CONTENTS

Introduction 2
I. Part One: Chapters 1-18 of Beloved 9
I.1. Announcing the theme for chapters 1-18 11
I.2. Problem analysis in chapters 1-18 12
I.3. The logic link of the current to the next part 12
II. Part Two: Chapters 19-25 of Beloved 16
II.1. Announcing the theme for chapters 19-25 16
II.2. Problem analysis in chapters 19-25 18
II.3. The logic link of the current to the previous and next parts 19
III. Part Three: Chapters 26-28 of Beloved 23
III.1. Announcing the theme for chapters 26-28 23
III.2. Problem analysis in chapters 26-28 23
III.3. The logic link of the current to the previous part 24
Conclusions and suggestions for future work 28
Reference 29
Appendices 30

1
 INTRODUCTION

The novel that was chosen for this thesis (Morrison, 1987) follows the life of a family of
former slaves in the United States of America (USA). Our work compares the information within
the novel to the history of the slavery in the USA, especially based on these two documents:
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850; Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.
We discuss: the addressed topic and the motivation for choosing it; what is intended to
demonstrate or to analyze within this work; methodologic approach; chapters’ abstracts and the
explanation of their logical sequence; readers’ reaction upon the novel’s release; controversy and
censorship; the novel’s relevance nowadays
The addressed topic and the notivation for choosing it. Beloved is set in the pre-war
America. It is classified as a neo-slave narrative. It deals with: slavery; the traumas inflicted by
such an institution on the survivors.
The novel, set in the free state of Ohio and the slave state of Kentucky, relates the true
story of the infanticide slave Margaret Garner. She killed her daughter rather than giving her
away to slavery. The sequence of events is non-chronological. The novel is all about Sethe’s
recuperation of a past that she has attempted to forget. Memory plays a pivotal role in Beloved,
not only in that is used as a mode of narration, but in being what the novel is about. Dealing with
memory is what the characters mainly do. The process of the novel corresponds to Sethe’s
repossession of her most repressed memory. The recollection works as a healing ritual. The
experience of slavery and the infanticide had been eradicated by Sethe’s will to move on, by a
wish to forget something too weighty to be remembered. The presence of the baby ghost in 124
Bluestone Road house is a sign of Sethe’s past still possessing her present. What the woman
refuses to remember chains her and her daughter Denver to an impossible life. Isolated from the
rest of the community Sethe’s and Denver’s present is possessed as well as their future.
What is intended to demonstrate or to analyze within this work. Beloved revolves
around Sethe Suggs who recounts her painful story. Sethe runs away from Sweet Home, the
slave house. Once she has gained freedom, she gives birth to Denver on her way to Ohio with the
help of a fugitive white girl. Traced back by her previous master in her new home, Sethe’s
maternal love turns into a horrific crime: the killing of her older daughter. Left in 124 Bluestone
Road house with her eighteen-year-old daughter Denver, Sethe lives in a real isolation. Her two

2
sons abandoned the house as they were tired of living with the ghost of their sister killed by
Sethe. Her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, had passed away, leaving the house empty and quiet.
Sethe, finds herself still enslaved by her past and her crime that intrude in her life through the
spirit of her baby, an, later, through her return in flesh and blood.
Methodologic approach. Beloved is part of Morrison’s contribution to the re-writing of
the black American history (Palladino, 2008). Toni Morrison insists upon the necessity of an
engagement with the past. As a sacrificed black, female Christ, Beloved becomes a focus for
Morrison’s concern with redemption through memory. Morrison’s work retrieves past memories
to sketch a denied history. With Beloved, Toni Morrison wants to divulge what has fallen into
oblivion1. This national amnesia is what Morrison targets. Through her fiction she challenges the
forgetfulness that Eurocentric history has initiated. The narration is dense with powerful
eruptions from the past that culminate with the return of the killed baby in the form of a girl
called Beloved, after the inscription on her tombstone. Her age corresponds to the one of the
baby had she lived. This objectification of the past slowly induces the characters to recuperate
their memories, to narrate their stories. The baby’s return is an example of the past that comes to
be reworked. In Beloved, past memories are often awakened by the present. The subject re-
experiences past traumas in the light of later events. The advent of present incidents confers to
the past its full significance: the subject, although traumatized after the fact, reaches a closer and
complete understanding of his/her memories.
Chapters’ abstracts and the explanation of their logical sequence. Sethe and Denver
perform as storytellers, both trying to satisfy Beloved's need to be entertained, which is an
indication of her cultural starvation. Beloved and Denver need to hear stories in order to feel a
sense of belonging, a sense of community. The stories that Denver and Sethe tell relate the story
of their family: Denver's birth; Sethe's earrings; Sethe's actions in the woodshed.
For Denver, the story is a way of keeping Beloved's attention, a “net to hold Beloved”.
Denver embellishes the story she has heard all her life. The story comes alive for Denver 2.
Denver speaks while Beloved listens3. Through the act of storytelling, the two girls recapture the
past and rewrite their own histories. Morrison's stream-of-consciousness technique disrupts a
1
I thought this has got to be the least read of all the books I’d written because it is about something that the
characters don’t want to remember, I don’t want to remember, black people don’t want to remember, white people
won’t want to remember. I mean, it’s national amnesia”.
2
“Denver was seeing it now and feeling it”.
3
“monologue [becomes], in fact, a duet ... as the two did the best they could to create what really happened”.

3
chronological ordering of her text. Variations of the same story are repeated by different
characters. There are multiple versions of the story of Denver's birth. Sethe tells Denver about
Denver's birth at the beginning of the narrative. Denver retells the story to Beloved, adding
details and rounding out the understanding of the event. These techniques underscore the notion
that Morrison's novel is not a stagnant text. It circulates as an on-going, shifting narrative in
order to serve the fluctuating needs of the community. Beloved functions as a circular narrative.
Morrison is a master of language. She brings her descriptions to life by using evocative and
unusual images: a house “palsied by the baby's fury”; baby Suggs dies “soft as cream”;
interesting enough, a music group has a track called “Soft As A Dove” (please see in the
Appendices) on one of their music albums (Yes, 2001); this album includes recycled, unused,
band material from the early ‘80s; as a brand, Dove is also a cream; Sethe's dress is “stiff, like
rigor mortis”.
Adding to her vivid descriptions is Morrison's use of synesthesia. Sethe considers the “size
of the miracle: its flavor”. The dying landscape has “insistent and loud voices” Morrison
explains that she capitalizes on the resonant language of African Americans 4. She recognizes the
importance of language in her community5. Her task as an artist is to make the language “appear
effortless. It must not sweat”. Critics have praised Morrison's lyricism. In addition to sharing
performative qualities, African epics, Morrison's Beloved reflects the richness and complexity of
their cultures.
A parallel presents itself in Morrison's portrayal of the African-American community in
Beloved: baby Suggs's excess of hospitality and generosity leads the community to envy, thus
disrupting the harmony of the community; Sethe's excessive love drives her to murder her own
daughter, upsetting the harmony even further; Sethe's excessive pride prevents the community
from helping her after she is released from jail, prohibiting any resolution or appeasement.
An additional thematic similarity comes in the relationship of the individual to the
community.
Most African societies see a delicate balance between the individual and the community.
The individual must follow his own destiny, while not surpassing the limits of the
community.

