Beloved The Human Condition

Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved, reveals the effects of human emotion and its power to cast an individual into a struggle against him or herself. In the beginning of the novel, the reader sees the main character, Sethe, as a woman who is resigned to her desolate life and who isolates herself from all those around her. Yet, she was once a woman full of feeling: she had loved her husband Halle, her mother-in-law Baby Suggs, her four young children, and loved the parties and feasts thrown by Baby Suggs. And thus, Sethe was a little jaded when the people and things she loved so much began to disappear. Halle never made it to 124 Bluestone, her two sons ran away, and Baby Suggs died. After failing to 'save' her children from the schoolteacher, Sethe suffered forever with guilt and regret. Guilt for having killed her "crawling already?" baby daughter, and then regret for not having succeeded in her task to save them all. It later becomes apparent that Sethe's tragic past, her chokecherry tree, was the reason why she lived a life of isolation. Since Sethe and Denver were by themselves now, they had to look after each other and they felt that there was no room for anyone else in their lives. When Belov

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Beloved, on the other hand, was a sad and angry spirit who fought death in order to return to life so that she could assuage her vengeful, obsessive love for Sethe. It was Sethe's overpowering love for her children that drove her towards a desperate attempt to kill them.

Both mother and daughter seemed to have loved too much; while Sethe wanted to save her child from pain and make up for sending her to such an evil place for so long, Beloved wanted to satiate her own ravenous love. Morrison uses breast milk to symbolize how strong Sethe's maternal desires were. Most importantly, Beloved's true intention is revealed: to utterly and completely take possession of Sethe. In the beginning, Beloved longed to receive Sethe's attention. And the great depth of Sethe's maternal love is expressed through the course of all events: she loved her children so much she was willing to die with them, so much she would rather kill them than have them suffer, and so much that after that one fateful afternoon, her entire life's happiness dwindled away to near-nothingness.

Morrison captures the tragedy of human emotion by showing Sethe?s and Beloved?s desperate need for each other, Beloved?s love/hate for Sethe, and Sethe?s love for Beloved. Beloved showed up at 124 Bluestone as a frail, weak girl while Sethe was a strong, single mother just trying to get her life back in order.

Sethe was a woman who knew how to love, and ultimately fell to ruin because of her "too-thick love" (Morrison 164). [She] collected every bit of life she had made?carried, pushed, dragged them?over there where no one could hurt them" (Morrison 163). Beloved fought to live the life that was so abruptly taken from her and in the process, took the life of the woman who loved her enough to die for her. One love is so powerful it always loses, and one love is so powerful it consumes everything. At the end of Beloved?s stay she was the strong, pregnant woman who wanted a life and Sethe was the feeble, incomprehensible child.

Approximate Word count = 1276
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

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