After being confronted with the newspaper article about her arrest by Paul D, Sethe begins to try to explain her reasoning behind her terrible and disturbing actions. While she had not explained herself to anyone, Sethe feels encouraged to stop “dancing around the subject” and openly speak to Paul D, specifically stating that, “Perhaps it was the smile, or maybe the ever-ready love she saw in his eyes…that made her go ahead and tell him what she had not told Baby Suggs” (Morrison 190). However, this decision to open up to Paul D does not go as Sethe planned, for she is not met with the “ever-ready love” she thought existed but rather judgement and fear. For Sethe, she felt that the look in Paul D’s eyes meant that he would understand the reasoning …show more content…
In fact, after hearing Sethe’s story, Paul D realized that, “This here Sethe was new” (Morrison 193), signifying that Sethe had lost the one person she thought would understand her for once because Paul D did not know who she was anymore, thus creating tension between the two that results in Paul D’s departure. Additionally, Paul D’s response to Sethe’s story is also surprising, considering the fact that the man who had suffered at the hands of the schoolteacher did not support the actions taken to prevent others from experiencing the same abuse. Perhaps the only reason why Sethe chose to try to kill all of her children was to prevent them from being dragged back to Sweet Home and having to endure the schoolteacher’s tyranny, which both Sethe and Paul D were all too familiar with. However, despite experiencing exactly what Sethe was trying to prevent for her children, Paul D was not sympathetic or accepting of Sethe’s reasoning, which is shocking on behalf of the fact that he knew just how terrible of a life slavery entailed. Instead of taking her side, Paul D is shocked that the woman he once knew and loved would do such a thing, thus making him side with the perspective of the bystanders when it comes to Beloved’s murder. That is, Paul D felt that there was no
Paul D swings a table around, rids the house of the ghost, and determines himself apart of the home. However, his character change in relation to the illuminating incident does not occur for some time. It is when Stamp Paid urges him to confront Sethe regarding the incident that he learns of it, and his reaction is extremely important to the development of his character and his relationship with Sethe. He was considering having a child with her, but then he learns that her “love is too thick”, that “this here Sethe was new….didn’t know where the world stopped and she began” (164).
In the novel Beloved, Toni Morrison focuses on the concept of loss and renewal in Paul D’s experience in Alfred Georgia. Paul D goes through a painful transition into the reality of slavery. In Sweet Home, Master Garner treated him like a real man. However, while in captivity in Georgia he was no longer a man, but a slave. Toni Morrison makes Paul D experience many losses such as, losing his pride and humanity. However, she does not let him suffer for long. She renews him with his survival. Morrison suggest that one goes through obstacles to get through them, not to bring them down. Morrison uses the elements of irony, symbolism, and imagery to deal with the concept of loss and renewal.
Sethe describes her actions to Paul D, arguing, “I took and put my babies where they’d be safe” (Morrison 164). Here Sethe reveals the extent to which she will go to protect her children from the horrors of slavery; she is willing to personally kill each of them if it means slavery will not have them. Her love for her family and personal experiences as a victim of slavery have caused her to go to cruel lengths to ensure her children’s safety. Sethe does not wish for her children a life under slavery’s influence, which she herself suffered from at the hands of the schoolteacher and his nephews. Although Sethe and Schoolteacher come from opposite spectrums of slavery as well as race, they both are willing to achieve their ends through brutal actions.
Sethe is the main character in Toni Morrison’s award winning novel Beloved. She was a former slave whom ran away from her plantation, Sweet Home, in Kentucky eighteen years ago. She and her daughter moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to live with her mother-in-law Baby Suggs. Baby Suggs passed away from depression no sooner than Sethe’s sons, Howard and Buglar ran away by the age of thirteen. Sethe tries...
When Sethe chooses to murder her daughter, rather than allowing her to be returned to slavery, she must face the consequences of her actions. Sethe’s murder of Beloved creates an allusion to the biblical character of Cain. According to the Bible’s Old Testament, Cain’s slaughter of Abel marks the first murder ever committed. In the aftermath of Abel’s death, Cain mourns that, “My punishment is greater than I can bear...I shall be a fugitive and wanderer on earth” (English Standard Version, Gen. 4.13-14). Sethe experiences a similar reaction after she takes Beloved’s life. Taken to prison after killing Beloved, Sethe faces ostracism from her community. However, living with the memory of the murder seems a worse fate. Like Cain, the “punishment”, both psychological and physical, that results from her murder is so great that it almost destroys her. Her murder, like Cain’s, violates society’s norms and both opens her to judgment and sets her
Thus, Sethe is very protective of her milk after that incident, especially now that she believes she is reunited with a physical manifestation of Beloved. In her internal monologue, Sethe reinforces the exclusivity of her milk to her children, as “nobody will ever get [her] milk no more except [her] own children” (200). Although she no longer lives in Sweet Home, Sethe still remembers and references the time where she was abused under cruel conditions, and works harder than ever to provide a positive environment for her children, both Denver and Beloved. Another main instance of cruelty conducted by the Schoolteacher is the placement of the iron bit inside Paul D’s mouth. With the bit in his mouth, Paul D was not allowed to speak, even to talk to Halle about Sethe being violated by the schoolteacher’s nephews.
