Beloved by Toni Morrison

 Analysis of The Novel, "Beloved"

By Toni Morrison

• About the Novel:- "Beloved" is a 1987 novel by the American writer Toni Morrison. It is written in Aural-Narrative Technic, set after the American Civil War, it is inspired by the life of Margaret Garner, an African American who escaped slavery in Kentucky in late January 1856 by crossing the Ohio River to Ohio, a free state.

• About the Author:- Chole Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist, essayist, book editor, and college professor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she gained worldwide recognition when she was awarded the Novel Prize in Literature in 1933 for portraying the livelihood of Anglo-American People after the end of Civil War.

Characters

1. Sethe
2. Beloved
3. Paul D
4. Denver
5. Baby Suggs
6. Halle
7. Paul F
8. Paul A
9. Sixo
10. Stamp Paid
11. Schoolteacher
12. Amy Denver
13. Mr. Garner
14. Mrs. Garner
15. Edward Bodwin

Any many Others

Points, that we have to know before reading Beloved

• Beloved is written on a part of a series of novels on a major theme, Slavery.
• Beloved stitches out five outclassed themes; following on - Mother-Daughter Relationships, Psychological effects of Slavery, Definition of Manhood, Family Relationships, Pain.
• The novel's dedication reads "Sixty Millions and More", referring to the African and their descendants whole died as a result of the Atlantic Slave Trade.
• The Genre of this piece has a controversial detachment from other ones. But one can say that it is a brilliant psychological horror*.
• Beloved has been banned from five U.S. schools since 2007. It is banned for the common reasons for censorship including bestiality, sex, and violence. Twenty years after Beloved’s publication, in 1987, the novel was first banned from AP English classes at Eastern High School in Louisville, Kentucky because of the book’s mention of bestiality, racism, and sex.
• Some say the book discussed particular ritualism of slavery based on a voodoo subsidiary's chapter 4 part 1, The Antebellum Slavery.
• The base theme is Escape. For some of the characters, it is an escape from the brutal past, or for others, it is the true escape from reality.   

Lets's move on to the Analysis. From this particular book, I am not doing any scene-by-scene summary but rather I am trying to provide - chapter-wise Analysis of the plot. And I think with a proper idea about the text and its characters one could easily understand the views and points... 

Part I

Chapter 1

1. The novel begins with a description of the house, rather than any character, emphasizes the importance of the home to Sethe and her family. However, the haunting presence of Sethe's dead baby has disrupted any kind of ideal home, causing Howard and Burglar to flee from their own family. Baby Suggs, seeming depression and obsession with pondering color raises a mystery about just what could have pushed her into such a state.
2. Sethe and Denver's attempt to speak with the ghost sets the tone for the prevalence of supernatural episodes in the novel. The Ghost is one way in which Sethe's past continues to literally haunt her. As we will later learn, Sethe herself killed the baby, but the word "Beloved" on the baby's tombstone insists that Sethe still somehow cared for the child and was acting as a loving mother.
3. Baby Suggs' comment reminds the reader that the suffering of Sethe and her relatives is only a microcosm of the suffering of all the former slaves throughout the country. Sethe cannot help but remember her past life on the ironically named farm Sweet Home, which was anything but a sweet home to her and other slaves. The past, like the ghost, haunts her.
4. Paul D is another element of Sethe's past life at Sweet Home, and his arrival immediately dredges up the past, particularly Sethe's lost husband Halle.
5. Seeing Sethe also prompts Paul D to remember things from Sweet Home. All of the former slaves are haunted by the past, just like Sethe. Even he, who is not aware of Sethe's dead child, can feel its persistent presence in 124.
6. Paul D's recollection begins to show what life was like as a slave on Sweet Home. Although Mr. Garner was kinder than other slave-owners the slaves were still looked down upon and Baby Suggs' freedom as a human being had to be bought. Nonetheless, the slaves on Sweet Home form a kind of community as "Sweet Home Men".
7. Denver's relationship with her mother is so close that she gets jealous whenever she feels excluded from her in some way. Sethe's comment about the past emphasizes that memory is often involuntary.
8. Denver does not see Paul D as fitting into the home that she and Sethe have made. Sethe's refusal to move shows her attachment to 124, even with its haunting, or perhaps because of its haunting.
9. Sethe's memory is one of the novel's most horrifying episodes of life as a slave. The two white boys not only physically violate Sethe, but also take from her one of the most basic, physical ways of being a mother, robbing her children of their mother's breast milk. The boys essentially treat her like an animal - taking her milk as if from a cow. The memory stays with Sethe just as the physical scar remains on her back.
10. The spirit of Sethe's baby, representing the persistence of the past, does not allow Sethe even one moment of relaxation or pleasure. However, Paul D fights the house and can potentially help create a new order at 12, making it a different kind of home.
11. Even the young Denver is burdened by her past, as she misses the members of her family who have died or run away.

