FREE ESSAY ON BELOVED

BELOVED

April 19th, 1996
A critical analysis of the main characters and plot from the novel Beloved (BY TONI
MORRISON).
Frank Mancini
irg@ix.netcom.com
Beloved is a novel set in Ohio during 1873, several years after the Civil War. The book
centers on characters who struggle fruitlessly to keep their painful recollections of the
past at bay. The whole story revolves around issues of race, gender, family relationships
and the supernatural, covering two generations and three decades up to the 19th century.
Concentrating on events arising from the Fugitive Slave Act of 1856, it describes the
horrendous consequences of an escape from slavery for Sethe, her children and Paul D. 
The narrative begins 18 years after Sethe's break for freedom, and it gradually persuades
the reader to accept the haunting of 124 Bluestone Road by a 2 year old child, killed by
her mother Sethe: Full of baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the
children...by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims (Page 1). The
novel is divided into three parts. Each part opens with statements as to indicate the
progress of the haunting--from the poltergeist to the materialized spirit to the final
freeing of both the spirit and Sethe; Part I: 124 WAS SPITEFUL (Page 1); Part II:  124
WAS LOUD(Page 169); Part III: 124 WAS QUIET (Page 239). These parts reflect the
progressive reconciliation of a betrayed child and her desperate mother. Overall
symbolizing the gradual acceptance of freedom and the enormous work and continuous
struggle that would persist for the next 100 years.
The dynamics of the story attempt to distance the reader from an immediate and direct
exposure to the extremes of the real horror contained in the narrative. The narrative
jumps from one setting to another, from the past to the present. However, the complex
chronology is necessary to understand the psychological and emotional state of all the
participants in the story. Reading the story resembles listening to a story. This
peculiar oral style surfaces; it feels as if the novel is speaking the emotions of each
character out loudly, allowing the reader to identify with each one.
Events that occurred prior and during the 18 years of Sethe's freedom are slowly revealed
and pieced together throughout the novel. Ever so painfully, Sethe is in need of
rebuilding her identity and remembering the past and her origins: Some things just stay.
I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you
never do. But it's not. Places, places, are still there. If a house burns down it's gone,
but the place--the picture of it--stays, and not just in rememory, but out there in the
world (Page 35). 
The author moves around the characters allowing each participant in the story a
turn--Baby Suggs, Paul D, Stamp Paid, Denver, Sethe and Beloved--to convey their
perceptions of events to the reader. Baby Suggs' horror at her grandchild's murder is
passionately displayed: Baby Suggs had got the boys inside and was bathing their heads,
rubbing their hands, lifting their lids, whispering, 'Beg your pardon, I beg your
pardon,' the whole time (Page 152). Within this horror, the insensitivity of her landlord
is shown when Baby Suggs is approached by her landlord's kids regarding fixing some
shoes, not knowing and not caring to know they just give her the shoes: Baby Suggs ...
She took the shoes from him...saying, 'I beg your pardon. Lord, I beg your pardon. I sure
do (Page 153). Paul D's memories of Sweet Home are remembered to confront his and Sethe's
past: Paul D smiled then, remembering the bedding dress. Sethe was thirteen when she came
to Sweet Home and already iron-eyed (Page 10). These various voices act as witnesses to
Sethe's experiences and showing how black women had no control over their husbands,
children or own bodies. 
Racial issues are one of the main issues in Beloved. The story revolves around the life
of a former slave and her attempts to get on with her life as best as she can considering
what the white slave owners have put her through. The cruelties of the slaves by the
slave owners in this story are probably conservative compared to what really occurred in
many cases. This novel is about emotions and perceptions of African-Americans and of the
burden of sorrow that they have inherited from being deprived of their homeland and
treated like animals. These emotions are complex and very deep. 
The violation begins at the moment of capture, when the native Africans were forcefully
taken and transported cross the Atlantic to the New World: She told Sethe that her mother
and Nan were together from the sea. Both were taken up many times by the crew (Page 62).
Sethe's mother threw away the children of the abusers, exercising the choice to kill as
her daughter will do herself later. One did it for hate and the other one for love, but
for both mother and daughter the choice to kill was the ultimate act of protection: She
threw them all away but you...You she gave the name of the black man. She put her arms
around him. The others she did not put her arms around. Never. Never (Page 62). 
The treatment of black women as productive livestock whose children were regarded as
valuable economic units was a fact of slave life. The lack of respect of such basic human
qualities is central to Sethe's attempt to kill her children and her success in killing
Beloved: Men and women were moved around like checkers. Anybody Baby Suggs knew, let
alone loved, who hadn't run off or been hanged, got rented out, loaned out, bought up,
brought back, stored up, mortgaged, won, stolen or seized. So Baby's eight children had
six fathers. What she called the nastiness of life was the shock she received upon
learning that nobody stopped playing checkers just because the pieces included her
children (Page 23). 
