Toni Morrison's novel Beloved tells the story of Sethe, a former slave, and her family as they struggle with the lasting effects of slavery years after emancipation. The novel explores how slavery destroyed families and dehumanized people, leaving deep psychological scars that are difficult to overcome. When Sethe's daughter reappears in the form of a mysterious young woman called Beloved, she forces Sethe and the other characters to finally confront the painful memories of the past they have tried to suppress. By grappling with these memories, Sethe and her community work to heal the wounds of slavery and forge a future defined by love rather than the trauma of the past.

1. Beloved by Toni
Morrison
•Sixty Million and More
•History through slaves not
white view
•Interior life of those who
didn’t write their story

2. • “I Can’t imagine American Literature
without it.”
• Beloved can only be reread; it is
immediately incomprehensible and
excessively demanding; must adopt
new strategies of interpretation
• “Bestial treatment of human beings
never produces a race of beasts.”
• Slavery is the jungle planted in them
that destroys and represses memory
• Emotional and psychological scars of
slavery

3. Biographical Info.
• Born on Feb. 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio
• Real name is Chloe Anthony Wofford
• Only black child in 1st grade and the
only student who could read.
• Cornell University
• Winner of Pulitzer prize for fiction
• See Interview handout

4. Structure
• “Narrative is one of the ways in which
knowledge is organized. I have always
thought it was the most important way
to transmit and receive knowledge. I
am less certain of that now-but the
craving for narrative has never
lessened, and the hunger for it is as
keen as it was on Mt. Sinai or Calvary
or the middle of the fens.”-Morrison

5. Structural Unity in a novel
• Structural divisions-Chapters?
Sections? Settings? How?
• Polarization of Characters-Who?
• Repetition of patterns and elements-
motifs
• Resolution of conflict-internal/external
• Narrative point of view-Range and
Depth-Consciousness?
• Beginning and Endings
• Linear/Spatial/Chronological/Causal

6. Structure-pieces/parts to whole like
slaves-remembering
Part 1-Slavery and Murder-Sethe must
confront the past
Part 2-Despair-Sethe finds atonement for her
sin/murder
Part 3-Restoration/Cleansing/Rebirth-Sethe
and Paul D unburden the past to create a
future together side by side pp. 259,
261,273- “the best thing is not Beloved but
Sethe”

7. • Repetition-mothers and daughter; violence;
settings; school teacher/community
• Circles and circling the subject/pain away
from the facts, return and circle back to
explain later in the novel-see conversation
in kitchen-the bit?
• See lines in forehead and 124 (p.51 and
202)
• See murder p. 10 and jail p. 42 and
explanation later in novel

8. • Story circles-Oral tradition where the
storyteller alternates narratives with
repetitions of words, phrases, motifs
and core images
• Community circle/ family/Denver’s
boxwoods-safety
• Pp. 159,161,163,164,210-217
• Beating back the past because the past
has taken possession of present (36, 73,
, 99,162, 256, 274)

9. Structure/POV
• Episodic unfolds in a series of
revelations or rememories
• By character’s POV/perspective-See
chapters-1st? 3rd?Unclear=communal
history and shared memory-claim past
and share it.
• Denver’s birth p.78 skips to 3rd person
then to Sethe in next chapter and on
p.90 to Suggs and more.
• Key events: Sethe’s escape, murder,
Beloved’s arrival

10. Time-separation from
past?
• 1873-1874-Now
• 1855-Denver’s birth Ohio to present-
• Sweet Home to 1855
• Flashbacks within those years, before
and after from Middle Passage to
Sethe’s arrival at Sweet Home, Baby
Suggs arrival, escapes, births of Suggs
children, Birth of Sethe’s children,
deaths, separations, return.

11. Settings: Sweet Home, 124, Prison in
GA, Kentucky before freedom, Ohio
before Beloved, the clearing,-After
• Sweet Home and the Garners vs
Schoolteacher-Utopia? Men? “Same loud or
soft.”-p.125,190,195
• 124 was…
• Alfred,GA- Hell pp.107-108- Chain gang-
“one lost all lost”-p.110
• Clearing=healing, love,
cleansing,connections-p.87-88, 97
• P. 137,148,157, 250-57

12. Dual Structures and endings
• Paul D’s journey and romance with
Sethe
• Beloved and ghost tormenting Sethe
• Construction and restoration of family
• Destruction of Beloved
• “There is always something more
interesting at stake than a clear resolution in
a novel. I’m interested in survival-who
survives and who doesn’t and why…. I do
not want to bow out with easy answers to
difficult questions.” -Morrison

13. Function of the Settings
• To show universal presence of evil
• the degradation of the human spirit and
the personal struggle to overcome it
• the inability to escape the horrors and
consequences of the past
• mental, spiritual, and physical
enslavement
• the subjugation of a culture
• loss and separation from oneself
• Importance of community/chain gang

14. Vocabulary
• Nigger, Negro, Negress, coloredpeople,
whitepeople, whitefolks, whitegirl, and
whiteboy.
• Man without skin-Yoruba
• Disremember (choose not to remember)
and rememory (haunting feeling; a memory
that recurs unexpectedly when one doesn’t
want to remember
• “Remember in pieces or choose not to
because if we did we couldn’t get up and go
to work in the morning.”

