In Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, the character that is focused on the most throughout the whole text is Sethe. Sethe is a strong, independent women and mother. Her strong motherly instincts are perhaps the most distinct characteristic of her, even leading her to great extremes.

Part I of Beloved ends with Sethe saying, “It ain’t my job to know what’s worse. It’s my job to know what is and to keep them away from what I know is terrible. I did that” (194). At this point in the novel, the reader is beginning to get hints at the big secret of the novel, until it is finally revealed.

Sethe truly believes that when “the four horsemen” came to 124, she did the right thing for her children. She believes that killing her baby and trying to kill the rest of her children would have been better for them than a life of slavery. Her quote on page 194 reveals that she truly believed that this was right.

The brutality, cruelty, and horrors of slavery pushed a mother, who loved her children more than anything, to do the unspeakable. Sethe believed that dying would be better for her beloved children more than slavery. This scary and astonishing truth, reveals the true and absolute horror of slavery and what knowing the truth about being a slave can push someone to do.

In Chapter 10 of Beloved, the narrator explains, “It was some time before [Paul D] could put Alfred, Georgia, Sixo, schoolteacher, Halle, his brothers, Sethe, Mister, the taste of iron, the sight of butter, the smell of hickory, notebook paper, one by one, into the tobacco tin lodged in his chest. By the time he got to 124 nothing in this world could pry it open” (Morrison).

Paul D grew up as a slave at Sweet Home. Although he is no longer a slave, he is burdened with the terrible memories of his past. Instead of dealing with these memories and emotions, he instead chooses to repress them and lock them deep inside of him.

In 2019, although we have not suffered through slavery, many of us have gone through traumatic experiences in our lives. Different people have different ways of coping with these experiences, but a common method is to avoid dealing with them all together. It can be easier to pretend that they don’t exist than to face the issue head on and the pain that inevitably comes with. Each of us would be lying if we said we had never once repressed a painful memory and locked it into our own personal tobacco tins. But as it is demonstrated in Beloved, there really is no escaping our pasts.

In the book Beloved a central theme of community is brought upon the reader when reading the book. Sethe finds a sense of self through her black community when escaping slavery. Baby Suggs comes into the equation by being such a vital part of this community, making her a main character in the book. As African Americans, Sethe and Baby Suggs feel isolated from many different communities in their lives. Creating this community allowed both of them to feel like they had a place somewhere and could not feel so isolated anymore. Even when Sethe is facing charges, her community helps her through the situation, provides her with a sense of relief. This makes me think about how the different communities in our lives can make us feel a sense of relief. Whether that be a community of playing a sport or attending some type of religious meeting, people can create communities that can help change peoples lives and perspectives. With community also comes power, which is seen when the community is rescuing Sethe. As a community builds, it gains power in some way, whether that is within that community or that power is brought outside of it, something is to be said about the things a community can create.

Beloved is a very intriguing book, as Toni Morrison shows her incredible writing technique. One of Morrison’s many impressive writing skills is her ability to weave many different narratives together. Beloved’s story is particularly well crafted and hints to the message of the entire novel.

In her own chapter in part two of the novel, Beloved begins to recount events that seem totally random to the reader, given the rest of the story. She says, “I am Beloved…there will never be a time when I am not crouching and watching the others that are crouching too…the man on my face is dead…we are all trying to leave our bodies behind,” (248).

It becomes clear to the reader that the experiences that Beloved is describing her experiences with slavery on the middle passage, which at first was confusing to me because those events seemed to occur at the beginning of slavery, whereas the story told in the novel occurs at its’ tail end. When Beloved started to describe the relief of death from these circumstances, it reminded me of Sethe’s own reasoning for killing her children. She believed that death was less painful than living in captivity. Clearly, Beloved shares the same mentality as she is on the middle passage when she is longing to die as the other slaves on the middle passage had. The fact that Beloved is Sethe’s dead daughter that Sethe killed for the same reason, makes Beloved representative of the greater trauma that black people as a whole have experienced in America at the hand of slavery. These people would rather die than suffer in captivity, explaining Sethe’s actions in the novel.

I remember there being a massive gas meter or electrical box near my house growing up. It was a colossal eyesore, so the company that owned it painted it blue. A nice shade of blue. This is what some of the characters from Toni Morrison’s Beloved do to their pasts. Paint a pretty color on it.

the earliest example of this starts out in the first chapter of the book. Sethe’s mother in law Baby Suggs spends the final 8 years of her life an invalid staring out the window and looking at the pretty colors that the clouds make. We later discover the person she was before this. She was a strong pillar of the community, even so that everyone envied her. A sacred holy preacher, turned into a shell of her former self following the murder of her granddaughter by Sethe. Unable to understand the horror show that was before her, she gave up. Sat on her bed and looked at the pretty colors.

After Sethe killed her 2 year old daughter to keep her from re-entering slavery, she gave her a tombstone. On it bore the word Beloved, not being able to afford the word dearly, painted pink. A light pastel pink, painted the past away. This white washing of the past ties into the main theme of the story. In the book Beloved comes back reincarnated as what she would be if she survived that day. After integrating herself in Sethe’s family she begins to Isolate Sethe and bleed her dry. Here the books theme of one’s inability to come to terms with the past and let it go is tied with color. In Sethe’s lowest point, practically banishing everyone in her life baring Beloved, she spends what little money she has on candy and pretty yellow ribbons. this is the ultimate expression of the previous two points.

The past of the characters is an eye sore. one that instead of coming to terms with it, they paint it a pretty color.

In the novel Beloved, Sethe and Paul D recount their journey through slavery and the reprocussions of freedom. Although author Toni Morrison didn’t have first hand experience, her descriptions and experiences in slavery accurately portray a variety of true stories. In particular, Morrison’s stories of Paul D and Sethe reflect a lot of the key themes and experiences in Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.