Chapter 2

1. Despite their physical intimacy, there is still a lot of past - things they do know and things they don't - that stand between them and make them shy. Sex is the easy part of the connection. Sethe's scar, a physical emblem of the painful past, causes Paul D to think of his own past.
2. Sethe's thoughts emphasize how slavery breaks up families and homes, separating children from their mothers.
3. As the two characters separately reconstruct their pasts, Sethe's unofficial marriage to Halle shows that the Garners did not consider their slaves worthy of the actual marriage. They may have been "kind" slave-owners, but they were still slave-owners who considered it acceptable to.
4. Amid all of Sethe's painful memories, the consummation of her marriage to Halle stands out as a small moment of pleasure, though they were forced to meet secretly out in the cornfields, as they lacked any privacy or room of their own.

Chapter 3

1. Denver's boxwood room is her own private place, a kind of refuge or home that she seeks away from the dysfunctional home of 124. The white dress with its arm around Sethe continues the idea of the haunting, and the way that the ghost seems both to depend on but also supports Sethe.
2. Denver is so steeped in her mother's storytelling that she can recall the story of her own birth as if she herself remembers it. Thus, Sethe's past lives on not only with her but with Denver as well. In extreme pain, Sethe persevered out of a motherly determination to reach her children.
3. The appearance of Amy saves Sethe's life. While Amy is white, her status as an indentured servant links her somewhat to Sethe as a slave. Their cooperation is a small example of how those oppressed and marginalized by society can come together as a community united by their difficulties.
4. Sethe's idea of "Rememory" encapsulates how the past continues to affect the characters in the novel. It is not just something from the past it is something that continues to recur. One person's "Rememory" can affect not only that person but other people as well, as exemplified by the ghost of Sethe's baby.
5. Through his book, the Schoolteacher attempts to define slaves on his own terms, without allowing to define slaves on his own terms, without allowing them to speak for themselves. This is one of the reasons for the importance of storytelling among slaves and ex-slaves, as a way of telling their own stories and keeping their own histories alive.
6. Paul D's arrival changes the familial arrangement of 124 as a household. The way Denver takes pride in the haunting shows how those who are different and made to feel separate because of it, can come to cling to the source of that difference and refuse help or compassion. Sethe, though, senses that Paul D may offer a way out of the cycle of "Rememory" and haunting in 124.
7. It is only when Sethe becomes able to tentatively think about the r\present and the future (as opposed to the past), she begins to recognize the lack of color in 124. Colour can be seen as symbolizing the vivacity in life, the enjoyment of the senses and the world around you - but Sethe and the house have been solely focused on and lost in the past.
8. Paul D's experience at Sweet Home and after have hardened him or forced him to harden himself so as not to be overwhelmed. But Sethe, whom he loved and desired even though she chose Halle (and he respected her choice of), reaches the parts of him that have been closed off, perhaps because he knew and loved her before he became closed off...
9. Sethe is protective of her only child left at 124, though she also wants to accommodate Paul D into her life. Sethe sees the past here as a kind of monster that can spring up and overwhelm someone, and she seems to see the past collectively - that the past of slavery and Sethe herself could overwhelm Denver and make her unable to face the present or future because of the horror of the past. And Denver is obsessed with the past - with her own birth.

