before, she doesn’t want anyone to take away Beloved. She tried to keep Denver and Beloved sheltered in order to make up for her actions when the white man came last time, and she can’t imagine going through that again. Earlier, Sethe speaks to Paul D about how happy she felt when she was free, before schoolteacher came to their house and ruined their lives. She says, “[t]hat’s a selfish pleasure I never had before.

Both Sethe and Denver see Beloved reincarnated at the age she would have been in if she had not been killed earlier. I believe that they both were imagining that Beloved was their because of the trauma they had been through. Towards the end of the book, Sethe becomes depleted and even sacrifices her own need for eating, so Beloved can continue eating. Eventually, it seems like Sethe has given up on life. Doctor Melinda Smith believes that one symptom of PTSD is feeling emotionally numb. She states, “That victims often avoid activities, places, thoughts, or feelings that remind them of the trauma. Also, they lose interest in activities and life in general and feel detached from others.” (Help Guide) At the conclusion of the novel, Sethe is completely worn out because Beloved consumes her spirit slowly. Another symptom of PTSD is not being capable t let go of the past. Sethe has a hard time letting go of what happened. Sparknotes.com states,

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.

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.

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 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

To begin with, Paul D.’s difficult hardships and story made him into a broken down man but with a heart of gold. In Sethe’s view, “Not even trying, he had become the kind of man who could walk into a house and make the women cry. Because with him, in his presence, they could. There was something blessed in his manner” (11). This indicates that Paul D. wasn’t just an ordinary man, he possessed of a particular quality that most men didn’t, which is a big heart. This demonstrates Sethe’s comfortable state with Paul D. because it allows her to have a trustworthy individual of her own to fall back on. Another example of Paul D. is, “ By the time he got to 124 nothing in this world could pry it open” (66). Morrison’s point is this character’s heart is compared to a tobacco tin due to how little he loves and all the painful memories it consists of. This is important because he is a free slave, but without a home to stay in. Paul D has put his painful memories in the past in order to survive

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 begins to nurture her children, only for her children to have a growing fear that Sethe would kill them one day, enacting her children to distance themselves. Due to Sethe mother’s abandonment, Sethe in fact has never been a “daughter” and the love she displays, Paul D. describes as “too thick” (193) causes resentment from her children. As Sethe undergoes mental and physical abuse from Beloved, causing her strong personality to wither away and becoming fully dependent on Beloved, Sethe gives herself to Beloved, “[a]nything she wanted she got” (283). This is a story not to be passed on for Sethe, she allowed herself to be swallowed up by her own inability to move past her dreadful memories at Sweet Home. The past, “Beloved” began to slowly creep on her, draining away the strong woman she once was. Sethe always tried to nurture her child, the way her mother never nurtured her. However, in the end when she becomes dependent on Beloved, she becomes old and weak. Yet, her positive development occurs when Paul D tells her that she, herself is the most important thing and finally then Sethe moves on.

 When Sethe finally arrives at 124 Bluestone Road, she is greeted with her loving mother-in-law, Jenny Whitlow, known to her as Baby Suggs.  A second healing takes place when Baby Suggs tends to her mutilated body.  “She led Sethe to the keeping room and bathed her in sections, starting with her face…Sethe dozed and woke to the washing of her hands and arms…When Sethe’s legs were done, Baby looked at her feet and wiped them lightly.  She cleaned between Sethe’s legs…”(Morrison, 93).  The methodical washing of Sethe’s body emphasizes the sympathy and love that fills Baby Suggs’ heart.  Putting her trust in Baby Suggs for the relief of physical and emotional torment, is the only way Sethe is able to relieve herself of her haunted past and suffering body.  Baby Suggs knows as well as Sethe, the haunting miseries of black men and women who have been brought low by slavery, yet she urges her daughter-in-law to keep going and be strong.

When Sethe kills Beloved in fear of her getting captured into slavery twice by the schoolteacher, she is questioned morally but knows it is for the right reasons as a caring mother. The circumstances Sethe was faced with, made the act of commiting murder her only choice. Beloved’s effect on Sethe and Paul D is so significant because she brings upon reconciliation with their wrongdoings while they are traumatized by their past. Her presence with Sethe has caused their relationship to grow and their love for eachother becomes incredibly overwhelming. Beloved becomes captivated by Sethe’s stories and desperately listens to the various experiences of Sethe’s traumatic life as a slave.

“She must have nursed me two or three weeks---that’s the way the others did (pg 73).” Again here we see how milk to a child is important to Sethe because it is the only interaction that she had with her daughter Beloved and her nameless mother. Even though Sethe tries to understand and cope with the past, Beloved generates a metamorphosis in Sethe that allows her to speak what she had thought to be the unspeakable.