Beloved Essay, Research Paper

Beloved

Toni Morrison’s, Beloved, is a complex narrative about the love between mothers

and daughters, and the agony of guilt. “ It is the ultimate gesture of a loving mother. It is

the outrageous claim of a slave.” These are the words, of Toni Morrison, used to describe

the actions of Sethe, the central character in the novel. She, a former slave, chooses to kill

her baby girl rather then let her live a life in slavery. In preventing her from the physical

and emotional horrors of slavery, Sethe has put herself in to a realm of physical and

emotional pain: guilt. And in understanding her guilt we can start to conceive her

motivations for killing her third nameless child. Did Beloved’s death come out of love or

selfish pride? In preventing her child from going into slavery, Sethe, too, protected herself,

she prevented herself from re-entering captivity. In examining Sethe’s character we can

see that her motivations derive from her deep love towards her children, and from the lack

of love for herself. Sethe’s children are her only good quality. Her children are a part of

her and in killing one she kills a part of herself. What hinders over Sethe is her refusal to

accept responsibility for her baby’s death. Does she do this because she is selfishness or

because it need not be justified? Sethe’s love is clearly displayed by sparing her daughter

from a horrific life, yet, Sethe refuses to acknowledge that her show of compassion is also

murder.

Throughout the work, seems to have two separate identities, which affect her

actions. When reunited with Paul D., Sethe recalls her reactions to School Teacher’s

arrival with no mention to her daughter’s death. “Oh, no. I wasn’t going back there

[Sweet Home]. I went to jail instead” (42) Sethe believes she made a moral stand in not

letting herself be taken into custody. In her statement she has done two things, she has

disassociated herself from the act, and also morally justified what had happened. When

Paul D, upon finding out what had really happened, confronts Sethe. She again ignores

the issue. “…So when I got here, even before they let me get out of bed, I stitched her a

little something… all I’m saying is that it is a selfish pleasure I never had before. I couldn’t

let all that go back to where it was….” (163) Sethe loves her children. But it’s that ‘selfish

pleasure’ which makes one question her actions. Sethe is living a life she’s never known a

life of freedom, freedom from brutality, from fear, and from pain. In killing her daughter

she saved herself, for the second time. Sethe was still free, and she wasn’t going back to

Sweet Home, or to School Teacher no matter what the cost. Sethes children were a part

of her, and they were a part she was not going to submit to slavery. They needed to be

protected, because the loss of them meant the loss of Sethe herself. When Sethe saw

School Teacher coming she “collected every bit if life she had made, all the parts of her

that were precious and fine and beautiful, and carried, pushed, dragged them through the

veil, out away, over there where no one could hurt them.”(163) Sethe sees no wrong here

because it as though she were killing herself. Saving herself from all the terror she had

already known. I was an act of love, and an act of primordial instinct.

Sethe’s needed to protect her babies because her mother didn’t protect her. “Sethe

never bonded or connected with her mother, and as a result she devoted her life solely to

her children”(Lewis 120) Sethe’s mother “went back in rice and [Sethe] sucked from an

other woman whose job it was” (60). Sethe and her mother never had the intimate bond

between mother and daughter, therefore Sethe was hollow inside. It wasn’t until she had

her own children that life and love filled within her. Sethe’s children were her life lines,

and she needed them to survive. But Sethe was not going to live her life in shackles, so

she could not let her children do so. The only way to be prevented from going back into

slavery would be to end her life, and she did through her daughter, Beloved. Beloved was

Sethe. This nameless child, who was buried under the headstone “Beloved,” was

christened on her burial. Sethe had heard the preacher say the words ‘dearly beloved, ’in

his prayer, and thus derived her name. (5) However, the preacher in saying these words is

talking to the spectators. Sethe was the dearly beloved, and thus Beloved was named after

Sethe. Not only was Sethe and Beloved connected by blood, they were connected in

name. And Beloved became the embodiment of Sethe. So it could be felt that Sethe had

killed herself when escaping from School Teacher. Sethe said clearly that she would not

go back to him, or to slavery, and in fright and hysteria, Sethe killed herself. Sethe does

not in effect die in a physical sense but she dies in an emotional sense. She since detaches

herself, and lives once again as though she were hollow. Like in childhood, she has once

again lost her bond. Sethe, therefore, feels she does not have to justify her actions. Sethe

escaped.

With Beloved’s return, Sethe can release all the guilt her conscious has laid upon

her. And effect repent for her sin. “I’ll explain to her, even though I don’t have to. Why I

did it. How if I hadn’t killed her she would have died and that something I could not bear

to happen to her. When I explain it she’ll understand, because she understands everything

already. I’ll tend to her as no mother ever tended a child, a daughter. Nobody will ever et

my milk no more except my own children…Now I can look at things again because she’s

here to see them too.” (201) Beloved provides Sethe with an outlet for her guilt. “By

absorbing all her love, which should have been rightly directed at herself, Beloved is

Sethe’s denial of freedom.” (Malle 216) Sethe’s guilt will not allow her to love herself, or

let herself be loved. Sethe’s conscience is the ghost that plagues her house. When Paul D

first enters the house, Sethe almost lets the “responsibility of her breasts, at last [be] in

somebody else’s hands” (18). As soon as this thought occurs, the ghost attacks and

wreaks havoc, the only remedy for which was its expulsion by Paul D. Sethe’s conscious,

manifested in the ghost, wouldn’t allow her to be freed by Paul in his way. Through

Sethe’s attempts to lessen her guilt and difficult past, she ironically worsens it. By letting

Paul D sleep in the house, Sethe begins to overcome her guilt and let go of her punishment

subsequently Beloved begins to fall apart. It is not until Sethe, has to decide between Paul

D and Beloved that we understand her grief. Paul D was to be her only savior and she

rejected him, to endure her penance. Sethe does not want forgiveness, she wishes only to

punish herself in order to mollify the pain of her past. Sethe’s guilt is her hollowness and

her selfishness. Selfish because although she has saved them from an institution she fears,

she has avoided the actual physical death that she inflicted upon her children. Once killing

Beloved, her best thing, Sethe realizes that she will never again be whole, and in effect she

will never loose her feelings of guilt.

Sethe knows that killing her daughter was wrong. And she also knows that killing

her was right. She killed Beloved because she wanted freedom and she wanted her

daughter to have freedom. Beloved is the embodiment of Sethe, torturing her for love,

like Sethe tortures herself because she does not. Her love from her children is presented

when she would choose to kill them rather then allow them to be broken by an evil

institution. Love is Sethe’s primary motivation for killing her children. However, her

selfish fault lies in the fact that she shifted the focus of responsibility from herself to the

institution that has spawned her. Ultimately, it is Sethe who is responsible for her murder

not slavery. Sethe kills her daughter to demonstrate her love. She exhibits her selfish pride

by rejecting her own guilt. When presented the notion that Sethe, not her children, is her

own “best thing”, her reply takes form of a question, “Me? Me?”(273) Sethe has realized

that she has loved her children too much, and herself not enough.