Chapter 4

1. Paul D continues to disrupt the home environment of 124. His thought is that it is dangerous for Sethe to love Denver as much as she does allude to how slavery destroys mother-child relationships by separating families.
2. Sethe and Denver must make room for Paul D at 124 both literally and figuratively, fitting him into their lives. The segregation at the carnival is a small example of the widespread discrimination that ex-slaves like Sethe faced even after finding freedom.
3. As the three starts to get along, Sethe begins to think that they might be able to piece together a home and a family even after their traumatic pasts. Even the sort-of-supernatural image of the shadows holding hands seems to suggest good things to come. 

Chapter 5

1. The events surrounding the appearance of this woman suggest a symbolic rebirth: she comes up out of the water of the river and Sethe has a kind of birth-giving experience upon seeing her. This symbolism helps suggest that the mysterious woman is linked to Sethe's dead child.
2. Beloved's name again connects her to Sethe's dead child. Her mysterious appearance and wandering hardly astonishes Paul D or makes him think of anything supernatural, because of how many people slavery has separated from their families, which is itself a horrifying commentary on Slavery.
3. Just as Sethe, Paul, and Denver were beginning to feel comfortable as a group in 124, Beloved has again changed the dynamic of the home, attracting Denver's interest and attention.
4. Beloved's strange behavior contributes to the mystery surrounding this supernatural character and suggests that she may not be simply a fugitive ex-slave as Paul D thought but is perhaps related to Sethe's dead child. Denver lies because she is desperate to keep Beloved around to have a playmate, or perhaps Denver senses that Beloved is something more.

Chapter 6

1. Beloved's devoted attention is not normal. Her dependence on Sethe seems to be almost total, like the way a baby is dependent on its parent.
2. Beloved's love of storytelling associates her generally with memory and the past, as she encourages Sethe to revisit old Memories. Her knowledge of Sethe's own past, though, continues to indicate that she is associated with Sethe's dead baby.
3. Sethe's earrings are evidence of the relative kindness of the Garners. Nonetheless, the Garners still owned and exploited slaves. As a counterpoint to Schoolteacher, the Garners show that even seemingly kind slave-owners participated in a horrible, dehumanizing system of slavery.
4. Beloved continues to spur recollections of Sethe's past. Sethe's memories of her mother show how slavery separates children from their mothers, not allowing for close maternal relationships.
5. The in-discriminant killing of Sethe's mother along with other slaves shows how little slaves' lives were valued by their owners. The fact that Sethe could not even find her mother's body, nor know why her mother was killed, emphasizes her lack of a relationship with her own mother as well as her total lack of agency in her own life. Her life was full of questions because it was controlled by others, by slave-owners.
6. Beloved continues to operate as a force of memory, causing Sethe to remember something she had always forgotten or repressed. The story of her mother's journey from Africa evidences the cruelty of slavery that has persisted across generations. Sethe's mother's murder of her infants who were the products of rape by white slave traders is reminiscent of Sethe's own decision to kill her own children to save them from slavery.
7. Denver doesn't want to know about the past. She wants to know about her own past. Since she can't know about the further past, she wants her mother's past to start with her own birth.

Chapter 7

1. Beloved's origins remain mysterious. Her answer that she was looking for a "place she could be in" suggests that she, like many others in the novel, was searching for some kind of hoe. The bridge that Beloved speaks of can be interpreted as a bridge between this world and the next, as Beloved may possibly be an embodiment of Sethe's daughter returned from the dead.
2. Despite the strangeness of Beloved, none of the other characters yet fully recognize her as something supernatural, since the effects of slavery have driven so many people to go mad or lose their memories.
3. Intent on forming his own idea of a home with Sethe and Denver, Paul D wants Beloved out of 124. It is worth noting that while Paul D wants to focus on the future, all Beloved Cares about is the Past.
4. This addition to Sethe's memory deepens the cruelty of the boys who abused Sethe, since they did it in front of her own husband, driving him mad.
5. What appeared at first to be a story of one person's suffering(Sethe's) expands into a memory of the suffering of Sethe, Halle, and Paul D. This emphasizes that the sufferings of all the individual characters of the novel are not isolated, but are related to (and stand-in for) the suffering of all slaves, hundreds of thousands of slaves.
6. Sethe's past continues to overwhelm her, as Paul D adds to the slew of painful memories that she tries to keep at bay to think about the future. Though she wants to escape the past, she can't.
7. While remembering the past can be painful, there is potentially some cathartic value in sharing one's story, so Sethe offers Paul D the chance to do so. Paul D's Experience with the bit epitomizes the dehumanizing aspect of slavery, which treats people as animals, as less than animals.
8. Like Sethe, Paul D also struggles with the past. His burying memories and emotions in his metaphorical tobacco tin shows the importance of forgetting the past to survive, but also reveals the cost of this repression, as the hollow, unfeeling tobacco tin has replaced his heart. As Paul D and Sethe discuss their past they enact the opposite process, the painful effort to come back to life, to bring their memories back out into the open and face them, together, as they move forward.  

