Sethe And Slaves In Toni Morrison's Beloved

On the contrary, Sethe had trouble accepting and acknowledging the former slave days as part of her life. Although Sethe was a slave just as Baby Suggs was one, Sethe is haunted by her past days as a slave and all traumatic events that stemmed from it. “Sethe looked at her hands, her bottle-green sleeves, and thought how little color there was in house and how strange that she had not missed it the way Baby did… It was as though one day she saw red baby blood, another day the pink gravestone chips, and that was the last of it.” (Morrison 39) Sethe was traumatized especially by the death of her eldest daughter, Beloved. Color is not something as pleasant as it was to Baby Suggs. The last color Sethe encountered heavily related to Beloved. She
In this novel, Beloved acts as her traumatized memory. Sethe greatly enjoys spending times with Beloved. She feels rejuvenated as if she found the source of a life. While Sethe in the reality got traumatized by her past days and it would be natural for her to confront her memory, the fact she is obsessed with Beloved illustrates that Sethe is too focused on her days as a slave that she fails to pay attention to what is going on outside of her memory. “Sethe was licked, tasted, and eaten by Beloved’s eyes.” (Morrison 57) As she spends more and more time with Beloved, she struggles more in a desperate attempt to find her own true identity, pure from other negative influences. While Beloved gained more life, “the smaller Sethe became; the brighter Beloved’s eyes.” (Morrison 250), as if Beloved was sucking Sethe’s life away and feed on it. As she let her memory get an advantage of her, Sethe was becoming less existence in a sense that she was becoming smaller in the context of her surroundings. Only thing Sethe is doing by spending more time with Beloved is to give more power and letting Beloved take away her