4
“full of metaphor and imagery... It has sight and sound”.
5
“[Language] is the thing that black people love so much, the saying of words, holding them on the tongue,
experimenting with them, playing with them”.

4
 This exists in Beloved. Beloved drains Sethe's power, herself. When the community
discovers this, they assemble to restore the harmony and to strengthen their collective power.
True to Morrison's ambiguity, the community is not always blameless. When Baby Suggs's
“three (maybe four) pies grew to ten (maybe twelve),” the community not only gets jealous, but
also angry. Everything seems to come easily for Baby Suggs 6. As a result, the community does
not take care of: baby Suggs; Sethe; the children.
It is within their power to warn of schoolteacher's arrival, but they turn their back,
“offended ... by excess”. Morrison thus hints that Sethe and Baby Suggs are not the only
disruptive factors in the balance between individual and community is to blame. The main
themes become clearer when examining the function of the African hero within the epic. Such a
hero is almost always outside of the community Morrison's novel reflects the functions of these
epic heroes but she transforms these male heroes into the female figures of Beloved and Denver.
Morrison's revision from a male hero to female heroines enables her to shift that focus from the
physical to the psychological. This allows her to emphasize the telling of the act as well as the
act itself.
Transforming the traditional African epic hero to a heroine allows Morrison to combine the
traditions of the African heroic epic and the female African American writer. She focuses on
both action and voice in Beloved. The change in gender highlights the centrality of women's
roles in the African-American community. Women's voices, as well as their actions, have been
silenced within this community. Morrison's revision enables her to reposition women at the
center of African-American cultural identity. There are two prototypes for heroes: the
adventurous hero, unschooled in the ways of wisdom; the chief, guided by this wisdom.
Ideally, the hero receives the teachings and becomes the chief. This is his ultimate destiny.
The hero and chief are separate characters. This model of the hero and chief can be applied to
Beloved and Denver. Beloved represents the reckless hero. Denver transcends this level and
becomes the chief. Conscious knowledge of the origins of the folklore is not a prerequisite for
Morrison’s use of such material. Echoes of epics have survived in the African-American folklore
Morrison is steeped in. The quest of the black individual for a self-definition as connected to a
community process is constant within Toni Morrison' s philosophy of life, in her literary
production. The self-exploration on the part of the individual is undertaken under the guidelines
6
“an ex-slave who had probably never carried one hundred pounds to the scale, or picked okra with a baby on her
back”.

5
of a loving community that holds on to traditional beliefs and values. This literary pattern
concerning the interaction between the individual and his/her community is present in her novel
Beloved, which represents Toni Morrison's clearest attempt to take up the subject of the African-
American community' s experience of slavery and its aftermath.
Readers’ reaction. For over two decades, Toni Morrison has rebelled against Eurocentric
readings of her novels, arguing instead that her works demand an Afrocentric approach
(Rummell, 2002). Morrison illustrates the problems of a Eurocentric approach to her fiction,
claiming that her novels are written according to something different 7. She has also combated the
notion of a universal standard for novels. Stories should serve the community from which they
originate8. Morrison hopes her novels reflect and create the African-American community.
Morrison attempts to re-create and preserve the cultural values of her community, an undertaking
which demands that we understand the black cosmology out of which she writes. In order to do
so, we must recognize that this cosmology comes not only from the African-American culture,
but ultimately from the African culture itself. Morrison pays allegiance to this African culture by
consistently drawing on its folklore and mythology in her novels 9. She responds to a call-in
question regarding her use of African symbols and rituals 10. She explains that she more often
draws on the culture she grew up with her: mother's, grandmother's, great-grandmother's
traditions, lore.
She speaks of ghosts and other elements of her novels11. Morrison's novel, too, can be read
as a performance of African and African-American culture. Morrison urges that her novels be
read as outgrowths of the oral tradition. She explains that she attempts to capture authentic
“black language” in “the way words are put together, the metaphors, rhythms, the music”. The
oral nature of Morrison's novel, then, echoes the epic performance. In the epic and in Morrison's
novel, the performance depends on an active audience. This same participatory impulse drives

7
“some structure that comes out of a different culture... I represent how characters and things function in the black
cosmology”.
8
“I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio....And I don't know why I should be
asked to explain your life to you”.
9
“part of the folklore of my life”.
10
“Once in a while, the connections are deliberate, when I'm trying to feed into a culture that is older than the one
that blacks cobbled together in this country and the diaspora”.
11
“all of these things are all part of the mythology, the culture that I grew up in, and apparently have real living life
in other African cultures that have been redistributed among us, and I would just love to see the history of some of
those things taken from my books”.

6
Morrison's novel. She enjoins her readers to help create the text12. Morrison describes her works
as containing “holes and spaces so the reader can come into it... My writing expects, demands
participatory reading”. In Beloved, she draws readers in as both audience and creators, investing
them with a sense of involvement in the novel's community. Additionally, the oral nature of the
prose begs to be read aloud. Readers share Morrison's role as creator in that they participate in
the sound of the work. Like a preacher, she has “created” her texts; but, also like a preacher, she
encourages her congregation of readers to help her deliver those texts. Morrison highlights the
importance of both storytelling and participatory reading within Beloved itself. The most striking
example of participatory storytelling is when Denver tells Beloved the story of Denver's birth.
Morrison has modeled for her readers the type of participatory reading her novels demand;
the “monologue” of Beloved becomes a duet, or even a chorus, when read properly. In addition
to the participatory nature of the epic and Beloved, both defy traditional chronological narration.
Shifting from past to present tense signifies repetition with a difference, reminding readers
of the interdependence of past and present within the story itself. From the beginning of the
narrative readers empathize with Denver. Reading Beloved through the lens of the African heroic
epic sheds light on the cobbled-together culture Morrison refers to. Reading Beloved as an
outgrowth of the African epic offers “new possibility” for understanding. It takes the readers
repeatedly from freedom to slavery and backwards. Although the reader comes across numerous
stories, the key issue of the novel is: narrating, recounting, recollecting.
Controversy and censorship. Toni Morrison’s inscription in Beloved, which reads “Sixty
Million and more”, raised a controversial debate as it was accused of competing with the
Holocaust. In the final part of this work we show that she actually does the contrary.
The novel’s relevance nowadays. The cobbled-together culture Morrison invokes relates
to her 1987 novel, Beloved. In both style and content, Beloved reflects the values and themes of
the African heroic epic. Morrison's novel represents a transformation of this epic tradition, one
that is transfigured, as it made its way across the Middle Passage, through slavery, and into the
twentieth century. African stories and traditions survived in this fashion, helping to create an
African-American culture. Accordingly, Morrison draws upon the transformed African heroic
epic tradition in Beloved. Exploring some of these African values as they evidence themselves in

12
“[The reader and I] invent the work together... It's a total communal experience”.