Chapter 8

1. Beloved's description of where she came from is still ambiguous. It can be interpreted as other-worldly (as Denver interprets it since she asks if Baby Suggs is there), but the dark, cramped space also recalls the Middle passage of slaves being brought by ship from Africa to America, which Beloved will later narrate. Beloved is thus again associated not only with Sethe's personal past but with the historical memory of slaves more generally.
2. Beloved's attachment to Sethe suggests that she may be somehow related to her dead child. Her intense desire for stories again associates her with forces of memory and the past.
3. Denver has heard the story of her birth so often from Sethe that if it is her own memory now. Amy transforms the welts on Sethe's back from something awful to something beautiful. Amy's search for carmine velvet seems to symbolize hope, perhaps an impossible hope. Sethe shares such a hope, though hers is to be free with her children, something more profound than some red velvet.
4. Denver's birth on the border that separates free from slave territory symbolizes her indeterminate place in between Sethe's past and Denver's potentially brighter future. Denver's name memorializes Amy's kindness, keeping the past alive in a positive way.

Chapter 9

1. Sethe's memories of Baby Suggs and the Clearing provide insight into the community of ex-slaves around 124 before the death of Sethe's child. It also raises the question of what happened to transform Baby Suggs from a communally loved religious figure into a depressive who cared only about little scraps of color, and what made the inhabitants of 124 now almost completely isolated from the surrounding community.
2. Baby Suggs' gatherings show the community coming together to deal with the lingering pain and consequences of slavery. Instead of speaking down to them with a dogmatic religious sermon, Baby Suggs simply gathers the community together and encourages them to love themselves, denying slavery's devaluation of them base on race.
3. Sethe's memories intrude on her involuntarily. The memory of her escape provides another example of the importance of relying on the help of a larger community for Sethe and other people in her position.
4. Whether from Baby Suggs or the spirit of Sethe's dead daughter, the fingers are another supernatural embodiment of Sethe's past. Sethe seeks comfort in the memory of Baby Suggs, but dwelling in memories is dangerous and can be constraining, just as the fingers are soothing at first, but then suffocating.
5. As Beloved rubs Sethe's neck soothingly, she is associated both with the ghost of Sethe's child and with Baby Suggs. Beloved can be seen as embodying various figures of Sethe's past.
6. Beloved's intense attachment to Sethe means that she opposes the new household arrangement at 124 with Paul D and Sethe. Meanwhile, Denver has a sense of Beloved's selfish neediness, which could lead her to do something like choke Sethe.
7. Sethe's murdering her child isolated Denver from the larger community, which would have given her some opportunity for both personal connection and a chance at a real future through education. It is not clear if Denver walks over to Beloved because she recalls how isolated she herself is and therefore feels sympathy for Beloved's own isolation, or if Denver senses that Beloved is connected to Sethe being a murderer.

Chapter 10

1. Paul D's experience on the chain gang is an example of the cruelty of slavery and also a symbolic microcosm of the institution of slavery: like the members of a chain gang, slaves are held together in bondage, but this shared oppression creates a strong community out of their shared suffering.
2. Again, the chain gang illustrates the importance of community in dealing with the horrors of slavery. Through singing, the prisoners express themselves in a way that their masters cannot understand, finding a small area of experience outside of their masters' control.
3. It is only by cooperating together that the prisoners can escape their bondage, just as slaves must rely on each other and the help of benevolent strangers (Amy) to find freedom. And yet, to escape, they also must slog through suffocating mud. This escape might be seen as a metaphor for Paul D and Sethe's attempted escape from their haunting pasts - that they must dive through it together to free themselves.
4. The Cherokee are a people as abused and disenfranchised as the slaves. Once free, Paul D does not know where to go, except generally north. He is free but without a home. After his painful experiences, Paul D had to put the past behind him and repress his memories to survive.

