Author Bio/Link to Lit and Topic:
![]()
Toni Morrison is a Nobel and Pulitzer-Prize winning author who’s works tend to center African-American women in a familial or individual setting. Her most well known and commercially successful novel Beloved follows the story of Sethe, a former slave who suffers a loss of identity, both physically, and emotionally because of the immoral nature of slavery. Toni Morrison’s inspiration for Beloved came from the real-life story of Margret Garner, an escaped slave who killed her young child upon capture to save it from the terrible immorality of slavery. Garner was charged with murder but was never tried. In Beloved, Morrison portrayed religion as the savior of morality, the window through which people are saved.
Plot Summary:
The book begins in 1873, in the aftermath of slavery and the Civil War. In 1848, Baby Suggs left the Sweet Home plantation in Kentucky and was driven to Cincinnati, Ohio, after her son, boughted her freedom. Sethe arrived at Sweet Home as Baby Suggs' replacement. A year after her arrival, she married Halle and they had three children.
Mr. Garner the plantation owner died and his wife became ill; she asked a schoolteacher to run Sweet Home. The schoolteacher treated the slaves like animals and abused them. Sethe sent her children to Ohio and planned to run. In the days she spent waiting for Halle, the schoolteacher and his nephews took Sethe, who was pregnant, to the barn and raped her.
As she tries to walk to Ohio, a white girl finds Sethe and helps her to the Ohio River where Sethe has her baby, Denver. Sethe is reunited with Baby Suggs. 28 days later, the schoolteacher comes to capture them. Sethe, fears for her children and tries to kill them, killing her first daughter with a saw and injuring her sons. The baby's ghost makes itself a powerful presence at 124 and Sethe's sons run away, while Baby Suggs dies. No one in the community will have anything to do with 124 or the people in it.
Paul D is scared of the ghost of 124 and he, Sethe, and Denver begin a new life together, until Beloved shows up. Beloved and Sethe become interested only in one another. Later, they become angry and violent with each other because Beloved thinks Sethe abandoned her. Sethe starts to waste away as Beloved's pregnant stomach grows, and Denver is forced to seek help her mother. Denver gets a job with the Bodwins. A group of colored women come to 124 to rescue Sethe from Beloved, the ghost haunting 124. Beloved and Sethe step onto the porch to see what's going on, and when Sethe sees Mr. Bodwin, she tries to kill him, believing the schoolteacher has returned. Beloved runs away because she thinks Mr. Bodwin is the white man that has come back for her, and Sethe has abandoned her again. With Beloved gone, Sethe gives up on life because she has lost her child, the best part of herself, again. Paul D comes back to 124 to help Denver take care of Sethe. Time passes and Beloved is forgotten.
Mr. Garner the plantation owner died and his wife became ill; she asked a schoolteacher to run Sweet Home. The schoolteacher treated the slaves like animals and abused them. Sethe sent her children to Ohio and planned to run. In the days she spent waiting for Halle, the schoolteacher and his nephews took Sethe, who was pregnant, to the barn and raped her.
As she tries to walk to Ohio, a white girl finds Sethe and helps her to the Ohio River where Sethe has her baby, Denver. Sethe is reunited with Baby Suggs. 28 days later, the schoolteacher comes to capture them. Sethe, fears for her children and tries to kill them, killing her first daughter with a saw and injuring her sons. The baby's ghost makes itself a powerful presence at 124 and Sethe's sons run away, while Baby Suggs dies. No one in the community will have anything to do with 124 or the people in it.
Paul D is scared of the ghost of 124 and he, Sethe, and Denver begin a new life together, until Beloved shows up. Beloved and Sethe become interested only in one another. Later, they become angry and violent with each other because Beloved thinks Sethe abandoned her. Sethe starts to waste away as Beloved's pregnant stomach grows, and Denver is forced to seek help her mother. Denver gets a job with the Bodwins. A group of colored women come to 124 to rescue Sethe from Beloved, the ghost haunting 124. Beloved and Sethe step onto the porch to see what's going on, and when Sethe sees Mr. Bodwin, she tries to kill him, believing the schoolteacher has returned. Beloved runs away because she thinks Mr. Bodwin is the white man that has come back for her, and Sethe has abandoned her again. With Beloved gone, Sethe gives up on life because she has lost her child, the best part of herself, again. Paul D comes back to 124 to help Denver take care of Sethe. Time passes and Beloved is forgotten.
