Beloved

By Toni Morrison

Author: Toni Morrison

Year Published: 1987
Type: Novel
Genre: Drama
Perspective and Narrator: Beloved has a third-person omniscient narrator and often uses
flashbacks.

Tense
Beloved is told in the past tense, with the exception of several stream-of-consciousness (a
person's thoughts and conscious reactions to events) monologues in Part 2.

About the Title: Beloved is the ghost of an infant girl killed by her mother. Her murder is
central to all the events in the story.

Context

Fugitive Slave Laws

According to the Fugitive Slave Laws of 1793 and 1850, it was illegal for anyone, whether in
a free or slave state, to help enslaved people escape. Protecting them or housing them was
also illegal. Slaves were seen as property, and local governments were required to return
escaped slaves to their owners. Slave owners were allowed to cross into free territory to
reclaim their property.

Slavery and Family Life

Set in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1873, Beloved takes place after the end of the Civil War. However,
flashbacks take the reader to a time when slavery was still the law of the land. Survivors of
the brutal Middle Passage, the inhumane crossing by ship over the Atlantic Ocean, were sold
to the highest bidder. Their names were changed, and they were forced into labor. Enslaved
people were often treated like animals. When they disobeyed, they were chained and beaten
or tortured in other ways. It was rare for slaves to be taught to read or write. Families were
often broken up; mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers were sold and sent off to separate
farms. Slave women of childbearing age were seen as birthing machines. Their job was to
produce as many new slaves as possible, especially following the 1807 law halting the
importation of slaves from Africa. Slave populations were kept steady due to the the rape of
black women by white men that produced "domesticated" and trainable children. There was
no regard for motherhood, love, or family continuity. In fact, as slave narratives such as
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass show, family bonds among slaves were
discouraged to ensure dependency on the slave owners.

Margaret Garner
Beloved is inspired by the true story of Margaret Garner. Born a slave in Kentucky, Garner,
her husband, and their four children escaped to Cincinnati in 1856. They made it to a safe
house, but within hours their master and federal marshals captured them. Garner was
determined that she and her children would not return to captivity. She took her children to a
back room. When the authorities found her, she had slit her two-year-old daughter's throat
and wounded the other children.
Summary

Beloved is divided into three sections. Each section begins with a description of the house in
which the main characters live. Through a series of flashbacks and dialogues in the present,
readers learn about major events in the lives of people, who have been all but ruined by
slavery.

Part 1
Beloved begins, "124 was spiteful." This house at 124 Bluestone Road in the outskirts of
Cincinnati is being haunted by the ghost of a dead baby. Sethe, a former slave, and her
daughter Denver live there with the ghost, who has become part of their lives. But Sethe's
two sons, Howard and Buglar, have been driven out by the ghost. Baby Suggs, Denver's
grandmother and Sethe's mother-in-law, has died. Paul D, a former slave who used to work at
Sweet Home plantation with Sethe, arrives at 124, drives out the ghost, and moves in.

Just as they all are getting used to the new family arrangement, a strange woman arrives at
124. She doesn't know where she's from, but she tells them her name is Beloved. Completely
unable to care for herself, this disturbed and disturbing person moves in with the family,
asking strange questions that bring up painful memories of the past. Sethe and Denver are
drawn to Beloved, feeding her and caring for her as if she were an infant. Sethe begins to
answer Beloved's strange questions, which contain details of the past that only Sethe knows.
Denver comes to believe that Beloved is the ghost of her dead sister.

Paul D is irritated with Beloved's presence and eventually moves out into the cold house.
Beloved talks him into sleeping with her, awakening in him raw memories of his past.
Through a flashback the reader learns that their former master arrived at 124 to capture Sethe
and her children and take them back to Sweet Home in Kentucky. Rather than face that ugly
life again, Sethe tried to kill her children and herself. However, she only succeeded in killing
her toddler, slitting her throat with a hacksaw. Her sons were wounded but survived, and
Denver was unharmed. The master left without the slaves, and Sethe and Denver were taken
to jail.

Another former slave, Stamp Paid, shows Paul D a newspaper clipping about the murder.
Paul D can't read and denies that the story is about Sethe. When he confronts Sethe, she tells
him the truth: that she killed the baby out of love. Paul D compares her to an animal and
leaves 124.

Part 2
"124 was loud," begins Part 2. Stamp Paid feels that he is to blame for what happened
between Paul D and Sethe, so he goes to 124 to try to make amends. As he approaches he
hears strange voices coming from the house. He leaves and returns several times, each time
without entering. On his final attempt, he looks through the window and sees Beloved but
can't make sense of what he sees.