Chapter 11

1. Beloved beings to disrupt Paul D's attempt to finally have a stable home at 124. Beloved wants Sethe completely for herself
2. Paul D has felt a similar restlessness before, but this time is different, prompted by Beloved. He clearly wants to stay at 124 and create a home with Sethe.
3. Beloved's seduction of Paul complicates her identity. She can be seen as representing a harmful extreme of desire, as she exploits what each character wants most (a sister for Denver, a daughter for Sethe, a lover for Paul D). As Paul D's tobacco tin opens, he begins to succumb to his painful past.

Chapter 12

1. Beloved's "bridge" can be interpreted as a bridge between the living and the dead. Ella's experience provides another example of the cruelty of slavery and racism.
2. As Denver begins to see Beloved as her deceased sister, she becomes more and more attached to her. Beloved prompts Denver to recall her past, just as she spurred Sethe to tell stories of hers, emphasizing the connection between Beloved and the desire for storytelling and memory.
3. Beloved's desire to stay at 124 shows that she is perhaps searching for a home, just as Paul D is. Beloved curling up in the darkness recalls the dark place she describes earlier, filled with so many others. Now she seems to see herself in that place, whether she is an individual or a kind of agglomeration of all suffering slaves.

Chapter 13

1. Schoolteacher exemplifies the cruel treatment of slave-owners, which causes both physical and psychological pain to the extent that Paul D has internalized Schoolteacher's racist thinking, questioning his own worth as a man.
2. Paul D is unable to voice his concerns to Sethe, perhaps because he does not want to risk losing the possibility of having a home with her, even if it is a troubled one.
3. Once again, Beloved comes between Paul D and Sethe, obstructing their attempts to have a life together at 124.
4. Paul D's memory of the woman in Delaware shows an earlier example of his failed attempt to settle down at a home. Sethe's thoughts on motherhood emphasize the intense responsibility, hard work, love, vulnerability, and duty of being a mother.

Chapter 14

1. Whereas Denver is willing to have a home arrangement with Sethe and Paul D, Beloved is focused upon having Sethe all to herself, further her association both with overly extreme, harmful desire as well as with the selfish all-powerful need of a baby. Her strange behavior with her tooth again suggests that she is somehow supernatural or inhuman.

Chapter 15

1. Baby Suggs' worries exemplify the awful condition of slavery, as she is too anxious to celebrate any good fortune since she is accustomed to loss. Baby Suggs wants her own baby - Halle - to return to her.
2. The miraculous profusion of food recalls the biblical story of Jesus feeding 5000 men with just five loaves of bread and two fish. Yet the other townspeople, who have suffered or had family or friends who have suffered, come to see the feast as an excessive celebration or flaunting of her own good luck.
3. Baby Suggs has offended her neighbors by celebrating herself and her own individual family, in the face of the community.
4. The Garners were kinder owners than Schoolteachers, but they still treated their slaves as slaves. While they allowed Halle to buy Baby Suggs' freedom, they still treated her freedom as something that had to be bought.
5. The Garner had "a special kind of slavery" but it is still nothing compared to actual freedom. Upon being freed Baby Suggs is suddenly aware of herself as a person, as exemplified by her sudden awareness of her own heartbeat.
6. Baby Suggs' keeping her own name - the name that she was called by the man who loved her - rather than talking the one that slave-owners assigned to her, signifies that she is now free and her own person. Further, as a slave, she would have had to listen to Mr. Garner. As a free woman, she can do what she wants.
7. While Baby Suggs cannot locate her family, she finds a kind of family in the community of people who help establish her new life, such as the Baldwins. The celebration, which seemed to place her own joy above the considerations of the community, break the trust that was built.