Baby Suggs had adopted a strategy for survival by which she allowed herself not to become
attached to her babies who would be sold from her. In contrast Sethe's life under Garner
at Sweet Home had been less harsh, since she always had her children around and by the
time the change of ownership took place, her bond with her children was complete. The
escape from slavery did nothing more than intensify this bond. For the first time she
felt she could love her children unreservedly and had a vision of true freedom: Look like
I loved em more after I got here. Or maybe I couldn't love 'em in Kentucky because they
wasn't mine to love...A place where you could love anything you choose--not to need
permission for desire--well now that was freedom (Page 162). 
Gender issues are also dominant in the story. Three of the four main characters are
female, and it not only tells the story of an ex-slave but of a woman's life. Slavery is
the cause of Sethe being in the situation she is. The bulk of the story deals with the
relationship between a single mother (Sethe), her daughter (Denver) and a female stranger
(Beloved). Sethe's relationship to Paul D is a source of contrast on the three women.
Sethe and Paul D could symbolize the joint potential of a people united no longer held
apart from slavery and a possible solution to heal everyone's pain. The freedom to love
one another. 
The Afro-American spirituality reflected in the novel by Baby Suggs's character indicates
the responsibility African-American women have in empowering and morally developing and
sustaining the community. Such activities are showed by Baby Suggs who preaches in the
clearing: A wide-open place cut deep in the woods nobody knew for what (Page 87). Here
she urges the community to love themselves as proof of their love of god and delivers a
very powerful monologue:  'Here', she said, 'in this here place, we flesh; flesh that
weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder
they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They do not love your eyes; they'd just as
soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flat it. And O
my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave
empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them,
pat them together, stroke them on your face, 'cause they don't love that either. You got
to love it, you! And no, they ain't in love with your mouth...This is flesh that needs to
be loved'  (Page 88). Baby Suggs clearly questions the racial inferiority implied by
slavery and stresses a better life on earth, which must come from the community and a
re-evaluation of the physical black self. To love one self and one another. This sermon
of love challenges the perversion of Christianity which had been used to further exploit
the blacks and justify slavery.
Self-acceptance and love are perhaps the most important points of the novel. For people
whose negative up bringing and indoctrination has associated blackness with every form of
evil and ugliness, self-love is difficult to achieve. Appreciation of one self and moral
reconstruction can be achieved only with a rejection of all that had destroyed black
identity in slavery. The author is attempting to show the roots of this negativity in
order to overcome it. The story revolves around the scars and the psychological state of
African-Americans during and after slavery.
Beloved materializes when Seth's plantation past re-emerges with a visit from a fellow
ex-slave, Paul D. He offers her love and the possibility of a new life. This triggers
Beloved incarnation who is extremely jealous to be recognized as the proof of her
mother's deed. The signs indicating that the young woman was Seth's child materializing
in flesh and blood were many, such as her name 'Beloved' and her weak neck: Her neck, its
circumference no wider than a parlor-service saucer, kept bending and her chin brushed
the bit of lace edging her dress (Page 50). 
The sudden emergency Sethe experienced as she noticed Beloved, remind the reader of Sethe
giving birth. Beloved's struggle to reclaim connection with her mother, could symbolize
their struggle for freedom by reclaiming their past. In order to never forget their
enslaved history and confrontation could be the catalyst to growth: She had an emergency
that unmanageable. She never made the outhouse. Right in front of its door she had to
lift her skirts, and the water she voided was endless...No, more like flooding the boat
when Denver was born (Page 51). 
Denver had never left 124 Bluestone Road and never encountered white people until forced
to seek help from her community where she recognizes the danger that Beloved poses to
Sethe. She begins to grow by attending to her mother and Beloved as if they were her
children. Later when in the house of Bodwin a pro anti-slavery activist she sees a small
statue of a black boy kneeling and with his mouth wide open to be used as a money box:
Painted across the pedestal he knelt on were the words 'At Yo Service'  (Page 255). Here
she realizes that help from this man who owns this ornament is helping to perpetuate
racism and that her emancipation is only possible with the help of the black community.
Although this novel is full of symbolism and metaphors, the ghost of Sethe's dead baby
could reflect the author's beliefs in the paranormal. Anyone who enters the house on
Bluestone Road actually witnesses the presence of this ghost which may symbolize
slavery's rememories that haunt Sethe and her people throughout the story. All of the
characters try to repress their memories, which need to be faced and exorcised as you
would a ghost. 
The end of this novel emphasizes the importance of the community and the individual's
search for self which characterizes the survival struggle of Black Americans. Sethe is
destroyed by her memories and her isolation with the ghost of Beloved, (representing the
memories of slavery) until the community intervenes and saves her. The black community
and their cohesiveness and harmony is an essential factor to further the healing of 244
years of slavery and another 133 years of political abuse.
The author has successfully developed a novel which represents the hopes, aspirations,
and historical memories of black America in 273 pages. Special attention has been placed
on black women, which struggle under a double burden: that of racial prejudice and that
of a male-centered society.