7
the African heroic epic and in Beloved will illustrate the ways in which the epic and the novel
create and endorse cultural values.
Morrison identifies her writing as “village literature, fiction that is really for the village, for
the tribe”. Like the epics, her novels “give nourishment” to her community as they tell the
community's stories. On several occasions Morrison has compared the function of her novels to
that of music for the earlier black community13. African Americans have had to turn to the novel
as a means of cultural survival and preservation. By building this literary culture, then,
Morrison's novels become a cultural monument to the African-American community. In creating
these cultural monuments, both the African epic and Morrison's novels depend upon
performative strategies. Slavery is not to be: filed, forgotten, but analyzed, claimed back the way
it was: the roots of: a community way of life, understanding human existence as the presence of
individuality supported on a sense: belonging; caring; sharing.
The legacy from the past can be reactivated to: illuminate the present reality; help work out
its vicissitudes.
Feeling whole can be achieved through a process of: re-working; revising the traditional
value system based on the ideals of: love, trust.

13
“for a long time, the art form that was healing for Black people was music. That music is no longer exclusively
ours; we don't have exclusive rights to it... So another form has to take that place, and it seems to me that the novel
is needed by African-Americans now in a way that it was not needed before”.

8
 I
PART ONE: CHAPTERS 1-18 OF BELOVED

Set in the years after the Civil War, the novel recounts a family story, in which emotional
relationships are established among its members. The analysis of the family relations presented
in the novel is dominated by a sense of survival that permeates each of the characters; especially
Sethe-the mother, who, as ex-runaway slave, clings to what she has got, is not ready to let it go.
The image of the community as a sheltering place is foregrounded in the novel as related to
their enslaved past in the Sweet Home14. The community acted in those days as their support,
their joy.
They cared about each other. It would serve the function of a family. The family unity was
under threat. They always had somebody to tum to, despite their apparent solitude. It becomes
clearer in the portrayal of the community life in Baby Suggs' time, after slavery. The references
to this period of time are idyllic with a nostalgic tone that informs every description of it. The
message coming from the community is voiced in Baby Sugg's words in the Clearing, the
epitome of the community sense of living and caring 15. This message brings the idea of loving as
the way to: deal with life; make up for the loss; make up for the suffering they have been
through.
This idea determines Beloved’s role in the novel. It is through her actions that the
characters allow themselves to: feel once more; trust; love each other; come to terms with their
community, the world around them.

I.1. Announcing the theme for chapters 1-18

The use of numerology runs throughout the text. This is obvious from the format of the
first sentence. It is written all in capital letters 16. 124 is not only the number of the house where
Sethe moved escaping from slavery, but each cipher is rich with meaning. This is a sequence of

14
“It wasn't sweet and it sure wasn't home ... But it's where we were ... All together. Comes back whether we want it
or not”.
15
“Here, she said, in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love
it. Love it hard ... more than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your
heart. For this is the prize”.
16
“124 WAS SPITEFUL”.

9
numbers with a missing figure. The number three is missing. Its absence is perceived from the
first line.
This implies an incompleteness that governs the story. The novel, structured in three
sections, is about the manifestation of the missing figure. It is a celebration of its completeness.
Beloved becomes: the return of the missing figure; the return of the ghost; the completion of an
unfinished sequence.
The sequence 1 2 4 that misses the third figure, signifies the absence of Sethe’s third child.
Sethe has four children: Howard, Buglar, the little killed baby, Denver.
Beloved has been excluded from: the family; life; being enumerated among Sethe’s
children.
She has been left out, consciously forgotten for being a heavy, unbearable memory. The
correspondence of Beloved with the number three and its Christian heritage is not accidental,
suggesting the Trinity. The number three signifies the idea of Oneness (Eliade, 1963), in which
more entities coexist. It is the figure of perfection where the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost
are One and Three. Beloved’s presence in the novel corresponds to the three parts of the One, the
Trinity. Being a Christ, she is one of three and, at the same time, One.
Sethe is talking about her daughter, Denver, who lives with her 17. She becomes more
explicit when refusing to leave the place where they live now 18. She clings to the present
circumstances because it is all she has got. She is unwilling to change or complain about them.
The same spirit of survival (Yes, 2001)19 is voiced by Paul D, another slave from the Sweet
Home plantation, who has run since he left it20. This character takes the spirit of survival a step
farther, as if he had exhausted life possibilities in his wandering. This wandering marks him as a
character with no: roots, sense of family, sense of community.
He clings to his life. There is a need in both characters to affirm themselves in their present
as survivors, as opposed to those who did not make it, the dead ones. Toni Morrison's proposal
here is that suffering is good because it frees the characters from the burden of their past and let
them feel what they should let themselves feel: love. The center of the suffering in the novel is

17
“The one I was carrying when 1 run away is all I got left”.
18
“No moving. No leaving. It's all right the way it is ... 1 got a tree on my back and a haint in this house, and nothing
in between but the daughter I am holding in my arms. No more running-from nothing”.
19
Please see in the Appendices.
20
“By the time he got to Ohio, then to Cincinnati, then to Halle Suggs' mother’s house, he thought he had seen and
felt it all”.

10
exposed as a kind of love that produces suffering and even death. What the characters have
refused to face until now is their loving feelings, to feel human again after their experiences. The
slaves' consign was “Don't love nothing”. Even after slavery was over, this is what they have
been trying to keep up. Their past has shown them that loving is dangerous because of the
emotional involvement it implies.

I.2. Problem analysis in Chapters 1-18

Due to this need for affirmation, the presence of the dead as a contrasting element is a
characteristic feature of Morrison’s narrative. This presence emphasizes: the superiority of life
over death; the difficult task living is, as opposed to easy death.
Sethe is talking about the death of Baby Suggs, her husband's mother 21. The difficulty lies
in carrying on with life, in not giving up. There is an urge in the characters to widen the gap that
exists between them and the dead, the ghosts from the past, to disassociate themselves from
death. The characters admit the influence the reality of death has on them. Two alternatives of
dealing with life are proposed: Sethe' s refusal to leave, her need to cling to whatever is left to
her; Paul D's desire to continually move on, as if he wanted to catch up with life that way.
Both of them have one thing in common: their wish to escape from the memories related to
their enslaved past. This is foregrounded in Sethe's case 22. The same task is performed by Paul
D23.
This rejection of the past is justified by the characters in the name of the present, of the
future24.
She is interested in the present feelings that are blocked by the past she unlearns. The past
returns, defeats her25. The characters are trapped in a vicious circle in which they refuse to
remember the past in favor of their present life. This life is impossible to live without its past
account. The emphasis on the supernatural is evidenced in Beloved, notably in the character of
the ghost Beloved. It is possible to argue that Beloved is a mortal character. By doing so, one

21
“Soft as cream. Being alive was the hard part”.
22
“As for the rest, she worked hard to remember as close to nothing as was safe”.
23
“He would keep the rest where it belonged: in that tobacco tin buried in his chest where a red heart used to be. Its
lid rusted shut”.
24
“No thank you. I don’t want to know or have to remember that. I have other things to do: worry, for example,
about tomorrow, about Denver, about Beloved, about age and sickness not to speak of love”.
25
“But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to
imagine, let alone plan for, the next day”.