Chapter 16

1. The appearance of the four horsemen, reminiscent of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, is one literal way in which Sethe's past of slavery comes back to haunt her and her family. It is also an example of how permanent family. It is also an example of how permanent and pervasive the effects of slavery were. Even after slaves escaped to freedom, they were not really free, since they could potentially be recaptured by their former owners. There is also the sense that if the community had not been offended by the celebration they might have warned Baby Suggs and Sethe of what was approaching. But they did not.
2. Sethe's killing her own child is the strongest statement against slavery. Her act essentially claims that death is preferable to a life of slavery. Moreover, she implicitly asserts that it is better to be the mother of a dead child than the mother of an enslaved child. This is the central event to the novel's exploration of motherhood and slavery. The schoolteacher cannot understand such thoughts (he can't even understand that slaves are anything more than animals) and so he thinks she has gone wild. He can't see the rationality and love in her actions. At the same time, Sethe has murdered a baby, here baby, even if to protect it. She has saved and murdered the baby, and the irreconcilable fact of doing both of those things in the same action shows just how pernicious and awful slavery was.
3. Despite her attempt to kill her children, Sethe maintains a fierce sense of motherly duty, as she is reluctant to let her baby go and breastfeeds Denver immediately. Her actions show that her attempt to kill her own children was out of a kind of love, however perverse it may appear. 

Chapter 17

1. Sethe's past begins to catch up with her, even as Paul D refuses to believe that the article is about her.
2. Attempting to plan a future with Sethe, Paul D does not want to hear about her troubled past.

Chapter 18

1. Being a mother on Sweet Home was even more difficult for Sethe since she was the only slave woman there and had to figure out how to raise her children alone. This implies that she may have had an even more intense love for her children - she had to figure out how to do everything for them herself.
2. Sethe's thoughts stress that her killing her baby was an act of love, an attempt to protect her children from slavery. She had saved herself and had no one to rely on but herself, and killing them was the only way she had to save them.
3. Again, Sethe insists that she acted out of love. Paul D's comment implies that Sethe played into slave-owners dehumanizing ideas of slaves by acting like an animal. He believes that no love should be intense enough to make someone kill the object of their love. Sethe and Paul D had been rediscovering their past, rediscovering their memories together to move into the future. But Paul is unable to work through this revelation of the past, and so he leaves.

Part II

Chapter 19

1. At Baby Suggs' funeral, Sethe offended the community by acting as an individual apart from them. After the death of her child, she (and Denver) became increasingly isolated from the local community, such that Stamp Paid feels the need to knock on their door, rather than simply enter as he is accustomed to doing with most people's homes.
2. While the townspeople feel offended and horrified by Sethe's actions, Sethe feels abandoned by them. Sethe attempts to make 124 work as a home with Beloved, Denver, and her. Beloved's knowledge of Sethe's song further associates her with Sethe's dead child.
3. Baby Suggs stopping her gatherings is indicative of the gradual withdrawal from the community of the inhabitants of 124 following the death of Sethe's child. Stamp Paid's thought suggests that Beloved represents not only Sethe's past sufferings but perhaps the pains of slaves more generally.
4. Sethe's reinterpretation of the shadows shows that she now hopes to make a home with only Denver and Beloved. In doing so, she begins to withdraw even more from the surrounding community, becoming more isolated within 124, within her own past and ghosts.
5. As Sethe becomes more and more obsessed with Beloved, she starts to become overwhelmed and dominated by her past and memories.
6. Even though the inhabitants of 124 have abandoned the community, Stamp Paid still feels a responsibility toward Sethe and Denver and begins to seek help for them.
7. The schoolteacher denied his slaves the ability to think and reason for themselves, as he does explicitly with Sixo in this memory of Sethe's. One of the reasons for the importance of storytelling is that it allows for slaves to be defined by someone else's story.
8. The schoolteacher epitomizes the dehumanizing quality of slavery, as he treated his slaves like scientific specimens and animals.
9. Halle's comment emphasizes that, although Mr. Garner was kinder than Schoolteacher, he was still a slave-owner and therefore not essentially different from Schoolteacher. The idea of a kind slave-owner (as Mr. Garner would understand himself to be) is oxymoronic, since to own slaves is, by definition, to be cruel and unkind.
10. Stamp Paid's thoughts again suggest that Beloved embodies the painful past of slavery generally. His analysis of slavery is that slave-owners see slaves as uncivilized when in reality they make slaves uncivilized by enslaving them.