Character Analysis:
![]()
In Beloved, Sethe is an escaped slave and single mother. At one time, she had 4 children, but after her former owner came to her house to reclaim what was his, Sethe attempted to kill all of her children in order to save them from a life of enslavement. She only killed one, but two would later run away and the dead one would be reincarnated as Beloved. It is quite disturbing to think a mother could attempt to murder her children, but it was Sethe’s moral code that led her to do so. Sethe loves her children and would do anything for them, but her experience as a slave has led her to believe that enslavement is the worst experience one can have in life. As a slave on Sweet Home, she wasn’t treated particularly badly, until her owner died and a relative of his called schoolteacher took over the operation, but it was not just the treatment. It is the dehumanizing effects of being a slave that tear apart a person. For this reason, Sethe decided to kill her children to save them because she thought it was the right, or moral thing to do, not because she had gone insane as most of the black community in Cincinnati, where she lived, believed.
Before leaving Sweet Home, Sethe was raped by schoolteacher and his two nephews in the barn. Her husband Halle had been hiding in the barn and witnessed the whole thing without her knowledge causing him to go more or less insane. Sethe did not find him at the spot they agreed to meet at before they attempted to escape but she continued on anyways. From this, Sethe became very distrustful of men and developed a sense of pride in herself as a single mother and as one who did not need help from anyone after she made it to Cincinnati, despite receiving help from various people in getting there.
In Beloved, Sethe is an escaped slave and single mother. At one time, she had 4 children, but after her former owner came to her house to reclaim what was his, Sethe attempted to kill all of her children in order to save them from a life of enslavement. She only killed one, but two would later run away and the dead one would be reincarnated as Beloved. It is quite disturbing to think a mother could attempt to murder her children, but it was Sethe’s moral code that led her to do so. Sethe loves her children and would do anything for them, but her experience as a slave has led her to believe that enslavement is the worst experience one can have in life. As a slave on Sweet Home, she wasn’t treated particularly badly, until her owner died and a relative of his called schoolteacher took over the operation, but it was not just the treatment. It is the dehumanizing effects of being a slave that tear apart a person. For this reason, Sethe decided to kill her children to save them because she thought it was the right, or moral thing to do, not because she had gone insane as most of the black community in Cincinnati, where she lived, believed.
Before leaving Sweet Home, Sethe was raped by schoolteacher and his two nephews in the barn. Her husband Halle had been hiding in the barn and witnessed the whole thing without her knowledge causing him to go more or less insane. Sethe did not find him at the spot they agreed to meet at before they attempted to escape but she continued on anyways. From this, Sethe became very distrustful of men and developed a sense of pride in herself as a single mother and as one who did not need help from anyone after she made it to Cincinnati, despite receiving help from various people in getting there.
However, Sethe’s pride does not drive her decisions as much as it does others. After a grand feast at their house on 124 Bluestone Road, the black community began to resent the pride of Sethe and her mother in law, Baby Suggs, leaving no one to warn them about the approaching slave capturers that led Sethe to attempt to murder her children. In this case, it is the community’s decision not to be moral people and put aside their resentment in order to help a fellow member of the black community.
Analysis of Elements that Relate to Topic:
Analysis of Elements that Relate to Topic:
In Beloved, personal identity plays a big role in shaping characters and their actions. Several characters, Paul D in particular, have little to no identity. In Paul D’s case, this is because he has been so degraded by his masters and the tasks he has to do, ultimately by slavery. Sethe also suffered under slavery; forced to kill her youngest child, a baby girl, Sethe becomes a social outcast and lives with her other daughter on the outskirts of their community. Sethe feels a great conflict both spiritually through the ghost of her dead daughter, and emotionally because of slavery. Slavery was extremely immoral and served to degrade slaves. These slaves were turned into subhuman beings with little to no sense of self. Perfectly ‘normal’ blacks would have their humanity taken from them by slavery. However, through religion some were able to regain or find their lost humanity and sense of self. Baby Suggs and Stamp Paid in particular regain their sense of self by becoming community leaders that direct their community through religion and spirituality. They find personal identity guiding the hearts and minds of their peers through the spiritually world, and find great fulfillment in doing so.
