Toni Morrison Use Of Symbolism In Beloved

In the novel Beloved, Toni Morrison reveals that Sethe is haunted by the death of one of her children and the memories of Sweet Home through symbolism. At the beginning of the novel, Morrison introduces Sethe who is a victim of the memories from Sweet Home, the plantation Sethe was a slave on. Eventually, Paul D, another former slave of Sweet Home, arrives at Sethe’s home and begins to lament with Sethe regarding their terrifying former lives. As Morrison writes, “‘Schoolteacher made one open up my back and when it closed it made a tree. It grows there still.’ … ‘They beat you and you was pregnant?’ ‘And they took my milk!’” (20). Sethe is haunted by the memories of Sweet Home because she still endures the memory of being whipped. Thus, the scars are symbolic of the horrors of Sweet Home because they mark the pain Sethe endured whilst at Sweet Home.

Thus, by saying that the scars still grow on her back, Morrison suggests that the scars inflicted by Sweet Home’s tyranny still grows to this day. Furthermore, Morrison suggests that Sethe’s children are extremely important to her because Sethe only exclaims when she says, “‘they took my milk!’” (20), not when she explained that she was whipped. Sethe’s children are important to her because Sethe is more worried about the nourishment of her children than the physical abuse she endured at Sweet Home. However, the taking of Sethe’s breast milk is symbolic of the disenfranchisement of her children because her children were born to a former slave and were deprived of nourishment. Sethe is also haunted by Sweet Home because it reminds her that her children have been deprived of life. Furthermore, the death of one of her children also haunts Sethe because when talking about her child who, “wasn’t even two years old when she died.” (5); Morrison writes, “Ten minutes for seven