Sethe is content with her life inside 124 with Denver and Beloved. Scenes from her life—
cooking at a restaurant and spending time with the girls—are interspersed with her memories
of Sweet Home. She no longer minds talking about her horrific past. Beloved tells Sethe that
she has come from the other side, and Sethe understands that the strange girl is her dead baby
who has come back to her. She tries to explain to Beloved that she killed her as an act of love.
Paul D sits on a church porch and tries to make sense of his memories of their last days at
Sweet Home. He wonders what went awry in the escape plan for the Sweet Home men,
including Halle, Sethe's husband, and Sethe and her children. Stamp Paid finds him and
apologizes for telling him the truth about Sethe.

Part 3
"124 was quiet," begins the last part of the novel. Sethe has stopped working at the restaurant,
and everyone in the house is starving. They have squandered their meager savings on ribbons
and colorful clothes that delight Beloved. Denver has been shunned, and Sethe now spends
all her time with Beloved. Denver decides to search for work outside. The neighbors leave
food on a stump by the house to aid the troubled residents.

News spreads of Beloved's puzzling appearance at 124. Joining together, a group of women
decide to free Sethe and Denver. Denver's boss, Mr. Bodwin, also approaches the house to
pick up Denver for work. Sethe sees him and mistakes him for her former master. She attacks
him with an ice pick but is stopped by Denver and the women, whereupon Beloved vanishes,
never to return.

Sethe loses her mind and lies down to die, as Baby Suggs had. Denver has a good job and is
working toward attending college. Paul D returns to Sethe to tell her he wants a future with
her, getting her back up on her feet to walk again. The members of 124, along with the
community, have been released from the tragedy of Beloved so that they can move forward
into a better life.

Character Analysis

Sethe
Sethe, an escaped slave, is the main character of the novel. Her major role in life is that of
mother; her children are everything to her. Sethe experiences the brutality of slavery
firsthand, being beaten and dehumanized. In a culture of servitude, where family
relationships don't matter to the slave owners, Sethe feels blessed that all four of her children
have the same father. Sethe is a strong woman. On her own she manages to get her children
safely to Cincinnati, where they will be free. When their freedom is threatened, she will do
anything to keep her children from having to live through the horrors she has endured. Out of
love she makes the "rough choice" to kill them. She manages to kill one of her children and is
sent to jail. Freed from jail, she is alienated from her community. She tries to keep memories
of the past at bay, but, with the help of others, including the ghost of her dead child, she
finally faces those memories. She accepts the past and moves toward the future. Sethe is a
symbol of motherhood in its most profound form. By killing her child, she "saved" it from a
life of servitude and despair.

Beloved
Beloved is murdered by her mother when their former master comes to reclaim them after
they escape slavery. At first, she haunts the family as the ghost of a baby, playing planks that
gradually become more serious. Later, she returns in the form of an 18-year-old woman to
manipulate her mother and sister and to drive away her mother's new lover. Her disturbing
and demanding presence forces them to face the memories of their past. She is eventually
driven out of their lives.

Denver
Denver, Sethe's youngest child, is an innocent victim of the events of the novel. She spends
her childhood isolated from the outside community because her mother killed her older sister
and the tragedy caused their neighbors to shun them. She becomes a teenager constantly
searching for her own identity. At the same time, she craves attention from her mother and
Beloved. Learning what her mother has done, she lives in constant fear that her mother will
kill her too. She dreams about her father coming to live with them and is resentful when Paul
D moves in. Throughout the novel Denver becomes more independent. At one point she
becomes the caregiver for both Beloved and her mother. Desperate, she summons the courage
to leave the house to ask community members for help. It is then that she feels herself
become a woman. When Beloved is driven out for good, Denver finds a job and begins to
prepare to go to college.

Paul D
Paul D is a fellow slave at Sweet Home farm when he meets Sethe. When she chooses Halle,
Paul D and the other men still fantasize about her. Paul D is caught, trying to escape, and
taken back to the farm in chains. He is sold and attempts to kill his new owner. Forced to
work on a prison chain gang, he is miraculously able to escape to the North. For years he
wanders around, never putting down roots, and not wanting to. Finally, he ends up in
Cincinnati, at Sethe's home. Paul D and Sethe are lovers until Beloved begins to control him
and he is tormented by her. When he finds out that Sethe murdered her own child, he is
appalled, compares her to an animal, and leaves her. Slowly, he comes to terms with his own
and Sethe's past and determines to make a future with her.