11
ignores Morrison's plea to judge her works in the black cosmology. Beloved is a ghost with
supernatural powers. Denver is her mortal sister. Only Denver lives. Beloved functions as an epic
heroine. Both Beloved and Denver attempt to increase their life-force. Beloved's attempt is
obvious. By returning from the dead, she is going beyond her means. Because Beloved's life has
been taken from her, she must acquire some other life-force. As a parasite, Beloved finds a host
in Sethe26. Beloved inverts the mother-daughter relationship. She physically came from Sethe.
She is a part of Sethe. Beloved believes that Sethe is a part of her as well. Beloved thinks that
Sethe belongs to her27. Beloved first confronts Sethe from the other place, the ghostly place.
Lonely and rebuked, she haunts 124, Bluestone Road, Cincinnati, Ohio (124), seeking attention
from Sethe. Once Beloved assumes her physical form, these confrontations become more
powerful. Beloved debilitates Sethe physically and emotionally.

I.3. The logical link of the current to the next part

An alternative of treating life is that represented by Denver. She has no past or need to be
concerned about it. She is unhappy with her life as is, exactly because of that reason28.
Loneliness marks her existence devoid of a sense of belonging or sharing with others. She
feels a stranger in her house with her mother, who is not a fit company for her. She suffers more
from loneliness. It is not her choice. She has been forced into that situation. She dislikes it. Her
loneliness is provoked by her lack of a past that could make her relate to the other characters.
What all this suggests: the impossibility of a present that refuses to remember the past and
its dead; the consequent importance that looking back to the past acquires.
Paul D acknowledges this importance 29. They are scared of the suffering that remembering
the past brings about. This fear prevents their feelings. Sethe is wondering about this 30. Afraid of
remembering their past because of the suffering it means, they are unable to cope with feelings.
By disremembering the past, they could also ignore their feelings. It is at this point that
Beloved comes into being. This character is signaled in the text as the: personification of the

26
“[Sethe's] smiling face is the place for me”.
27
“it is the face I lost”.
28
“They were a twosome, saying 'Your daddy' and 'Sweet Home' in a way that made it clear both belonged to them
and not to her. That her own father's absence was not hers”.
29
“Sethe, if I' m here with you, with Denver, you can go anywhere you want. Jump, if you want to, 'cause I'll catch
you, girl. I'll catch you 'fore you fall. Go as far inside as you need to, I'll hold your ankles. Make sure you get back
out”.
30
“Would it be all right to go ahead and feel? Go ahead and count on something?”.

12
past; resurrection of a baby ghost who makes the characters: face the rebuked past; work it out,
despite the suffering it causes31.
Suffering is a means to relieving32. The text emphasizes the idea of suffering as belonging
to a life sphere. Refusing to feel belongs to the dead, those who gave up the fight. Beloved is
presented as an instrument to confront the ghosts of the past. In the beginning, she is an almost
new-born baby, who needs to be nurtured by Sethe's stories from the past 33. Sethe is capable of
learning about her loss through Beloved, who only directs her attention to the past. The pain
represents exorcism from the past, a way of feeling the past to un-feel it. From the start of the
novel, readers see Beloved's haunting: mirrors shatter, kettles tumble, slop jars turn over, all
because of the baby ghost's outrage. At the beginning of the novel, Denver is as selfish as
Beloved. Denver only wants to hear stories about the past if they concern her 34. This is the
perversion of participatory storytelling. If stories are meant to serve the community, Denver's
sense of alienation prohibits her from listening to those stories. The only stories she wants to
hear are those which feature her, those which privilege the self over the community and therefore
contribute to Denver's selfishness and her isolation. Denver, like Beloved, feels “lonely and
rebuked”, is hungry for companionship. Denver wants something she can claim as her own.
Beloved becomes this claim. As Beloved wants to possess Sethe, so Denver wants to
possess Beloved. After the numerous departures in Denver's life: Howard, Buglar, Baby, Suggs,
the father she never knew.
Beloved's arrival is sweet, miraculous. Denver finally has someone she can care for. She
assumes the role of Beloved's protector. She wants to warn Beloved about Sethe35. What neither
Beloved nor Denver realizes at this point is that to claim another's identity is not to claim one's
own.
Denver, the chief, will eventually understand this distinction, whereas the unlearned
Beloved is destroyed by her inability to understand it. Denver experiences setbacks, as evidenced
in her first attempt to join the community. At age seven Denver spends almost a year at Lady

31
“Anything dead coming back to life hurts”.
32
“Good for you. More it hurt more better it is. Can’t nothing heal without pain, you know”.
33
“Sethe learned the profound satisfaction Beloved got from storytelling. It amazed Sethe (as much as it pleased
Beloved) because every mention of her past life hurt. Everything in it was painful or lost”.
34
“Denver hated stories her mother told her that did not concern herself, which is why Amy was all she ever asked
about. The rest was a gleaming, powerful world made more so by Denver's absence from it”.
35
“Don't love her too much. Don't. Maybe it's still in her the thing that makes it all right to kill her children ... I have
to protect [Beloved]”. And, echoing Beloved's refrain about Sethe, Denver says, “she's mine, Beloved. She's mine”.

13
Jones's school, learning to read and write. This achievement is significant to Denver because she
“had done it on her own”. In a real way, she is gaining a voice. With her initial experience at
Lady Jones's school, Denver is finally in the “company of her peers”, participating in her
community. Denver's feelings of acceptance and self-worth are subsequently shattered when
Nelson Lord asks her36. From that moment on, Denver retreats from the community 37. For a
while, Denver even isolates herself from Sethe and Baby Suggs 38. Ironically, it is Beloved, the
baby ghost, who restores Denver's hearing, and thus her limited interaction with her family. After
learning that Sethe had murdered her own child, Denver concentrates solely on the baby ghost.
She avoids the outside world39. For Denver, the world beyond is frightening, threatening. She
retreats into a world populated only by: herself, Sethe, Beloved.
Just as Beloved needs Sethe in order to have a self, so Denver needs Beloved. Denver
spends “all of [her] outside self-loving [Sethe]” but saves her inside self for her sister. Beloved
focuses on the hours spent with Sethe, whereas Denver concentrates on her time with Beloved40.
Beloved gives Denver a life, a self, satisfies Denver's hunger. Beloved becomes Denver's self.
When Beloved disappears in the cold house, Denver cries 41. At this point in the novel, neither
young woman realizes that a self must come from within. Both attempt to share another's self.
Beloved joins Sethe. Denver tries to join Beloved. Sethe dares disposing of her children’s lives.
She loved them. She did not want them to suffer as much as she had. Her love was the
justification for her action42. She has since refused to come to terms with it. She eels scared of
loving again. It may end up as it did before. Her love went beyond the conventional limits. It was
punished. Beloved questions those limits by freeing Sethe from her remorse and thus validating
her acts. The same liberating effect is true in Paul D’s case. Beloved forces him to open up and

36
“Didn't your mother get locked away for murder? Wasn't you in there with her when she went?”.
37
“and the field behind it were all the world she knew or wanted”.
38
“For two years she walked in a silence too solid for penetration”.
39
From her limited perspective, whatever “made it all right for my mother to kill my sister ... comes from outside
this house, outside the yard”.
40
“Denver is a strategist now and has to keep Beloved by her side from the minute Sethe leaves for work until the
hour of her return”.
41
“she has no self. Death is a skipped meal compared to this. She can feel her thickness thinning, dissolving into
nothing”. When Beloved reappears, Denver “pinches a piece of Beloved's skirt between her fingers and holds on”,
thus physically holding on to herself.
42
“Collected every bit of 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, overthere where no one could hurt them”.