Chapter 20

1. Sethe's thoughts show her intense devotion to her children and increasing obsession with Beloved. Her sparse memories of her mother highlight how difficult it is to be a mother under the institution of slavery. Sethe has sacrificed her life for her children, refused to give them up, even killing them to stop anyone from taking them from her, and that obsessive love is overwhelming her.
2. Sethe again insists that she killed her child out of love. Her thoughts evidence an extremely strong motherly attachment to her daughter.

Chapter 21

1. Denver sees herself as more than sisters with Beloved, as blood-sisters of a sort. Her intense feelings are only made more intense by the fact that she has always been alone. And being alone and isolated from the world has made her afraid of that world, making her even more alone.
2. This is the first time we see how Sethe's actions affected the young Denver. She was constantly afraid of her mother, who she knew had the capacity to kill her, even if out of love, and therefore she dreamed to be saved by her father who would never come for her. This may be why she sought a home in her boxwood room, safe not just from the ghost of 124 but also from her mother.

Chapter 22

1. As Beloved embodies, to some extent, the persistence of the past, her monologue eschews historical time in favor of one fluid time, in which past memories and the present coexist. Her recollections of a slave boat associate her with Sethe's mother, who experienced such a voyage. But these fragmented memories may also suggest that Beloved gives voice to the sufferings and longings of all slaves, beyond Sethe's own family.
2. Beloved's emerging from the water can be seen as a symbolic rebirth and her obsession with Sethe suggests again that she is at least partially Sethe's daughter.

Chapter 23

1. Through Beloved's thoughts, her separation from her mother Sethe comes to stand in for the countless separations from mothers caused by slavery, and even for the ultimate separation of Africans from their motherland.
2. Sethe's thoughts show her devotion to her daughter, who she now believes has returned. The obsessive dialogue of thoughts shows the degradation of life at 124: Sethe increasingly withdraws into her home, her past, and her own thoughts.

Chapter 24

1. Much like Sethe, Paul D is consumed by his past and memories. His questioning of the differences between Mr. Garner and the Schoolteacher emphasizes the essential cruelty of slavery, regardless of the slave-owner.
2. The slaves' planned attempt to escape relies upon their cooperation as a group, though it is made more difficult by Sethe's pregnancy and by Schoolteacher.
3. Again exemplifying the cruelty of slavery, the Schoolteacher kills Sixo because he only values his life in terms of how much work Sixo can perform. Similarly, he thinks of Paul D in terms of how much money he is worth. Sixo's laughter suggests at the moment that Sixo has gone crazy (though the fact that his laughing suggests that to readers means that readers are underestimating Sixo).
4. Devoted to her children, Sethe sent them ahead before trying to escape, herself. Paul D's thoughts about the monetary value of various characters show him grappling with how slavery treats human beings as commodities. While Schoolteacher (and, uncomfortably, the reader) saw Sixo's laughter as simply crazy behavior, it was in fact a final act of defiance against his cruel master, as Sixo knew that while he was being killed his child would be born in freedom.

Chapter 25

1. Stamp Paid's offer of help (and confidence that someone will offer a home to Paul D) shows the beneficence of the local community. However, Paul D does not want to be in a house. He needs a church, perhaps because he feels that he either does not want to be with other people or because he needs a certain closeness to something holy to combat his terrible past, or perhaps both. Earlier, with Sethe, Paul was starting to unearth and confront that past. Now he is trying to escape it through alcohol.
2. Stamp Paid's story shows another example of the abuse of slaves by slave-owners. His name change can be seen as an attempt to separate himself from his painful past. Just as Paul D repressed his memories, Stamp Paid had to become a different person to put his past behind him. Also, note how Stamp Paid's anger at the abuse from his master was directed toward his wife - how the abuses of slavery could turn slaves against each other.
3. Stamp Paid reinforces Sethe's assertion that she loved her child, that she was taking the only path she could to escape from those who had hurt her. Paul D's painful question emphasizes the unceasing, unfathomable, abuses and indignities suffered by him and other slaves. Stamp Paid asserts that they must continue on living, to face whatever comes until it kills them. But Paul D, in his despair, cannot see why. 

