Toni Morrison's Beloved

The past comes back to haunt accurately in Beloved. Written by Toni Morrison, a prominent African-American author and Noble Prize winner for literature, the novel Beloved focuses on Sethe, a former slave who killed her daughter, Beloved, before the story begins. Beloved returns symbolically in the psychological issues of each character and literally in human form. The novel is inspired by the true story of Margaret Garner, a slave in the 1850s, who committed infanticide by killing her child. Barbara Schapiro, the author of “The Bonds of Love and the Boundaries of Self in Toni Morrison’s Beloved”, Andrew Levy, the author of “Telling Beloved”, and Karla F.C. Holloway, the author of “Beloved: A Spiritual”, present ideas of the loss of psychological freedom, the story being “unspeakable”, Beloved being the past, and the narrative structures of the story rewriting history.

After reading Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, I could not help but feel shocked and taken aback by the detailed picture of life she painted for slaves at the time in American history. The grotesque and twisted nature of life during the era of slavery in America is an opposite world from the politically correct world of 2016. Morrison did not hold back about the harsh realities of slavery. Based on a true story, Toni Morrison wrote Beloved about the life of Sethe, a slave and her family. Toni Morrison left no stone unturned when describing the impact slavery on had the life of slaves. She dove deeper than the surface level of simply elaborating on how terrible it is to be “owned” and forced to do manual labor. Morrison describes in detail, the horrors and profoundly negative impacts slavery had on family bonds, humanity of all people involved and the slaves sense of self even after they acquired their freedom.

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”

The story “Beloved” is developed around the decision Sethe makes when she returns to slavery and decides to murder her baby with a hacksaw. Her choice of doing such action results in the reincarnation of Beloved later on in the story with unknown intentions. When Sethe kills her child, she feels no remorse towards what she has done, due to her lack of knowledge regarding the terrible act she has committed. Sethe’s choice of killing her baby was wrong as it left her mentally suffering, was inhumane, as well led to a series of unfortunate conflicts that the characters face.

Beloved has been amongst the living and the dead. According to her, the purpose of life is to become dead. Halle, the man on her face, has accomplished this through disappearing. Nobody knows anything about him, so he is as good as dead. Contrarily, Beloved has always been on Sethe’s mind. Killing her own daughter is memory that she can not forget. Beloved is brought back to life because she can not be forgotten. “What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head” (page 36). It is impossible to forget the memory of Beloved because she was murdered in the shed right outside 124Bluestone Road. The memory stays right in the place where it happened. Halle’s death is back in Sweet Home since he never made it to 124Bluestone Road. Sethe has never gone back to there, so she can not pass by the place to bring back her rememory and so he stays dead. “her [Sethe’s] face is my own and I want to be there in the place where her face is and to be looking at it too” (page 210). Earlier in the chapter Beloved wants to be with her mother. She misses Sethe because, even after all Sethe has put her through, she is still her mother. She wants to look up to that familiar face that can be recognizable as her own. As Beloved thinks more about Sethe, her tone changes, “the woman is there with the face I want the face that is mine” (page 211). Beloved no longer wants to look up to Sethe, but to control her. This is what ends up

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

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

In the book, Beloved, the author, Toni Morrison, writes about the memories of the past effecting the present. The masters of the slaves thought for the slaves and told them who to be. The slaves were treated like animals which resulted in an animal-like actions. Furthermore, the shaping of the slaves,by the masters, caused a psychological war within themselves during their transition into freedom. The beginning sections display how savage and lost a person can become due to the loss of their identity early on in their lives as slaves.

In Beloved, Morrison discusses the power that the past can hold over a person. Sethe murdered her daughter and was stopped before she had the chance to murder her other children. However, the murders did not occur out of malicious intent. After escaping her owner, Sethe is terrified that someone will catch her and her children and force them into slavery. She feels that the worst thing in the world is

If ignorance is bliss, then why is it human nature to uncover the truth? In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, the character Denver uses knowledge to feed her craving in hopes that it will fill the void her mother unsuccessfully tried to satisfy with the blood of the past and too little milk. To understand these truths one must accept that Beloved is a physical representation of the past, Sethe embodies the present, and Denver exemplifies the future. Throughout the novel these three characters interact on a superficial level, but each action has a deeper underlying influence on the other. This is why Denver’s assumed motive of using the attachment she forged with Beloved to develop a closer relationship with Sethe is cursory. When in fact it was for

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.

With Beloved’s arrival and back into Seth’s life, Sethe also feels the need of going back into the memory of Baby Suggs, her mother in law. Baby Suggs held religious gatherings at a place called the clearing, where she taught her followers to love their voices, bodies and minds. However, after Sethe’s act of infanticide, Baby Suggs stops preaching and retreats to a sick bed to die. Accompanied by Denver and Beloved, Sethe feels the need to go to the clearing where Baby Suggs used to preach. “Baby Suggs’ long distance love was equal to any skin- close love she had known. The desire, let alone the gesture, to meet her needs was good enough to lift her spirits to the place where she could take the next step (pg 112).” In this section the memory of Baby Suggs also comes onto the surface, making Sethe want to remember her death by the presence of Beloved.