14
let his feelings flow43. For both characters, Beloved represents the reconciliation with their past
that implies the possibility of feeling: whole; complete; with a heart that is not scared of loving.
In Denver’s case, she stands for reconciliation with the unknown past of the other
characters, with an understanding of the reasons of her mother's behaviour towards her children.
She has feared her mother because of the knowledge of her sister’s killing. This taught Denver
neither to trust nor to love her. Loving has been too risky for her. It could mean her undoing.
That fear has blocked the flow of feelings towards her mother. It is through Beloved that she
learns about her mother’s feelings and her justification 44. She reaches a point of contact with her
mother finally and sees things from the same perspective.

43
“She moved closer with a footfall he didn't hear and he didn't hear the whisper that the flakes of rust made either
as they fell away from the seams of bis tobacco tin. So when the lid gave he didn't know it. What he knew was that
when he reached the inside part he was saying, Red heart. Red heart, over and over again. Softly and then so loud it
woke Denver, then Paul D himself. Red heart. Red heart. Red heart”.
44
“Denver was seeing it now and feeling it-through Beloved. Feeling how it must have felt to her mother”.

15
 II.
PART TWO: CHAPTERS 19-25 OF BELOVED

The free-flowing of feelings that the characters achieve thanks to Beloved's intervention
turns to be devastating soon. By opening the realm of feelings, these are powerful as to loose
destruction and death. This reverse process before love is reached through suffering. Pain means
the zenith of loving is that of infinite suffering. This process is portrayed through Denver's eyes.
She is the only character who does not get carried away by the past 45. She is not overwhelmed by
her feelings. She realizes what is going on. She is aware how frightful the violent relationship
between Beloved and her mother can be for them all.

II.1. Announcing the theme for chapters 19-25

Denver makes a decision that overturns the path of their own lives. She reaches the
conclusion that they need external help. She is brave to go and ask for it to the outside
community. Up to now, the community has been rejected by each of the characters in turn. Sethe
is explicit about it46. Sethe rejects the outside world in favour of the more intimate one created by
Beloved' s presence, which becomes the only world worth living in. The figure of Beloved
embodies a dichotomy between the inside and the outside at several layers of analysis. The
inside has been related to the past. The outside to the present in opposition. We notice the
threshold (Eliade, 1963) between the worlds of the dead, respectively of the living. Beloved, by
taking the characters in a journey back to their past experiences, functions as a representative of
their past that makes them face it in order to: make them feel it; liberate them from its ghosts.
This process has been defined as a painful but fruitful one. The characters lose their fears.
They are capable of expressing their feelings. At a more social level, the characters associate the
inside with themselves: the family living at 124 Bluestone Road. The outside is associated to
everything that lies outside. Denver’s awareness of this dichotomy is telling, when talking about
the reasons that lead her mother to kill her sister 47. Denver is referring: back to slavery days; the
45
“The job she started out with, protecting Beloved from Sethe, changed to protecting her mother from Beloved ...
Denver knew it was on her”.
46
“Paul D convinced me there was a world out there and that I could live in it. Should have known better. Did know
better. Whatever is going on outside my door ain't for me. The world is in this room. This here's all there is and all
there needs to be”.
47
“Whatever it is, it comes from outside this house, outside the yard, and it can come right on in the yard if it wants
to. So I never leave this house and I watch over the yard”.

16
way in which the slaveholders carne in their yard to capture her family, which was the cause of
her mother's killing.
This threat that lurked in the air in slavery days is gone. It has been internalized and
generalized to any outside world, including the black community. It is this same character who
steps out into the world to bring help in. Denver’s transformation is affected by Beloved's
influence over her mother. This is destructive. She is conscious of the urgent need to find a
solution to this problem48. The precariousness of their lives leads her back to the community as
the only possibility of survival for them. Beloved can be interpreted as a collective voice or
memory by means of which the characters can return safely to their beginnings. Because she has
a more objective viewpoint, Denver realizes that Beloved is not in danger. Sethe is. Beloved
demands. Sethe gives. Denver begins “protecting her mother from Beloved”. Denver slowly
understands49.
The beginning of Denver's initiation comes in her: awakening to herself; movement away
from Beloved and Sethe, towards the outside world in which she finally takes part.
Denver has now arrived at that knowledge. Armed with new-found strength from the
community's support, Denver decides50. Denver realizes that, before she can save Sethe, she must
save herself51.
It is Nelson Lord who affirms Denver's self52. This one sentence, equating Denver' with a
self “[opens] her mind”, allows her to participate within the community. Denver's assertion of
herself awakens the community to its self as well. As Denver reminds the women of her mother's
deed eighteen years before, she also reminds them of their responsibility for and responses to that
deed, their part in the tragedy that unfolded. This sign of reciprocity from the community, their
respect for Denver, awakens their sense of responsibility. In a sign of true community, the
women gather to help Sethe and Denver for the first time in eighteen years. With their sound, the
community reclaims Sethe and Denver, while “leaving Beloved behind. Alone. Again”53. Denver,
as the strong, quiet chief, restores the harmony between 124 and the community. She is able to

48
“Somebody had to be saved, but unless Denver got some work, there would be no one to save, no one to come
home to; and no Denver either. It was a new thought, having a self to look out for and preserve”.
49
she must “leave the two behind and go ask somebody for help”.
50
to “do the necessary ... to stop relying on kindness ... hire herself out somewhere”.
51
“It was a new thought, having a self to look out for and preserve”.
52
“Take care of yourself, Denver”.
53
Interesting enough, bassist-guitarist-vocalist Mike Rutherford has a song called Alone Tonight on a music album
(Genesis, 1980). The lyrics “Alone again” are recurrent in the chorus of that song. Please see in the Appendices.

17
do so because she first restores the harmony between me and us, between herself and the
community. Beloved refuses to acknowledge the reciprocity between self and community. She
does not understand that the self, less the community, is “empty ... Alone”.

