Sethe Short Story

    Not long after the ice-skating scene we see how Sethe begins to fall. Sethe's first major stumble deals with the loss of her job.  For many years Sethe was an extremely hard worker at a restaurant in town and never missed a day of work in her life. However, after Beloved started becoming more dependent upon Sethe, demanding more and more from her mother, Sethe found it nearly impossible to maintain a job.  Sethe played games all day long with Beloved and "she took to going to work later and later each day until the predictable happened: Sawyer, her boss, told her not to come back" (240).  With the termination from Sethe's job resulted in a feeling of apathy. Sethe wished to put all of her time and energy into Beloved's happiness because of the terrible guilt she had inside.  Sethe felt extremely ashamed for killing her daughter. Therefore, Sethe would do anything for Beloved. Anything Beloved was craving, Sethe made sure her daughter received. Beloved took advantage of her mother's behavior and drained her of everything.  Hours

He was brave enough to kill an evil demon that had been terrorizing Fablehaven for many years. He saved Fablehaven from destruction. “‘The demon Graulas.’ ‘Yeah, I killed him,’ Seth said” (57). Seth always offers himself to the danger instead of his loved ones. “‘No, I’ll do it,’ Seth said. ‘I didn’t see andy dragons in there. When Kendra let go of me I didn’t freeze up. I’ll make a run for the bottles alone”’ (265). Another time, Kendra was scared about not making it home, so she offered to leave. Seth was brave and explained to her that leaving would result in more danger and problems, and that it would be a failure to everyone if they didn’t get what they came for. “‘I guess we could just leave,’ Kendra said. ‘Can we really?’ Seth asked. ‘Can we leave behind the scepter? Leave behind Calvin? Just go back to Blackwell Keep with nothing? What if Celebran knows we’re here? What if her figures out what we’re after? What if he sends somebody to get the scepter tomorrow? Or tonight? What if someone is on their way right now? I wonder if anyone has lost a preserve just two days after becoming caretaker”’

Her mind is clouded with emotions and “rememories.”  But in the ice skating scene this appears to change as Morrison writes, “Anybody feeling sorry for [Sethe], anybody wandering by to peep in and see how she was getting on would discover that the woman... was sailing happily on a frozen lake” (Morrison 174).  Sethe appeared to be happy once again.  At one point, Sethe takes on the qualities of some kind of wild animal, having four legs.  After falling on the ice “Sethe rose to her hands and knees, laughter still shaking her chest, making her eyes wet.  She stayed that way for a while, on all fours” (Morrison 175).  Paul D also refers to her as being an animal and having four legs later in the novel.  It is also interesting that Morrison writes, “Sethe couldn’t skate a lick...” (Morrison 174)  Sethe did not know how to skate, just like she did not know how to be a parent.  This inability later leads to the downfall of the family.

Sethe’s consciousness is always working, always a part of her decisions affect her children, the best things in her life. She is indeed, ambivalent too what would destroy her mothering. As strong as Sethe is, she cannot stop her children from leaving; and her strength is what scares some of them.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Her healing actions toward Sethe, not only gives Sethe the physical strength to go on, but the restoration of self-worth and dignity.

 Sethe learned the value of motherhood from an early age.  Not wanting the children of the white men that raped her, Sethe?s mother, Ma?am (as she is called in the book), threw all the unwanted children away.  But, Sethe?s father was a black man whom Ma?am loved, and so she kept Sethe.  Recalling the story, Sethe thinks back on what Nan (the woman who knew Sethe?s mother and raised Sethe, herself) said, ?She threw them all away but you.  The one from the crew she threw away on the island.  The others from more whites she also threw away.  Without names, she threw them.  You she gave the name of the black man? (Morrison, 62).  Thus having an identity because of her mother, ?Sethe learns Ma?am?s history and grounds her personality in motherly-love? (Kubitcheck 123).  Kubitcheck also says, ?mother-love offers the strongest defense against slavery.  When Nan tells Sethe that her Ma?am chose to conceive and bear her, Sethe acquires the base on which to build feelings of self-worth? (135).  She could also identify with her mother by the mark branded below Ma?am?s

“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.

Ambassador Pryce strode purposefully across the open walkways which meandered between each building of the Capital. His destination was the Senate Chamber, where the Senate met with ambassadors like him, petitioning them on matters of interstellar policy and law. The structure’s dome rose in majestic solitude above any nearby buildings and monuments. The tranquil beauty of the vast parkland ecosystem surrounding Pryce did little to calm his nerves, various scenarios of how the next few sensitive hours could play out repeating in his mind.