Baby Suggs
At the beginning of the novel, Baby Suggs is dead. The reader learns about her through
flashbacks. During her time as a slave, she became crippled and was only allowed to raise
one of her eight children, all of whom had different fathers. Baby Suggs was the matriarch of
the family whose freedom was bought by her devoted son, Halle. She asserted her newfound
freedom and independence by taking her husband's name. Baby Suggs welcomed Sethe and
the children into her home and became a stabilizing force for them. She was also prominent
in the community, holding gatherings in the Clearing, teaching them to love themselves. After
Sethe killed her daughter in the woodshed, Baby Suggs slowly died, believing that white
people were bad luck.

Symbols

Colors
Colors represent different things to each character. Red is a symbol of pain, evil, and death.
When Paul D first walks through the door of 124, a pool of red light stops him in his tracks.
He asks Sethe, "What kind of evil you got in here?" To Paul D, red is also the color of the
rooster Mister's comb, which represents the evils of slavery and the freedom he feels he will
never have.
Baby Suggs contemplates colors such as yellow and blue, which signify peace for her. She
never gets to red, the color of the dead baby's blood. Red would be painful for Baby Suggs,
and Sethe understands why she never thought about it.
Pink is the last color Sethe remembers seeing—the pink of her baby's headstone.

Water
Water symbolizes escape. Paul D and the chain gang escape when rainwater floods their
enclosure. Likewise, Sethe crosses the Ohio River to escape slavery. Denver is born on the
river, after her mother's water breaks, and she is freed from her mother's womb. Sethe breaks
water again, feeling the need to urinate when she sees a young stranger named Beloved,
symbolizing her freedom from the memories of murdering her. Beloved herself emerges from
the river and is born again. She has been freed from the confines of death.

Trees
In Beloved trees signify both comfort and evil. Trees are the means of death for Sethe's
mother (hanged), Sixo (tied to a tree and burned), and numerous other, unnamed slaves, both
before and after the war. The "tree" on Sethe's back, scars from whippings, is a symbol of the
evils of slavery.

However, trees are also a source of comfort. Denver retreats to her emerald closet of
boxwood trees, where she finds solitude. Paul D follows the flowering trees to the North, as
he makes his escape. Both Sethe and Paul D find comfort in remembering the trees at Sweet
Home. Paul D especially remembers the sycamore he called Brother, under which he and the
other Sweet Home men would gather to cool off and share companionship.

124
The house on Bluestone Road is referred to as 124. Each of the three books of the novel
begins with a description of 124. This number is significant in that it symbolizes Beloved, the
baby Sethe murdered. Sethe had four children, and number 3 is missing because she is dead
by her mother's own hand.

Baby Ghost
The ghost is the dead child Sethe murdered. She symbolizes slavery and its horrors; Beloved
is her reincarnation. Sethe is still enslaved by the memory of killing her daughter. Beloved
intervenes and breaks the cycle of painful memories, especially those of Sethe and Paul D.
Only then are they able to go on with their lives.

Themes

Morrison uses dialogue and flashbacks to convey the themes of her novel Beloved. Through
them the reader is able to piece together the puzzle that reveals the story of the house at
"124."

Past versus Present

Sethe is in a constant struggle to "beat back the past." However, it will not remain buried,
either literally or figuratively. The ghost of her dead daughter haunts her. While she is content
with that, Paul D, "the last of the Sweet Home men," comes to visit her, bringing with him
painful memories of slavery. Sethe hates her "rebellious brain" that will leave no painful
memory behind, with no room to plan for the future. But with Paul D she is better able to
bear the past because the horrors belong to him too. She hopes that she can learn to trust him.
Eventually, she tells him her worst memory, that of killing her own child to save her from
slavery. He reneges on his promise to "catch her" and leaves.

Paul D begins to talk to Sethe about memories of Sweet Home. But he leaves most of them
locked up in the "tobacco tin" that takes the place of his heart. After hearing Sethe's reasons
for killing her daughter, his tobacco tin is blown wide open. Memories of the horrors of
Sweet Home under authority of schoolteacher (the slave owner) come flooding back. In the
end Paul D remembers his friend Sixo's love for the Thirty-Mile Woman. He decides he
wants to combine his story with Sethe's and make a future together.