II.2. Problem analysis in chapters 19-25

Beloved can travel on land and in the water. Her first physical appearance in the novel is
when she “walk[s] out of the water”. Beloved demonstrates special powers. She disappears in the
cold house with Denver. Beloved can claim an unusual birth. Beloved is born when she takes on
a physical form and walks out of the water, fully grown. If Beloved's birth is considered to be her
emergence from the water, she is walking then as well. Beloved is driven by a “reckless
ambition”. She wants to take back her life by “joining” with Sethe. Beloved has not received
mahano. She cannot distinguish right from wrong. Morrison portrays Beloved's actions in terms
of opposition and violence. As Beloved grows in strength, all of her interactions with Sethe
become challenging and destructive. She: “complains”; “takes”.
Beloved explains54. The mother-daughter struggle drives Beloved. Beloved possesses
supernatural powers. She returns from the dead. Beloved is a monomaniac. She has one goal: to
reclaim her life by 'joining' with Sethe. She does not care whom she hurts as long as she is
successful. She drives away Paul D. She eventually alienates Denver, the loving sister who
nursed her back to life and guarded her secret. Beloved employs mental and emotional trickery to
defeat Sethe. Beloved does not engage in direct physical combat with Sethe. She capitalizes on
her mother's sense of guilt and love in order to wear Sethe down. Beloved could have chosen
simply to kill Sethe. The strangling in the Clearing is evidence of this. She displaces Sethe55.
The development of the characters can be seen as following different stages: from
searching in the inside part of their past history to the outside flow of their feelings; from the
inside of their family life to the outside of their community that claims them back.
Their individual and familial processes become also a communitarian process. The
exorcism of the past is completed in a communitarian purification: “For Sethe it was as though
the Clearing had come to her with all its heat and simmering Ieaves, where the voices of women
searched for the right combination, the key, the code, the sound that broke the back of words.
Building voice upon voice until they found it, and when they did it was a wave of sound wide
54
“I wait on the bridge because she is under it”.
55
“The bigger Beloved got, the smaller Sethe became”.

18
enough to sound deep water and knock the pods of chesnut trees. It broke over Sethe and she
trembled like the baptized in its wash”.
It is in this scene the community unites itself to defeat the evil that has trapped them. They
are: loaded with their past; unable to deal with it; unable to forget it; stuck in a present that had
witnessed the loss of their ancestral values that were based on: loving, caring and had found no
replacement for them.
Beloved becomes the mother, Sethe the child. The possession is complete. The community
does not approve of Beloved's violent and destructive actions. The women of the community
believe Beloved has gone too far in whipping Sethe every day. They find their spokesperson in
Ella. She thinks Beloved has exceeded her proper place in life56. The community does not view
Beloved's actions as imitable or positive. She has overstepped her bounds, demanded too much.
She values herself above the community. Beloved does not become the true chief. That journey
is left to Denver. This progression is noticeable in her. Selfishness, possessiveness motivate her.
She transcends these desires as she undergoes her initiation into mahano. In Morrison's novel,
mahano means understanding the difference between the self and the community, creating a
mutually hospitable environment for both. Individuals must interact in the community while still
retaining their separate identities. Beloved's final destruction comes because she does not
understand this delicate balance. Denver learns this lesson, transcending the role of hero to
become the chief. In fulfilling her destiny as the true chief, Denver recognizes her: true self; her
role within the community.
Her initiation process begins when Denver is excluded from Sethe's and Beloved's games.

II.3. The logical link of the current to the previous and next parts
Beloved is disremembered. She is not a part of the community57. She is forgotten. Denver
will not be forgotten. She has endured her initiation rite and has matured into a fine young
woman.
Denver's maturity is evidenced in her last encounter with Paul D. Once her mortal enemy,
Paul D affirms Denver's new identity with his observation 58. Denver recognizes that Sethe needs

56
“As long as the ghost showed out from its ghostly place, shaking stuff...Ella respected it. But if it took flesh and
came in her world, well, the shoe was on the other foot... This was an invasion”.
57
“Although she has claim, she is not claimed”.
58
“You grown”

19
Paul D, and encourages him to return to her. Where Beloved brought death, Denver brings life.
As Beloved meant destruction, Denver promises hope and harmony for the community. Beloved's
selfishness helped teach Denver mahano. Sethe is reduced59. Once the physical weakening is
complete, Beloved preys on Sethe's feelings of guilt, compelling her to explain her actions that
day in the woodshed. When Sethe's life-force becomes vulnerable, Beloved begins to join with
Sethe, confident she “will not lose her again”. If it were up to Sethe and Beloved, this symbiotic
relationship would continue until Beloved drained Sethe's life-force. The more Beloved takes, the
more Sethe gives, yielding everything “without a murmur”. Trapped in overwhelming guilt,
Sethe does not “want forgiveness given; she [wants] it refused”. Because Sethe does not stop
Beloved, Beloved continues to feed on her, growing fat, as Sethe slowly withers away. The
ghost-daughter has succeeded in displacing Sethe's life-force 60. By claiming Sethe's life-force,
Beloved oversteps her bounds. As heroine, Denver's adversary is Beloved. At first possessive of
Beloved, Denver eventually realizes61. Denver sees the destruction Beloved is bringing to 12462.
Denver consults the women of the community, through Lady Jones. This interaction with
the community allows Denver to understand the power of a self. She realizes that unless she gets
work “there would be no one to save, no one to come home to, and no Denver either”. Whereas
Beloved's power comes from taking Sethe's self, Denver's comes from discovering her own.
Denver furthers her identity as heroine by simply presenting her new power, herself, to the
community. The community recognizes this self, approves of it 63. Through Denver's actions, the
community realizes that Beloved is overstepping her bounds. Beloved belongs to the “ghostly
place”, not to the world of the living. There are lines to be drawn between the individual's rights
and the community's. There are lines between the living and the dead (Eliade, 1963). Ella
acknowledges that “you can't just up and kill your children,” but that the “children can't just up
and kill the mama” either. This “practical woman” asserts that “what's fair ain't necessarily
what's right”. In a world where black men and women were slaves to a white master, these same
people should not have to be slaves to their own mistakes. What is past is past. Ella does not
“like the idea of past errors taking possession of the present”. When a “little communication”
59
to “pick-eating around the edges of the table and stove: the crusts and rinds and peelings of things,” until the flesh
between Sethe's “forefinger and thumb fade[d]”
60
“Beloved bending over Sethe looked the mother, Sethe the teething child”
61
“the job she started out with, protecting Beloved from Sethe, changed to protecting her mother from Beloved”
62
“since neither Beloved nor Sethe seemed to care what the next day might bring ... Denver knew it was on her”
63
“The daughter, however, appeared to have some sense after all. At least she had stepped out the door, asked for
the help she needed and wanted work”

20
between the ghost world and the human world becomes “an invasion”, Ella convinces the others
that a “rescue [is] in order”. The women of the community effectively defeat Beloved by
restoring Sethe's rightful life-force. Beloved has proven herself to be a heroine. Through
Beloved's desire to increase her life-force, Denver and the other women realize the
disequilibrium in the community and strive to restore the harmony. Denver becomes a catalyst
for the community's actions. She increases her life-force in an acceptable way. She performs
actions beyond her means when she “step[s] off the edge of the world” and enters the
community. She succeeds. Unlike Beloved, she is acting to help others. She does not take
another's life-force to increase her own. She adds to the community's life-force by restoring
harmony between 124 and the community. The hero does not succeed alone. The community
must play a role in the process. Morrison complicates this role by portraying the community
ambiguously. The day after the party at 124, the community is envious of Baby Suggs and Sethe.
This envy is an indication that the community must shoulder some of the responsibility for
the tragedy at 124. The community's pride prevents them from warning Sethe about
schoolteacher.
Yet in reversal, Sethe's pride seems to be what upsets them the most 64. The community also
alienates Paul D because they think “he's a touch proud”. The community ostracizes those who
are too proud. The community is guilty of this sin. The balance between the individual and the
community is disrupted, not necessarily because of the individual's actions. Morrison suggests
that the balance can be restored when the community and the individual relinquish their pride.
She implies that asking, not taking, is the key to a harmonious community. When Stamp Paid
accuses Ella of being inhospitable to Paul D, Ella answers65. When Denver asks the community
for help, they offer it willingly. Asking involves two-way communication. Denver accomplishes
this when she asks for help. Beloved never asks for anything. She simply takes66.
Selfish, greedy, Beloved does not reconcile fadenya and badenya. She is not accepted by
the community. Morrison intertwines the supernatural and the natural. Beloved is a supernatural
character. Not only is she a ghost, but she also possesses supernatural powers. She: returns from

64
“[Ella] understood Sethe's rage in the shed twenty years ago, but not her reaction to it, which Ella thought
wasprideful”.
65
“can't nobody read minds long distance. All he has to do is ask somebody”.
66
“it was Beloved who made demands...[she] invented desire”.