However ,the hauntings stopped once an old friend of Sethe’s from Sweet Home, Paul D, shows up on her doorstep one afternoon. Paul D plans on a new beginning with Sethe vowing to take care of her saying, “We can make a life” (55). Things do not go as planned when a girl shows up on their doorstep named Beloved. The name Beloved has significant meaning because when Sethe buries her daughter that was all she was able to get on the headstone. The life Paul D has in mind is disrupted as the the ladies begin to put together connections that Beloved just might be the baby who is murdered in the past. Sethe and Denver become attached to Beloved because of her absence from their life for so long. However, Beloved is only obsessed with the thought
From the beginning, Beloved focuses on the import of memory and history. Sethe struggles daily with the haunting legacy of slavery, in the form of her threatening memories and also in the form of her daughter’s aggressive ghost. For Sethe, the present is mostly a struggle to beat back the past, because the memories of her daughter’s death and the experiences at Sweet Home are too painful for her to recall consciously. But Sethe’s repression is problematic, because the absence of history and memory inhibits the construction of a stable identity. Even Sethe’s hard-won freedom is threatened by her inability to confront her prior life. Paul D’s arrival gives Sethe the opportunity and the impetus to finally come to terms with her painful life history.
...nd her strength. From the kiss on Sethe’s neck, to her new born child reenactment, Sethe succumbs to the job of a mother and tends to her, unaware of the fact that she is losing her health and strength in the process. Beloved is given the best of things from her mother such as food, and when there is nothing else left to give, “Beloved invented desire” (Kochar). Beloved at first seems like the victim in the novel due to the idea that she is supposedly the reincarnation of Sethe’s murdered child, but towards the end of the story Sethe becomes victimized by Beloved and her numerous desires. Sethe grows thin and weak while Beloved grows pregnant and healthy. Although Beloved may be portrayed as only the antagonist in the novel, she also symbolizes an intervention since she leads the characters to understand their pasts and in the end exposes the meaning of community.
Throughout Beloved Sethes duplistic character is displayed in the nature of her actions. Shortly after her re-union with Paul D, she describes her reaction to schoolteachers arrival as 'Oh no, I wasn't going back there. I went to jail instead' (P42) These words could be seen that Sethe was. portraying a moral stand by refusing to allow herself and her children to be dragged back into the evil world of slavery....
For Sethe, slavery is not over, at least not in. her mind, and beloved serves as a form of therapy by drawing out the painful. memories and giving Sethe a second chance to right her wrongs. During the last few days at Sweet Home, Sethe was made to suffer more than. any human being should have to.
Denver has grown up alone. When she was younger, 124 was filled with people; Baby Suggs, Howard, Buglar, Sethe, and many others. However, as Denver grew up 124 became emptier, until the only people remaining were herself, Sethe, and the ghost of Sethe’s baby, Beloved. The three of them lived “harmoniously”, almost as if they were a family. Until, one day Paul D, a man of Sethe’s past, shows up on the front porch of 124. Denver notices how the two instantly reconnected and were a twosome; the reminiscing of the past “made it clear [it] belonged to them and not to her.” With the only person in her life being Sethe, Denver “[hoped] that her mother did not look away [from her] as she was doing [with Paul D], making Denver long, downright long, for a sign of spite from the baby ghost.” Feeling left out, Denver wanted Paul D to leave, but instead Paul D “had gotten rid of the only other company [Denver] had,” the baby ghost. Denver’s only company was gone, “whooshed away in the blast of a hazelnut man’s shout, leaving [her] world flat.” Paul D was taking up Sethe’s attention and he got rid of the ghost, leaving D...
Whether it be the lynching of Paul A in Sweet Home or the murder of Beloved in 124, both homes constitute very unpleasant histories. The inevitable haunting of slavery plagues the slaves from Sweet Home even after their departure. Slavery and its history will never die, and the characters in this novel confirm this through their constant battles with their past. Seeking refuge at 124, Sethe was met by a shunning and unsupportive community. However, the community comes around in the end and, similar to the situation in Sweet Home, Sethe finds herself surrounded by a group of supportive, helpful, and friendly individuals who all care for one another’s
Sethe is the most dramatically haunted in the book. She is the one who was beaten so badly her back is permanently scarred. She is the one who lived and escaped slavery. She is the one who murdered her child rather than return it to slavery. So she is the one whose past is so horrible that it is inescapable. How can a person escape the past when it is physically apart of them? Sethe has scars left from being whipped that she calls a "tree". She describes it as "A chokecherry tree. Trunk, branches, and even leaves. Tiny little chokecherry leaves. But that was eighteen years ago. Could have cherries too now for all I know" (16). It is apt that her past is represented on her back--something that is behind her, something she cannot see but knows that is there. Also it appeared eighteen years ago, but Sethe thinks that it may have grown cherries in those years. Therefore she knows that the past has attached itself to her but the haunting of it has not stopped growing. Paul D. enters Sethe's life and discover a haunting of Sethe almost immediately. He walks into 124 and notices the spirit of the murdered baby: "It was sad. Walking through it, a wave of grief soaked him so thoroughly he wanted to cry" (9). The haunting by Beloved in its spirit form is stopped by Paul D. He screams "God damn it! Hush up! Leave the place alone! Get the Hell out!" (18). But Sethe's infant daughter is her greatest haunt and it is when Beloved arrives in physical form that Sethe is forced to turn around and confront the past.
Although this is seen more in other characters that in the main character Sethe, who has a strong attachment to her living daughter Denver. The idea of individual survival is seen in Paul D. She analyzes that his need for individual survival exceeds his want for a family and a community to belong to. Both Sethe and Paul D seek to affirm themselves as survivors both in their own way. Sether by keeping her last family alive and protected, and Paul D by moving from place to place and having no connections that can be broken.