In her novel Beloved, Toni Morrison writes about the life of former slaves of
Sweet Home. Sethe, one of the main characters, was once a slave to a man and his wife,
Mr. and Mrs. Garner. After Garner's sudden death, schoolteacher comes to Sweet Home
and takes control of the slaves. His treatment of all the slaves forced them to run away.
Fearing that her children would be sold, Sethe sent her two boys and her baby girl ahead
to her mother-in-law. On the way to freedom, a white girl named Amy Denver helped
Sethe deliver her daughter, who she later names Denver. About a month after Sethe
escapes slavery, schoolteacher found her and tried to bring her back. In fear that her
children would be brought back into slavery, Sethe killed her older daughter and
attempted to kill Denver and her boys. Sethe, along with Denver, was sent to prison and
spent three months there. Buglar and Howard, her two sons, eventually ran away. After
about eighteen years, another ex-slave from Sweet Home, Paul D., came to live with
Sethe and Denver. A few days later, while coming home from a carnival, Sethe, Paul D.,
and Denver found a young woman of about twenty on their porch. She claimed her name
is Beloved. They took her in and she lived with them. Throughout the novel, Morrison
uses many symbols and imagery to express her thoughts and to help us better understand
the characters. Morrison uses the motif of water throughout the novel to represent birth,
In Beloved, one of the things that water represents is birth. When Sethe was
running away form Sweet Home, she was pregnant. In order to get to freedom, she had
to cross the Ohio River. On the way to the river, Sethe met a young white girl named
Amy Denver. Amy helped Sethe to keep going because her feet were swollen up. When
Sethe and Amy got to the river, Sethe thought the baby had died during the previous
night. However, she soon felt the...