21
the dead; knows about things she could not know (like Sethe's earrings); disappears into thin air
(in the storehouse with Denver); uses these powers to increase her life-force.
After driving Paul D away, she feeds on Sethe 67. Contrasting this magical character is the
human Denver: vulnerable, lonely, afraid to love, afraid not to love.
Denver cannot understand her mother's actions. Like Beloved, Denver is victimized by
Sethe.
She overcomes this victimization through human courage, strength, rather than through
magic.
Beloved tries to survive by claiming another self. Denver survives by claiming herself.
Denver is more successful. As Morrison herself admits, she is interested in survival. Denver
successfully increases her life-force by discovering the human power of herself. Finding and
asserting this self, Morrison illustrates, enables Denver to endure and even triumph in the
African-American community. As is common in African societies, Denver gathers courage from
a conversation with her dead grandmother. Baby Suggs tells Denver that although there is no
defense against whites, thus against fear itself, Denver must nevertheless “know it, and go on out
the yard”.
Denver's initiation continues when she approaches Lady Jones for help 68. With her entreaty
for help comes Denver's acceptance into the community of women. The community accepts
Denver.
They did not accept Sethe. Denver, unlike her mother or Beloved, does not try to “do it all
alone”69.

67
“Beloved ate up [Sethe's] life, took it, swelled up with it, grew taller on it”.
68
It is Lady Jones's “baby, said softly and with such kindness, that inaugurated [Denver's] life in the world as a
woman”.
69
As Ella says, at least Denver “had stepped out the door, asked for the help she needed”.

22
 III
PART THREE: CHAPTERS 26-28 OF BELOVED

The refrain in the final section of the novel, repeated three times, changes in its third use 70.
The section, as well as the novel, culminates in the name of the girl that the section describes:
Beloved.
This name, the last word of the text, recalls the first word of the text, the title, returning
back to the beginning through the circular technique. This poetic and musical technique becomes
a trope for Morrison's narrative strategy. In the last section of the novel, Beloved, who has turned
out to be evil, is exorcised.

III.1. Announcing the theme for chapters 26-28

Flower symbolism, occurring throughout reinstates Beloved’s association with
Christological symbolism. It functions as a symbol of The Passion of Christ, re-figured in the
last sections of the narration; e.g., when Beloved offers Sethe some flowers71. These flowers,
symbols of death, appear as anthropomorphic in Morrison’s text. They are: stuck, pierced,
wounded just like a body under flagellation.

III.2. Problem analysis in chapters 26-28

Morrison’s text is dense with references to Christ. This is not random. As an African-
American person writing about slavery, she must have known about religion too. The final part
of the novel refigures the Passion of Christ, which is represented not only through Christological
imagery, but also through use of numerology and flower imagery. Morrison portrays Beloved
through Christ’s emblems72. Morrison’s reference to women’s hair is an essential feature to
describe their physical and symbolic status. Hair is a main signifier of black identity. In Beloved,
the author adopts it to assert the character’s metaphorical identity. Morrison depicts Beloved as a
Jesus through her hair, bearing a Christological symbolism. At the end of the novel, Beloved,

70
“It was not a story to pass on” becomes “This is not a story to pass on”.
71
“[s]he filled basket after basket with the first things warmer weather let loose in the ground—dandelions, violets,
forsythia—presenting them to Sethe, who arranged them, stuck them, wound them all over the house”.
72
“vines of hair twisted all over her head. Jesus. Her smile was dazzling”.

23
thought to be disappeared, was seen cutting through the woods as “a naked woman with fish for
hair”.
This reference validates the assumption of Beloved being a re-figuration of Christ. By
positing Beloved as a Christ-figure, Morrison insists upon the enormity of the betrayal of
collective memory in the postmodernist isolation of the Holocaust. This is the defining moment
that illuminates the bankruptcy of the Enlightenment project. Fusing an inverted version of the
Christian tradition with the narrative of African-American history, Morrison problematizes our
notions of post-colonialism.

III.3. The logical link of the current to the previous part

The Clearing, carried out by the women of the community, bears a connection with the
Passion narrative. Similarities recall the flagellation and the Crucifixion of Christ73. At three in
the afternoon, thirty women walked toward 124 to exorcise Beloved. It is a Friday. This is the
day in the week when Christ was killed. At the age of thirty-three, Jesus was condemned to death
and crucified, He died on a Friday on the ninth hour. This is three in the afternoon. The Friday in
question is the Good Friday that is observed by Christians74. On the Good Friday, the Roman-
Catholic Church prescribes that one should not: bake, cook, eat meat, clean the house.
Abstention and fast should be observed as a sign of respect and mourning for the death of
Jesus.
The scene shifts to a minor character, Edward Bodwin, the old white man whose arrival
echoes that of slavers. His presence reawakens memory for Sethe, who attempts to kill him.
Bodwin’s past is recalled. 30 years ago, he used to live in 124 Bluestone Road as a child 75. To
Bodwin are connected the main symbols of Christ’s Flagellation: chains (fetters). Bodwin is
portrayed holding “a whip in his hand”. This image confirm the previous assumption. The whip
(scourge) is yet another symbol of the Passion. Bodwin was not a slaver. We have a metonymic

73
“So thirty women made up that company and walked slowly, slowly toward 124. It was three in the afternoon on a
Friday”.
74
“They could have been going to do the laundry at the orphanage or the insane asylum; corn shucking at the mill;
or to clean fish, rinse offal, cradle white babies, sweep stores, scrape hog skin, press lard, case-pack sausage or hide
in tavern kitchens so white people didn’t have to see them handle their food. But not today”.
75
“There was a time when he buried things there. Precious things he wanted to protect … Where, exactly, was the
box of tin soldiers? The watch chain with no watch? … Now he just wanted to know where his soldiers were and his
watchless chain”.

