Beloved
. Who or what is ? Many people think that is the Devil or a savior. Others just take her at face value as Sethe's dead child come back to haunt her. I believe that all of these ideas come close to her identity, but they are still not completely right. This is not a story about good or evil, but rather a story about facing your own past. (the character) is simply a physical manifestation of Sethe's guilty conscience.
Sethe's desire to save her children from slavery was stronger than her humanity, and as a result she brutally murdered her baby, and buried it under the headstone "." Sethe chose to have this engraved on the tomb, because this was the "word she heard the preacher ...
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completely that her neighbors, already upset at her crime, isolated her because she seemed to feel no remorse for the awful deed. Sethe's stoic resolve continues until Denver loses her hearing, which was caused by Denver not being able to deal with hearing what her mother had done. Only when her mother's conscience manifests itself as the ghost of the baby does Denver's hearing return.
Denver, having as a child suckled her sister's blood with her mother's milk, attaches herself to this ghost, the manifestation of her mother's guilt. She makes friends with it, because due to her mother's heinous deed, she will have no other friends in the community. Denver must make peace with what her mother did in order for her to survive, and she accomplishes this by making the ghost her playmate. In their own little world, both Denver and her mother acclimate themselves to the sin that they must live with.
The appearance of Paul D throws everything into turmoil. To Sethe, ...
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may improve, her conscience just finds a new way to make her suffer for what she did. So, as life begins to get better for Sethe and Denver again because of Paul D, Beloved shows up, and when she gains some strength she promptly begins to move Paul D out of the house, systematically further and further away from Sethe. This is consistent with the masochistic pattern exhibited by Sethe's conscience, because Paul D is the only individual who shows potential (at this stage in the plot) of helping Sethe overcome her past. In his absence her guilt could punish her more effectively, and so Paul D ends up sleeping in the shed, with Beloved visiting him at night to make him very uncomfortable. ...
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CITE THIS PAGE:
Beloved. (2004, September 18). Retrieved December 23, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Beloved/14538
"Beloved." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 18 Sep. 2004. Web. 23 Dec. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Beloved/14538>
"Beloved." Essayworld.com. September 18, 2004. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Beloved/14538.
"Beloved." Essayworld.com. September 18, 2004. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Beloved/14538.
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