In the fictional writing world, Toni Morrison’s Beloved could be categorized in the horror genre. Horror is meant to instigate fear and dread for our fictional characters. Beloved is a great American horror novel. Except Beloved is not just a fictional story, it’s a horror story based on the American institution of slavery. Furthermore, it’s a story based on a real event; Morrison based Beloved on a Cincinnati murder case in which a mother’s sacrifice of her children to keep them from being returned to slavery; thus exploring what happens to a human being who has been pushed to the wall and drilled through it. Who comes out of the other side of the fence? Is it the same person, are they even human anymore?
There are fundamental themes running throughout the story, but the primary driving force behind them is the theme of sacrifice and its consequences. Sethe is the main character who we learn has done a despicable act to prevent the inevitable. Fifteen years before the start of the story, Sethe killed her infant daughter, trying to keep her from being brought back into slavery. It’s easy for us readers to question this act by the protagonist, and Morrison assists us with this judgment by pointing out that the black community Sethe leaves in knows what she did, and all have frowned her and avoid her since the incident. Many think she is mad. However, when digging deeper into the character, it is easier to see how the severities of the characters’ actions are built on the psychological trauma of their past that has left not just Sethe. Still, everyone around them scarred in one way or another. Through these experiences, we are meant to understand that Sethe scarified her love and compassion for her kid to ensure she does not end up in her shoes.
In Beloved, the past sexual abuse and exploitation haunt each of the characters (Barnett). We see this for example in Paul D. who has decided to hide his experience with rape in “that tobacco tin buried in his chest where a red heart used to be” (Morrison), Denver, Sethe’s is so afraid of sexual exploitation she has become a hostage in her own home. Nonetheless, I observed that the story tries to piece together past incidents through memories characters have been attempting so had to repress and live telling to try and explain what pushes the main character to undertake such an inhumane action and whether it was justified. Sethe killed her two-year-old daughter to ensure that a white man would never get a chance to “dirty” her daughter as those two young men who violated her womanhood and robbed her any decency she had as a woman, “one sucking on [her] breast the other holding [her] down” (Morrison). But now there is a ghost that can’t be ignored, and the past must be revisited to give each character a chance to come with terms to the ugly truth of the effect this traumatizing experiences had on them. The past has to be overcome in order for them to accept themselves fully as humans.
The beauty in realizing the sacrifice in the book is its nonlinear form of storytelling. As a reader, I never entirely at any given time grasp where the story is coming from nor its real intended end. In fact, the ending is ambiguous to provide you with a sense of frustration with the whole situation. The story is shuttered and mostly left for the reader to fill in from past fragments. This gives the past the same magnitude as the present. As a reader, I had to sacrifice my need for the neat conclusion and linear storytelling in order to follow and consider the worth of each character since none is playing second fiddle character in the story.
Sacrifices have consequence which is the thick of the story. Both the past and the present of Sethe are affected by her sacrifice. When she killed her daughter, the immediate consequence was going to jail, losing whatever freedom she had left. Her past in the story is vividly represented by Beloved a Mulata woman who comes to live with Sethe and Paul D and reminds Sethe of her daughter. But Beloved is a representation of Sethe past which she admits to Denver that, “Some things just stay” (Morrison) and that nothing stays dead. Beloved, like her past, sucks everything from her. She stops paying attention to Denver, her daughter, fights with Paul D, a man willing to love her, who picks and leaves and she stops going to work and instead stays at home to be near Beloved. The first thing I noticed about this scene was how Beloved a representation of her past was also quite similar to slavery. Slavery had also striped Sethe everything and every character has something they have lost to slavery. Paul lost his masculinity, Baby Sugg has lost her spirituality, and Denver lost her mother’s love. With Beloved, Sethe sacrifices everything necessary to her to serve her past. In today’s America, we can see daily how our need to hold on to the past is hurting present generation and the suffering of the black male, a stain from our history that has refused to go away. Due to the past emancipation of black male, even today, young kids are being shot just for being black. “That is the burden of black boys in America and the people that love them: running the risk of being descended upon in the dark and caught in the cross-hairs of someone who crosses the line.” Says Charles M. Blow of the New York Times after the shooting of Trayvon Martin, a teenager in Florida. I wish I could say this was an isolated incident, but it’s not, and America keeps on getting sucked back to its past while ignoring the advances we have made over the past century.
Paul D. is Sethe antidote. Once he showed up the ghost in Sethe house disappeared, and once the manifestations of that ghost show up, he leaves. Clearly, Morrison meant for him to be the light to pull Sethe out of her dark emptiness. But Paul is damaged too, and slavery in the chain gang has taken a toll on him. ‘But wasn’t any way I’d ever be Paul D again, living or dead. Schoolteacher changed me. I was something else, and that something was less than a chicken sitting in the sun on a tub.” (8.102-103) Paul has been broken to the point of feeling worthless than a farm chicken. While Beloved is a manifestation of Sethe’s being forced to revisit her shameful past, Paul is the epitome of redemption. He holds the key to Sethe’s finding herself just like she has the power to restore him as a man, something he has no sense of. But Paul also shows the importance of a community around Sethe, a woman who has become a pariah in her own community.
Speaking of a community, slavery completely ruined it among the black community. Being treated like a commodity and never really having a sense of ownership for one’s mind and body destroys a man’s sense of worthiness, and few are willing to invest in building a community. But the chain gang also left a poor taste I Paul’s mouth since it was a forced community. One slip and everybody suffers for it. — “Look out,” meaning this might be the day I bay or eat my mess or run, and it was this last that had to be guarded against, for if one pitched and ran—all, all forty-six, would be yanked by the chain that bound them and no telling who or how many would be killed.” This is a man who has seen the underbelly of a community that has no humanity in it. So it’s not hard to conjure that fear every time he feels he needs to join in on the community. Maybe that’s what attracted him to Sethe, like him she understood what it feels like to be in a community not because one wants to be there but because they have nowhere else to go. Paul D. broken and exhausted by the community he was born into is willing to sacrifice his fears, doubts and past demons and try building one with Sethe and her daughter.” Paul D made a few acquaintances; spoke to them about what work he might find. Sethe returned the smiles she got. Denver was swaying with delight. And on the way home, although leading them now, the shadows of three people still held hands.” (Barnett)This is the closest this three have been happy as an individual up to this point in the book.
Motherly figure in the African American culture is an important theme of this novel. Sethe does not get an opportunity to be loved by her mother. Baby Suggs, too, does not give motherly love to her children despite being a mother of eight. When Sethe gets a chance to win freedom, she becomes a true mother to her children even to the ghost of Beloved. She showers motherly love which they were denied in the past. It is because African-American mothers were not allowed to breastfeed their kids during slavery. However, after winning freedom, Sethe tries to be a good mother to show every mother carry the same love towards their children.
Beloved is an intriguing story that has mirrored America in ways few have come close. Its observation of slaves who are flawed irredeemable even is a refreshing take on a subject that has always taken high morals overtones. Moreover, it’s a story that shows the complexities slavery had on the black community and how no matter what humans will find a way to redemption and the sacrifices it requires even to attempt to find solace in this cruel world the character find themselves in and as Paul D observes, “Sethe,” he says, “me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.” (Morrison). Could not agree more. Everybody deserves a better tomorrow.