Honor's Novel #1

Identity to Be Found

Beloved by Toni Morrison depicts a character that is caught between colliding cultures of the past she lived and the present life she is living now. Sethe’s conflict clash is trying to find who she is and moving on from the past that she cannot forget. The main character Sethe goes through a time in her life where everything that had overwhelmed her twenty years earlier comes back to her again. 

In the beginning of the story Paul D, a man whom Sethe hadn’t seen in 20 years, shows up at her home. Paul D brought back the passion and love that she had once felt for her husband who disappeared. Paul D had a promising love for her until he found out that Sethe had murdered her own daughter. The images of her three children who had been lost in her mind years before, came back to remind her of what she had done. With these memories causing so much hurt and regret, Sethe’s daughter Beloved reappeared which only made things worse.

 With Paul D reentering her life, everything from Sethe’s past came back to her. This also literally included her daughter whom she had murdered. All the horrible events and occurrences that Sethe had left behind two decades before, came back to haunt her until something so real as the daughter she murdered entering her life again. It had been 19 years later and the daughter who had been lost so many years ago came back to reinforce the regret upon Sethe. Beloved sang the songs her mother had sung to her, she knew about the earrings Baby Suggs had given Sethe and she had the identity of someone who Sethe couldn’t quite recognize.

While Beloved represents Sethe’s past, Denver represents the present and future for Sethe. Denver is Sethe’s youngest child and the one who Sethe prided herself to live for and be made into her entire life. While Sethe couldn’t make Beloved’s life the best that it could be, she made sure that she lived for Denver and filled her life to its fullest. Although Denver loved her mother very much, she was always afraid of the acts in her mother’s past. When Beloved comes along, Denver and her become close, as if they had been sisters their whole life.

Sethe eventually got to a point where she let her entire past overtake her and she ended up being so caught up in her regret that she literally would do anything to make it better. Sethe felt so bad about what she had done to her daughter that she wanted to make things better and have Beloved forgive her. She becomes so consumed with Beloved that she literally did everything for this woman. Beloved began holding her mother hostage in their home and she would not let her leave. The months and weeks that the two were in Sethe’s home, the characters did a character swap with each other. Sethe became so weak and so fragile while taking care of her daughter and Beloved became the motherly figure to Sethe.  Denver had seen this happening and went for help.

The character of Beloved and Sethe contrasted each other and Beloved was used to help Sethe become content with her past and to move on from what had happened. Sethe subjected herself to the captivity of Beloved. When she actually faced her past instead of hiding from it, her past went away. Well at least the fear of her past disappeared. Sethe had been living years and years of a fear that she didn’t want to deal with. When the opportunity came up for her to forget she started off cowering from the past but then faced it head on.