24
displacement in Sethe’s eyes. He recalls the arrival of her slave master to 124, which resulted in
Beloved’s killing.
When Sethe hears the music sung by the thirty women assembled outside 124, she was
“wringing a cool cloth to put on Beloved’s forehead”. The girl was “sweating profusely”. This
image is a reference to one of the fourteen stations of Christ’s journey to the Calvary. Beloved,
who in this section becomes the girl Jesus, is on her way to be crucified. Beloved is naked76. The
adjectives thunderblack and straight deserve attention. They have implications. Straight alludes
to the unbroken legs of Christ. Thunderblack is Morrison’s first mention of Beloved’s blackness
in the novel. Beloved is a black, pregnant-like woman, progenitor of eternal life, crucified by her
community. After Beloved has been exorcised, the community is depicted 77. The image of a hill
is connected to the Passion of Christ. It is the place where he was crucified. It was on the
Calvary, the Hebrew Golgotha, a hill, where his cross was erected between those of two thieves
who were crucified at the same time. Once Beloved is gone, 124 Bluestone Road is a realm of
silence. Denver goes off to work every day. Sethe lies in bed, wanting to let herself die. Paul D,
who had been Sethe’s lover, hears from Denver and the rest of the community about her. He
decides to pay her a visit. When he gets to 124 the house looks surreal. Beloved’s leaving has left
a mark. The description of the house is filled with: symbols, discarded past memories, allusions
to the preceding events78.
This image evokes Christ nailed on the cross. “dead ivy twines around bean poles and door
handles” embrace the house like a spider web. It holds it as in a deadly grip. Although the
chrysanthemum blooms in November, Morrison included it in “the riot of late-summer flowers”
in the back of 124 Bluestone Road. In the Roman-Catholic symbolism, the chrysanthemum is
“the flower of the Dead”. All denote an absence. Everything signifies that something is over.
Somebody is gone. The place is “stone quiet”. When Paul D wanders around the house, he
realizes that “something is missing from 124”. It is not only the missing child. It is “something
larger than the people who lived there. Something more than Beloved or the red light”.
Something changed since the last time Paul D visited 12479. Whatever was locking him is now

76
“[Beloved] had taken the shape of a pregnant woman, naked and smiling in the heat of the afternoon sun.
Thunderblack and glistening she stood on long straight legs, her belly big and tight. Vines of hair twisted all over
her head”.
77
“a pile of people out there. They make a hill. A hill of black people falling”.
78
“Faded newspaper pictures nailed to the outhouse on a tree”.
79
“In the place where once a shaft of sad red light had bathed him, locking him where he stood, is nothing”.

25
over. With Beloved are gone: the burden of past is gone; the ghost of slavery; Paul D’s inability
to remember; his reluctance to tell.
He feels that something is missing80. This sentence is constituting a reminiscence of the
episode when Mary of Magdala, visiting Jesus’ empty tomb, saw the first Appearance of Christ.
When she recognizes his spirit, she attempts to touch it. Jesus asks her to not. Paul D realizes
that it is impossible for him to finger this presence. He perceives that 81. This evokes the final
episode of Christian history, the Last Judgment, the Doomsday. The Resurrected Christ rewards
or punishes the living and the dead: “To the right of him, where the door to the keeping room is
ajar, he hears humming. Someone is humming a tune. Something soft and sweet, like a lullaby.
Then a few words. Sounds like high Johnny, wide Johnny. Sweet William bend down low. Of
course, he thinks. That’s where she is - and she is. Lying under a quilt of merry colors. Her hair,
like the dark delicate roots of good plants, spread all over on the pillow. Her eyes, fixed on the
window, are so expressionless he is not sure she will know who he is. There is too much light
here in this room. Things look sold. Jackweed raise up high, she sings. Lambswool over my
shoulder, buttercup and clover fly. She is fingering a long clump of her hair”
This representation of Sethe as an innocent maid evokes Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Before dying, the young Ophelia sings refrains of songs of death and love. Ophelia’s song
is echoed by Sethe’s “high Johnny, wide Johnny. Sweet William bend down low. […] Jackweed
raise up high, […] Lambswool over my shoulder, buttercup and clover fly”. Names of flowers
are woven into Sethe’s song, expanding its allusions. Ophelia’s discourse is dense with flower
symbolism. To the right of Paul D lays Sethe humming a lullaby. In the frame of the Last
Judgement, she is on the right, among the safe souls. The lambswool over her shoulder is a hint
of her being safe, among lambs, pure souls. Sethe is freed from the slavery of her memories. She
has been redeemed by her guilt of killing her memories. Toni Morrison has placed a matricide
among innocents. The binary structure upon which the western culture is based, the dichotomy of
innocence and guilt, is dismantled. The homecoming of Beloved as memory is an opportunity for
Sethe to work through her past in order to reclaim the present and look at the future. Beloved, is a
sacrificed, black Christ, a redeemer for the community. Beloved becomes a story of redemption
based on memory. The ritual of exorcism on the body of Beloved is an act of awareness of the
back-kick of history on the part of the community: the Flagellation; the Passion; the Crucifixion.
80
“he can’t put his finger on it”
81
“beyond his knowing is the glare of an outside thing that embraces while it accuses”

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 All this is an act of working through the past, of dealing with it. There is a sense of the
effort on the characters' part to detach themselves from their past of slavery by trying to forget
everything related to it. But it is by confronting it that the characters are capable of dealing with
the present reality of their lives, of understanding their relation to their community, to the outside
world.

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 CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE WORK

We specify the way: each chapter, the demonstration, the overall argument covered the aim
of what was intended to demonstrate/analyze in the Introduction. In Beloved, Morrison is
interested in survival, not just of the individual. She is committed to the survival of the African-
American community. Morrison's use and revision of the African heroic epics illustrate her
preoccupations with cultural formation, preservation. She highlights the importance of
storytelling as a way to gather the community and endorse its values. Her novel becomes a
cultural record. She positions women and their stories at the center of her narrative in order to
give voice to their contributions to community and culture. It helps answer Morrison's call for a
more Afrocentric approach to her novels.

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 REFERENCES

1. Del Mar Gallego Durán, M. (1994). Community and Love: Understanding the Past in
Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos, no. 3JJ-17.
2. Eliade, M. (1963). The Sacred and the Profane. Harvest, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.
New York. Translated from French by Willard R. Trask
3. Genesis (1980). Duke. Charisma/Atlantic
4. Morrison, T. (1987). Beloved. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
5. Palladino, M. (2008). History, Postcolonialism and Postmodernism in Toni Morrison’s
Beloved. In Neither East Nor West: Postcolonial Essays on Literature, Culture and
Religion. Shands, K.W. (Ed.) Huddinge: Södertörns högskola: 53-63.
6. Rummell, K. (2002). Toni Morrison's "Beloved": Transforming the African Heroic Epic.
The Griot 21:1 Spring 1-15
7. YES (2001). Magnification. Eagle (UK)/Beyond Music (US). All songs by Jon
Anderson, Steve Howe, and Alan White.

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 APPENDICES

Yes “Soft as a Dove” from the album “Magnification” (2001)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF4g8vhMPjk&ab_channel=LuisFernandoTartaglioni

Yes “Spirit of Survival” from the album “Magnification” (2001)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2CDIPwpgj4&ab_channel=RolloInferior

Genesis “Alone Tonight” from the album “Duke” (1980)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUL3Zy6jxAY&ab_channel=moonlitknight009

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