Beloved” by Tony Morrison

,,Beloved” by Tony Morrison
"Beloved" ( eng. Beloved ) - a novel by American writer Toni Morrison , published in 1987. The novel takes place after the Civil War (1861-1865) and is based on the story of a Negro slave Margaret Garner , who at the end of January 1856 escaped from slave owner in Kentucky and crossed over to the free state of Ohio.
Morrison’s novel Beloved, is full of emotions and feelings. It balances fear, hatred, tension, passion and also love, which appears in various forms such as motherly love, physical love or the abstract love of freedom.
Morrison stated that the character Beloved is the daughter Sethe killed. The murdered baby was unnamed, so her name is derived from the engraving on Sethe's murdered baby's tombstone, which simply read "Beloved" because Sethe could not afford to engrave the word "Dearly" or anything else.
The book tells the story of Sethie and her daughter Denver after their escape from slavery. Their home in Cincinnati is haunted by what they believe to be Sethie's daughter. Because of a ghost whose presence in the house is the random throwing of objects around the room, the youngest daughter Sathy Denver grew up a shy and lonely recluse, and her sons Howard and Bagler ran away from home at the age of 13 years. Shortly thereafter, Baby Suggs, the mother of Satie's husband, whose name was Halle, dies in her bed.
Paul Dee, one of the slaves at Sweet Home, a plantation where Baby Suggs, Sethie, Halle, and some other slaves once worked, moves into Sethie's house and tries to bring a sense of reality into it. Trying to make this family forget the past, he banishes the spirit from the house. At first, it seems that the exile was successful: he even brings the recluse Denver out of the house for the first time in many years. But on the way back, they meet a young woman sitting in front of their house, who introduces herself as Beloved. Paul Dee is suspicious of her and advises Sethe to be careful, but she is fascinated by the young woman and does not listen to him. Gradually, Paul Dee is expelled by some supernatural force from Sethy's house to a neighboring barn.
Beloved drives Paul Dee into the corner of the barn, in which he is forced to spend the night. While they are having sex, his mind is filled with terrifying memories from the past. Overwhelmed with guilt, Paul D tries to tell Seth about this, but hesitates and instead says that he wants them to have a child with her. Sety is encouraged, and Paul Dee confronts Beloved and her influence on him. But when he tells his friends at work about his plans to start a new family, they express their concern. The stamp Paid reveals to him the reason for the rejection of Sety by the population.
When Paul Dee asks Sety about this, she tells him what happened: after escaping from Sweet Home and meeting with the children who were waiting for her in her mother-in-law's house, Sety was found by the owner, who tried to return her with the children to himself. Sethy grabbed her children, ran with them to the tool shed and wanted to kill them all. She managed to do this only with her eldest daughter, on whose neck she ran a saw. Sathe claims that she wanted to send her children "to somewhere where they would be completely safe." This revelation frightens Paul Dee, and he leaves their house. Together with him, both the sense of reality and the movement of time leave the house.
Sethie believes that the Beloved is her two-year-old daughter, whom she killed and on whose tombstone only the word "Beloved" is written. Sethy begins to live aimlessly and indulge her Beloved out of guilt. The beloved is constantly unhappy and demands more and more, loses her temper when something is not for her. Beloved's presence consumes Sethie's life, she becomes emaciated and sacrifices her food needs as Beloved's belly grows bigger and bigger.
At the climax of the novel, the youngest daughter Denver goes outside, seeks help from the black population, and some village women come to their house to exorcise evil spirits from Beloved. At the same time, a white man who once helped Halle's mother, Baby Suggs, drives up to the house by giving her this house after Halle bought her from their owner. White came for Denver, who was looking for a job with him, but Denver didn't tell Sethie about it. Not understanding why a white man is coming to the house, Sathe attacks him with an ice pick, but she is intercepted by the village women. As the bewildered Sethie "re-experiences" the arrival of her master, Beloved disappears. The novel ends with Denver going to work and Paul D returning to Sethie and reassuring her of his love.
"124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom (Chapter 1, Page 1)
In the opening sentence of the novel, the house numbered 124 is personified as the haint that haunts it. The haint Sethe's dead daughter who she kills in a shed when her former master and slavecatchers come after her. Rather than surrender herself and her children to a life of slavery again, she tries to end her children's lives and then her own. As a consequence of her violent act, 124 is haunted by the spirit of Sethe's dead daughter, scaring away Sethe's two sons who were also victims of Sethe's actions and isolating Denver from the rest of the black community
"Years ago when 124 was alive-she had women friends, men friends from all around to share grief with. Then there was no one, for they would not visit her while the baby ghost filled the house, and she returned their disapproval with the potent pride of the mistreated. But now there was someone to share it, and he had beat the spirit away the very day he entered her house and no sign of it since. A blessing, but in its place he brought another kind of haunting. Halle's face smeared with butter and the clabber too, his own mouth jammed full of iron, and Lord knows what else he could tell her if he wanted to."
After Sethe's murder of her daughter, the black community ostracizes her. Sethe in tum does not reach out to the community any longer, earning her a reputation of being prideful. When Sethe begins a relationship with Paul Dit appears momentarily that she may be able to forge kinship with someone who shares her experiences. However, Paul D's traumatic memories tagger her own making it impossible for her to repress her past.
"She threw them all away but you. The one from the crew she threw away on the island. The others from more whites she also threw away. Without names, she threw them. You she gave the name of the black man." (Chapter 6 Page 74)
When Sethe is young, she barely knows her mother, since the farm where they are enslaved does not permit mothers to spend nursing time with their children, Sethe learna from one of the other women that her mother had killed her siblings. She spared Sethe, although her reasons for doing so are unclear. She gave Sethe a male name, knowing she would need masculine strength to survive as an enslaved person Sethe will eventualy repeat this history with her own children, leaving Denver as the only child without injury However, Denver does not draw the strength to heal from masculine energy but rather the collective power of black women.
Beloved by Toni Morrison is a beautiful, haunting story that is set around the time following the slavery emancipation declaration. It’s, mysterious and supernatural, as well as being a love story, a tale of horror, forgiveness, loss and confusion. It’s very poetic and lyrical, full of metaphors and powerful imagery.
Beloved by Toni Morrison tells the story of Sethe, a runaway slave who has left her home in the South but is still living in the past. Her deceased two year old baby supposedly haunts 124, the house in which she and her daughter Denver live. Later, we find out the awful way in which the baby died and that makes the story even more tragic.
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