Beloved's memories, revealed in stream-of-consciousness narration, are of dying and being

among dead people. When she comes back to life, she remembers her mother's diamond
earrings and a song she sang. She forces her mother to remember. Sethe wants to tell Beloved
everything, to make her understand. In this way Beloved helps Sethe confront the past, but it
almost ruins her. Through these memories Morrison makes sure the reader does not forget the
brutality of slavery.

Loss of Identity in Slavery

The author metaphorically refers to the slaves as animals. Sethe's trouble begins when
schoolteacher's nephews nurse from her, milking her as if she were a goat or a cow.
Schoolteacher tells them to categorize her qualities, putting her "human characteristics on the
left; her animal ones on the right."

When she murders her child, schoolteacher thinks Sethe has gone wild and blames his
nephew for overbeating her, thereby rendering her useless to him as a slave. He justifies her
behavior, saying she acted like an animal that had been mishandled. Even when Sethe tries to
explain her actions to Paul D, he tells her she has "two feet, not four."

Paul D and Halle also suffer loss of identity. They are treated like men at Sweet Home when
Mr. Garner consults them. But, when they set foot off of Garner's property, they are
trespassing in the white man's world, where they are not men but merely property. After he
tries to escape and is caught, Paul D is chained up and an iron bit is placed in his mouth.

Guilt
Sethe lives a life of solitude and is so steeped in guilt over the killing of her daughter that she
loses her sense of self. At first, Sethe accepts the antics of the ghost of her baby daughter.
When Beloved returns to her, Sethe begins to indulge her every whim. Out of guilt, she tries
to make up for what she has done to her baby.

Beloved is the incarnate memory of the horrible act Sethe committed. Sethe struggles to
make Beloved understand that she killed her out of love. Toward the end of the novel, Sethe
stops taking care of herself because Beloved is angry with her. It is not until Beloved is
banished by the neighbors that Sethe is finally rid of the guilt.

Love
Slavery does not allow for love. It arrests all emotional attachments, especially between
family members. Paul D knows this and feels that love is risky. It is dangerous for slaves to
love anything and anyone, especially their children. Family love can "split you wide open."
He feels it is best to love "just a little." He defines freedom as getting to a place where you
could love "anything you choose."

When Sethe sees her children free in Cincinnati, she feels even more love for them. However,
she proves Paul D right: the battle lines between love and slavery are clearly drawn. Sethe
loves her daughter so much that she kills her rather than see her return to slavery. Sethe tries
to explain to Paul D and, later, to Beloved that what she did was right because "it came from
true love." When Paul D tells her that her love is "too thick," she replies, "Thin love ain't no
love at all." Sethe loves the only way she knows how and pays a terrible price for it by being
haunted by the memory of the child she killed.

Author’s Biography

Toni Morrison, whose given name was Chloe Anthony Wofford, was born February 18, 1931,
and grew up in an African American working-class family in Lorain, Ohio. Morrison debuted
as a novelist in 1970 with The Bluest Eye, a controversial story set during the Great
Depression. She has won numerous literary awards, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and a
Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

Morrison left her job as a fiction editor at a prominent publishing house just before writing
Beloved in 1987. Her own newfound sense of freedom led her to contemplate what freedom
meant for women and especially for African American women. She remembered a newspaper
clipping she had once read about an escaped slave named Margaret Garner, who, when
cornered with her children by slave hunters, killed her daughter so that the child would not
have to return to the plantation from which they had escaped. Morrison decided to tell
Garner's story as a work of fiction; thus, Beloved came to be written as an assurance that the
evils of slavery will never be forgotten.

Beloved also shows Morrison exploring racial labels and identity, topics that are central to all
of her work. As she writes in Playing in the Dark, her 1990 book of literary criticism, "The
kind of work I have always wanted to do requires me to learn how to maneuver ways to free
up the language from its ... employment of racially informed and determined chains."

Beloved has inspired both acclaim and controversy since its release. Critics argued that it did
not paint a true picture of slavery, while supporters celebrated its frankness. Some readers
also objected to the novel's dedication, "Sixty Million and more," arguing that Morrison was
setting up a comparison between the deaths of enslaved Africans and African Americans and
the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Other critics have argued that through
Beloved Morrison helped readers think differently about U.S. history. The novel paints a
brutal picture of slavery yet shows how those who were enslaved managed to remain human.

After the book was released, the African American community was angry that Beloved did
not receive the National Book Award; it was instead a finalist. Black writers placed an ad in
the New York Times applauding the novel, and Beloved did go on to win the Pulitzer the
following year.