The Important Role of Water in Toni Morrison’s Beloved Essay

Water.  It expresses its’ power in the form of hurricanes and flash floods.  It displays its gentleness, washing dirt off a child's scabbed knee.  Water has been used to quench the thirst of many longing throats; and it has been the cause of death to those who unfavorably crossed its path.  It possesses the power of total destruction, yet it holds the bases of all life.  Generally, water has symbolized cleanliness and renewal.  In the Bible, water was used in Baptism, cleansing the soul of original sin and offering a new life in the light of God.  Water in itself is a natural purifier, washing the dirt from our bodies. Water is a symbol of

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

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

Water is one of the biggest and most significant symbols in Beloved. The characters’ lives all at one point somehow intertwine with some form of water.

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.

Water is something that is seen as solely necessary for human beings to stay hydrated, but the novels being mentioned in this paper describe water as being something more. Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall, Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat and Masters of the Dew by Jacques Roumain all depict water as being something that helps with liberation, recovery and new life.

At the climax of her book Beloved, Toni Morrison uses strong imagery to examine the mind of a woman who is thinking of killing her own children. She writes,

Water has a very strong connotation of life, without water no life can exist. The “tide of people” (20) brings life back to ground zero, as water fills up and brings life to

Trauma: an emotional shock causing lasting and substantial damage to a person’s psychological development. Linda Krumholz in the African American Review claims the book Beloved by Toni Morrison aids the nation in the recovery from our traumatic history that is blemished with unfortunate occurrences like slavery and intolerance. While this grand effect may be true, one thing that is absolute is the lesson this book preaches. Morrison’s basic message she wanted the reader to recognize is that life happens, people get hurt, but to let the negative experiences overshadow the possibility of future good ones is not a good way to live. Morrison warns the reader that sooner or later you will have to choose between letting go of the past or it

In her novel, Beloved, Toni Morrison tells the story of a family and their lives after surviving slavery. In the book, the person who was most impacted by being owned as a slave was Sethe. Sethe managed to escape physical ownership as a slave but for the rest of her life she continued to be “owned” by her past. The psychological damage Sethe experienced from being owned as a slave caused her to be stuck in her past and resulted in her ruining her four children’s lives.

Her Mother in law dies shortly after Sethe and Denver get back to the house. Beloved displays supernatural senses during Sethe’s life. There is a presence in her house that she can not seem to find. There is a presence of evil, which comes out to be Beloved, Sethe's daughter she killed at Sweet Homes.

Unnervingly, Morrison artfully portrays the mindset and anxieties of Sethe, the protagonist in Beloved, by discovering the deeply rooted tendencies in the character’s unconscious mind. Sethe, who grew up on a slave plantation and was physically, emotionally, and psychologically abused as a slave, finds her identity from the barriers that her past has placed on her. She carries instances in her heart that map the road of her emotional responses, and only at certain moments will she reveal

The actions taken by Sethe show a theme developed by Morrison in the novel. After Sethe escapes Sweet Home, she never attains the comfortable feeling that she will forever be free from slavery. Instead this idea of slavery comes back to haunt her on multiple occasions. This illustrates the thought that Sethe and her family will never be free from slavery. Schoolteacher’s arrival at Sethe’s home and Beloved’s reawakening help develop this theme through their connections with slavery. Schoolteacher ruled over Sethe with merciless power. After she escaped, he then went on to find her at her new home with a family. Because Schoolteacher seems to find Sethe wherever she goes, Sethe develops a condition where she believes that he constantly is coming to find her. At one point, Sethe begins chasing after a man with an ice pick. This man turns out to be Mr. Bodwin; however, Sethe remains oblivious, believing that Mr. Bodwin resembles schoolteacher or “the man without skin” (309). This shows Sethe’s insanity and obsession with schoolteacher. He clearly holds a strong grip over Sethe’s mind. Beloved, alike Schoolteacher, also pays a second unexpected visit, draining all of Sethe’s pride and life out of her. Sethe’s guilt for the murder of Beloved makes her an easy target for the new Beloved. With

Beloved as a character defies classification. She is both the light and the dark, an all-encompassing duality that forces Sethe to recognize pain from her past, as well as deal with new pain in the present. Beloved’s shocking reappearance forces Sethe and others to confront old, painful memories whilst concurrently reconciling who or what Beloved is. For many, the character of Beloved embodies multiple generations of slavery and symbolizes the horrors of the past – seemingly back from the dead she haunts Sethe, Denver, and anyone else that is unfortunate enough to encounter the family.

 In the novel Beloved, the author, Toni Morrison, attempts to promote a variety of different themes and ideas by symbolizing them in minor events and situations.  This symbolism is evident throughout the entire novel and is very crucial to the understanding and analyzing of the text.  A good example of this is the ice skating scene.  Morrison uses this scene to represent the slow, but consistent, deterioration of the family living in 124 and to foreshadow the ultimate demise of the family unit.  Morrison writes repeatedly, “Nobody saw them falling,” yet in all reality they were falling, and falling fast (Morrison 174).  There are a number of details, including the setting, Sethe’s emotions, the choice of