Violence In Toni Morrison's Beloved

As Beloved’s presence becomes more and more menacing, it is Denver’s rebellion against this restricting violence that allows her to leave the sanctity of her domicile on Bluestone Road and find help for Sethe. With the presence of her dead grandmother, Baby Suggs, urging her on, she is able to escape the confines of historical violence committed by her mother and the psychological violence she inflicts on Denver because of her own fear and guilt and, by extension, escape the increasingly horrifying performance by Beloved who seems set on sucking the life right out of Sethe. Thus, Denver’s “personal stake in retrieving the past […] and her encounter with the past is ‘necessarily painful’” (Krumholz, 1992: 404), as it transforms her into this dominant, multifaceted character.

The fellow women of their community rally around 124 Bluestone Road to exorcise Beloved once and for all and, with this, Sethe is vindicated; “born once again” (Hirsch, 1994: 107) and freed from the shackles of her all-encompassing guilt. However, the conclusion of Sethe’s story does not initially find the same closure as Denver’s. Sethe appears irreparably psychologically wounded by the experience; the brutal confrontation of her past violence that was meant to be a resistance against the forced removal of her children’s freedom. Nevertheless, Sethe does find reprieve in the final moments of the novel, with her original redeemer, Paul D. His own story is just as wrought with the violence and atrocities of slavery as hers. Sharing their subjective yet also shared experiences, the two of them who have “got more yesterday than anybody” (Morrison, 2007: 322) need to find a future. Sethe appears to find a glimmer of hope as she repeats the seemingly innocuous “Me? Me?” (322) to Paul D as she accepts that she herself is her “best thing” (322), finally free from the heavy burden of