Beloved p. 3-51

           In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, the timeline of the novel switches back and forth between the past and the present. Sethe, now escaped and living on Bluestone Road in Cincinnati, Ohio, lives with her daughter, Denver, because the rest of her children and her grandmother have died. She reflects on memories of her previous life as a slave, talking about her children, others she worked alongside, and how she escaped while pregnant. She also talks about they way she was treated and experiences she remembers. 

In these pages, I have noticed some themes/motifs. First, color is very important. Sethe says that Baby Suggs, “used the little energy she had left for pondering color” (Morrison 6) while she lay in her sickbed. Color was the only thing that brought her some relief and happiness, and she noticed splashes of color in her life, such as the blue of the sky and the lavender of the cloth that Sethe often brought into the house for her. Color is also discussed when Paul D. walks into Sethe’s house, and he notices things such as “the blue-and-white wallpaper” and “discreet flecks of yellow sprinkled among a blizzard of snow-drops all backed by blue” (13). I think the emphasis on color is important because it represents how skin color separated people in this time. They spend time describing color because there was such an emphasis on how it made people different from others and allowed for people to justify slaveholding. I also think that color is significant to the characters in the novel because it pertains to a sensory experience which is how people conjure up memories. Throughout this novel, we are given glimpses into Sethe’s life before her escape through her memories, so I think that colors help the characters connect with the stories of their pasts as well. 

Another important symbol in these chapters is that of ghosts. Sethe talks about how her children and grandmother have died, but how their presence is still felt. The opening lines state that, “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom,” (3) and later Paul D. asks Sethe, “What kind of evil you got in here?” (10). The characters who are still living are in a sense haunted by the ghosts of their past. Those who have passed away harbour rage and anger for their situations and the circumstances of their deaths, and because of this their spirits are still felt. I also think the concept of ghosts of the past and being haunted by things that are no longer there relates to the novel as a whole because Sethe is unable to escape these horrible memories of slavery and how her life was like before. Like the ghosts of those who have died, Sethe struggles to move on and is almost caught between worlds as she tries to push past the awful events she has endured in her life. We also see that the title of the book also comes from what was inscribed on Sethe’s baby’s headstone “Beloved.”

There is irony in the name “Sweet Home” as that was the name of the farm they lived and worked on while enslaved. The idea of home in this novel is important because “Sweet Home” was anything but sweet, however, it is where Sethe made some lasting connections, such as the one she shares with Paul D. Now, she lives in a house which is haunted by the spirit of her child, and she is trying to make it her home, but Denver despises living there and wants to leave to go somewhere else. Sethe is hesitant to leave because she is tired of running as she has been running all her life. She struggles to find a place that can truly be home because she now has a house, but it is not filled with relatives or friends, only loneliness and almost emptiness.