To start, both Sethe and Paul D don’t have many familial connections and rely on the other slaves at their plantation for a sense of comradery. Frederick Douglass was also separated from his family at a young age and found it hard to build relationships due to him fearing their separation. As seen in Beloved, Sethe has a similar anxiety around trusting that Paul D will stay with her. After Sethe had lost her mother, Halle, and multiple kids out her life, she struggled with relying on people.

Another of many similarities between the two narrations is the restrictiveness of humanity under slavery. Paul D’s bit in his mouth reflected a lot of the physical barriers causing Frederick Douglass to feel inhumane. Frederick Douglass recounts the songs the slaves would sing as they were allowed to run errands off of the plantation. The songs retained their freedom of speech again as they could express their cries of sadness, hope, and any other suppressed emotions. The bit in Paul D’s mouth is restricting his freedom of expression and compromising his humanity like the slaves in Frederick Douglass’ autobiography. 

Beloved is so much more than just the spirit of Sethe’s dead child. She represents the spirits of all the slaves who died on their forced voyage to America. Beloved possesses memories that are unique to the trauma that slaves went through during their time on the Middle Passage. Beloved shares this memory with Sethe’s mother and therefore raises questions about Beloved also representing Sethe’s mom.

Because of Beloved’s unique supernatural characteristic and portrayal of so many forgotten slaves, she is individually underdeveloped in the story. Sethe’s actions and experiences shape Beloved and she proves to a beneficial part of Sethe’s life, until she isn’t. She assists Sethe by asking her to reveal stories of her past but later turns too needy. Her role as more of a force than a person helps this idea become clearer. While Beloved represents Sethe’s unnamed child, she is also a character for the masses that died during America’s most shameful period.

Throughout elementary and middle school, I was only told about the life of slaves who died as a slave, and the work that Harriet Tubman did with the Underground Railroad. That’s it. The worst part is, I didn’t even think about the fact that there are so many other sides and points of view of slavery besides those two. Beloved shed light on an embarrassingly new area for me, telling the story of a slave who escaped and began her life outside the confinement of slavery.

Even though Sethe in Beloved did end up escaping and gave birth to her child, her story falls nothing short of traumatic. Toni Morrison uses an array of symbols and motifs to reflect the past in the current, real life of Sethe. I believe that both the ghost and reincarnated (?) form of Beloved is the biggest symbol of all, as she is a real figure that triggers memories and scenes from Sethe’s past. I also believe that one of the biggest takeaways Toni Morrison would want her readers to gain is the true effect and aftermath of living life after being a slave, a life that most people nowadays would ever even be able to imagine. She shows the differing emotional impact this traumatic life had through many characters, but especially highlights the difference between Paul D and Sethe, as they shared a similar experience. Paul D compresses his feelings and they eat away at him. He feels that his role is to be strong and someone to lean on, which includes sacrificing his own needs in the process. Sethe has strong emotions and shows many of her flashback memories to the reader, she is clearly facing serious emotional damage which will stay with her for the rest of her life.

I think the song, “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables is an embodiment of Sethe’s mentality throughout the entire book. In, Beloved, Sethe spends the entire novel constantly reliving the past, the good and the bad. This song is all about how the main character dreams of a better life but is woken up by her reality. She sings, “I dreamed, that love would never die, I dreamed that God would be forgiving”. Sethe has specific flashbacks to the point in her life when she was with Halle. She goes back to the time when her husband was still there with her. Just like the song, she is reverting to the good parts of her past because it is easier than dealing with the traumatic parts.

Similar to the first piece of lyrics, Sethe, is remembering the good times. The character, Fantine, says, “There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted”. This can easily be compared to Sethe and Halle’s wedding or Baby Suggs’ preaching. In both of these situations there was some sense of joy, even if it was surrounded by a lifetime of slavery.

But, at some point, a lifetime of trauma can catch up to you. Like in the bridge of the song. It says, “But the tigers come at night. With their voices soft as thunder. As they tear your hope apart. As they turn your dream to shame”. This is almost an exact example of Sethe’s sudden flashback of being assaulted by the white men. At the end of the song she sings, “Now life has killed the dream, I dreamed”, which shows how remembering the trauma has ruined her past.

In the interview Tony Morrison gave shortly after releasing Beloved to shelves, she talked about the story of Margaret Garner, the woman who inspired her to write about slavery and more broadly what the mother-child relationship and dynamic is like for those who are enslaved or have experienced slavery. The story of Margaret garner is horrific but reflects not only the brutality of slavery but the intensity of a mother’s love for her child. Margaret Garner had almost escaped slavery with her family, but when stopped by US Marshalls, Garner killed her daughter as she would rather take her life than see it taken back by the slave owners. The act of taking her own daughter’s life would in no way be easy for her, but she is willing to do it to prevent her daughter from being enslaved. It also shows from the firsthand perspective of someone who had been enslaved for likely their entire life, that death seemed better than life as a slave.

This connects to Beloved, however Sethe did not have control of her daughter’s fate. This may have caused more pain in the longrun, as Sethe handed over her child, and is faced for the rest of her life with thoughts that if she had kept her daughter with her for those few days that she may still be alive. However, if Sethe had to do something like Margaret Garner did, and take the life of her daughter in a brutal way, and then lived the rest of her life safe from slavery, she would feel horrible and would be haunted ever worse by the Ghost of her daughter. The impact of Beloved’s death is shown throughout the novel, in one instance, Sethe refuses to move out of her home, even though it is causing them social and emotional problems. As she does not feel comfortable moving because the last time she did so, she lost her daughter, and likely because even though her daughter’s presence is not always positive, it is all she has left.