Part III

Chapter 26

1. Homelife at 124 has degraded significantly, as Sethe's motherly love turns into a harmful obsession. Even Denver is outside of the all-consuming bonds of neediness between Sethe and Beloved.
2. Beloved's control over Sethe is symbolic of Sethe's more general surrender to her own past and memories. Denver's decision to get help is heroic - she is facing a great fear of going out alone, in breaking her isolation.
3. In a role reversal, Denver must now protect and care for her own mother. The church committee is an example of the helpful community that Sethe felt cut off from and then turned her back on.
4. As Denver has re-entered the surrounding community, the community now begins to support her and Sethe again. Within 124, things continue to get worse as Sethe's being mentally overwhelmed by her past - her love, her guilt - is matched by her physical deterioration.
5. The local community begins to come together to support Denver and Sethe. Under the direction of Ella, they decide to help Sethe even without being asked to do so. The slave figurine at Bodwin's house is evidence that even abolitionists like the Baldwins are not necessarily free from the prejudices that are at the root of slavery.
6. The group of women singing together emphasizes the importance of community as they attempt to drive Beloved away. It is also significant that the group is made up of all women. They alone know Sethe's pain as a mother under slavery. They know the horror of what Sethe did, and yet now they are helping her, expressing understanding and fellowship.
7. The association of the singing women with Baby Suggs further links them with the general power of motherhood. Beloved's bizarre transformation shows that she is something more than merely Sethe's daughter returned to life. Her pregnant appearance associates her more generally with motherhood. She could be understood as the embodiment of the pains and desires of being a mother under the circumstances of slavery.
8. The fact that Sethe thinks Mr. Bodwin is Schoolteacher shows the degree to which she is literally living in the past but also suggests (given the racist figurine in Bodwin's foyer) the degree to which all white people have certain similar racist similarities. Denver runs after her mother to protect and help her, an expression of love. Meanwhile, Beloved's power is broken by being abandoned - as a baby, as a memory, like guilt, she needs attention to survive.

Chapter 27

1. With Beloved driven away, 124 is finally free from the burden of its past and can potentially become a home like any other. However, Sethe has not been able to escape from her past, as she seems to have gone mad.
2. Now that her family past has in some sense been exorcised in the form of Beloved, Denver can finally look forward to a potentially brighter future. She has escaped the dangerous, overwhelming side of memory that overwhelmed Sethe.
3. As Denver says, Beloved seems to have been both her sister and something more. She embodied the pain and suffering of slaves, the appeal and danger of the past, and the extreme love between a mother and child.
4. Paul D's wanderings represent him as continually in search of some kind of home, which he has temporarily thought that he had found at 124 before that, too went sour. He had thought that after the war freedom would be all he or other slaves needed. But of course, it is not that simple, the burdens of the past - both in memory and in racist oppression and violence - remain.
5. Paul D's comment to Sethe reinforces the novel's turn from the past to the future. Just as Denver is finally able to plan for a future, Paul D tries to get Sethe to let go of "yesterday" in favor of "some kind of tomorrow". And Paul D's own return to 124 signals a willingness to accept his past, to make a home in which to stay and live.

Chapter 28

1. The novel's ending suggests that forgetting about the past is the only way to move on after extreme tragedy. The novel even refers to itself as a story that should not be passed on. However, the very fact that Morrison wrote and published the novel implies that there is some value in remembering the painful tragedies in our personal and national histories. While being subsumed in the past can prevent people from living in the present, the novel ultimately claims that we owe it to the past to remember and honor those who have suffered. You must somehow do both things, both pass it on and not pass it on, and through the novel that is what Morrison does.

And here it ends the long analysis of the Benevolent novel on a traumatic theme of slavery. Though I may miss some points, my purpose of the thorough study is herewith presented with all my efforts of summing up the chapters along with the significance. I am also providing the trailer of the movie adaption of The Beloved by Jonathan Demme (famous for The Silence of the Lambs). I declare, it is not a total story follow-up of the book but a point-out thematic movie on the main plot; so please consider having it a go for a better understanding. Thank you for taking your time and reading this; hope it will help you at the furthest!

Trailer - 1998 Film