Beloved
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 isolates herself from all those around her. Yet, she was once a woman full of feeling: she had loved her husband Halle, loved her four young children, and loved the days of the Clearing. And thus, Sethe was jaded when she began her life at 124 Bluestone Road-- she had loved too much. 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. It later becomes apparent that Sethe's tragic past, her chokecherry tree, was the reason why she lived a life of isolation. Beloved, who shares with Seths that one fatal moment, reacts to it in a completely different way; because of her obsessive and vengeful love, she haunts Sethe's house and fights the forces of death, only to come back in an attempt to take her mother's life. Through her usage of symbolism, Morrison exposes the internal conflicts that encumber he
At first overjoyed that her daughter had "come back like a good girl" (223) and that she would get a chance to make up for her sins, Sethe soon realizes that Beloved would not be understanding. She could never forget the terror of the schoolteacher robbing her of her nurturing juices, she crawled on bleeding limbs to fill her baby's mouth with her milk, and finally, she immortalized that grim summer day when she fed Denver her breast milk-- mingled with blood. Never quite sure what had happened, the two year-old spirit believed that Sethe had left her behind and came back "to the one [she had] to have" (76). Although Beloved wanted and needed her mother, albeit to a disturbing degree, her bitterness quickly turned into revenge when Sethe began to indulge her; and by slowly draining the life out of her mother, Beloved could truly possess Sethe, both body and soul. Both Sethe and Beloved suffer the devastating emotional effects of that one fateful event: while the guilty mother who lived refuses to passionately love again, the daughter who was betrayed fights heaven and hell- in the name of love- just to live again. She seemed tranquil sitting near Sethe, as the older woman prepared breakfast in the morning. Beloved fought to live again and took the life of the woman who loved her enough to die for her. In the beginning, Beloved longed to receive Sethe's attention. Morrison uses breast milk to symbolize how strong Sethe's maternal desires were. One woman was killing herself trying to make the other understand, while the other was selfishly destroying everything in her way of happiness. [She] collected every bit of the life she made. 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.
Common topics in this essay:
Sethe Beloved,
Bluestone Road--,
Toni Morrison's,
Clearing Beloved's,
Clearing Sethe,
sethe woman,
sethe's maternal,
schoolteacher sethe,
human emotion,
tragedy human,
sethe beloved,
lost game,
loved children,
love powerful,
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Acceptance Essays