15. • Disremember (choose not to remember)
and rememory (haunting feeling; a memory
that recurs unexpectedly when one doesn’t
want to remember
• Real events and recurring memories always
there p. 37
• Denver desire to know about past but Sethe
keeps it from Denver
• Denver goes deaf when asked about prison
• Beloved forces Sethe to talk about past and
Paul D to feel the past and Denver to learn
• Lady Jones-Chp. 26- helps Denver and
Community heal and grow through
memories

16. Style-Jazz?
• Simple and clear
• Musical/poetic-songs
• Ornate and visual to let horrible things
be seen clearly and simply
• Shifts and solos
• Repetition of melody
• Theme and variation
• P.25-27 and pp.200-217

17. • Style Analysis Passages
• Illiteracy- Newspaper clipping, Title
• Margaret Garner
• Frederick Douglass
• Sojourner Truth
• Historical Background-origin, middle
passage, trade, treatment, Nat Turner,
Conflict, Emancipation, Northern
Migration
• “This is not a story to pass on.”

18. Biblical Allusions
• Romans 9:25- “Beloved”
• Loaves and Fishes
• Joshua-Stamp Paid
• Isaac and Abraham
• The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse
• Lot’s Wife/Sodom and Gomorrah
• Pride goes before a fall
• The Spirit is willing, the flesh is weak
• Sufficient unto the day is evil
• Don’t study war no more

19. Symbolism
• Water-birth, baptism, life, middle passage,
thirst for freedom-Ohio River Jordan
• Scar (Chokecherry tree), choke the fruit, on
back can’t see but it’s there like memory of
slavery-genealogy
• Birds-Hawk like Sethe; Hummingbirds like
needles p.157-angry dead? Free?
• “At Yo Service”statue-Bodwins
• Renaming=Rebirth-Suggs, Stamp Paid

20. Trees-intermediaries
between God and Man
• The clearing brings healing
• The sin of cutting trees
• Sycamores noticed over hanging-p.6
• Denver’s boxwoods-p.28
• Brother?-p.21
• Follow trees to freedom-p.112
• Georgia-small tree p.222
• Beloved on a stump

21. Symbols
• The bit, animal, Schoolteacher, the
chart, “real men,” the # of Sethe’s feet,
Sixo-forbidden to speak/need to speak
• Stolen Milk,Butter, Breasts, Nursing,
Milk and Blood
• #3-124-history of house shadows and
skating, unholy trinity of mother,
daughter and Beloved/Paul -
MICROCOSM for real world that
holds the pain and love of a culture
• #28-cycle/freedom

22. • Ribbons-white,red,black?
• Colors-Black, White,Orange, Pink,
Lavender, Freedom, Green, Grey,
Life/Death?-Baby Suggs
• Red-Roses but smelling dead,
Blood, Rooster, Velvet
• Winter/Ice-paralysis/death p.174
• Jungle planted in them by whites to
keep them enslaved-Stamp Paid
• Newspaper clipping/mouth

23. Rape/Emasculation
• Literal and metaphor- “dirty” a person and a
culture
• All men are emasculated and dehumanized
• Mother and child bond destroyed
• Many references to sexual abuse/pain/rape-p. 70,
215,241,251
• Beloved as succubus/vampire
• Paul’s tin box “whiff of contents”-p. 73, nothing
can pry it open-p.113, ocean deep-p.264

24. Love/Hunger/Heart
• See Baby Suggs Sermon p.87
• Red Heart and heart p.23
• Heart Beating upon Freedom
• Love too thick-p.164-5, 203
• Make space, make room for love p.29
• Love is a serious disability p.251-59
• The best thing?
• Hunger-swallowed, eaten, tasted,
empty, full pp.57,31,118,9

25. Symbols
• Paul A, F, D, Etc. “Sweet Home”?
• Halle, Stamp Paid, Sixo
• Crawling-already and Here Boy
• Baby Suggs/Jenny/ Nothing
• Bridge
• Sethe choosing her man
• Breeding/Stud/Pregnancies
• Nephew over-beating Sethe-her inhumanity like
a horse not a human
• Seven-O
• No bad luck in the world but Whitefolks
• Only Men according to Garner?

26. 3 generations of women in Novel
• Baby Suggs and Sethe’s mother-Free to
Slavery, lost 8 children
• Sethe-Slavery to Freedom; Replaces Suggs
at age 13, Free but enslaved at 124 for 18
years until the carnival-then Beloved
appears-Why?
• Denver-Born in River,Freedom to Future,
Literate,-Healing of Community/America-
Schoolteacher opens possibilities of
language unlike Sethe’s Schoolteacher
• How is each affected by Sethe’s choice?

27. Theme Seeds
• Love-What is love? Can one love in this
environment? Love too much? Love small?
• Loneliness/Alienation/Dehumanization/Infa
ntalization- “I call myself nothing,” Name
changes?
• Angry Dead/Past/Rememory/Dealing and
accepting the past
• Community/Family/Loss
• Morality/Banality of Evil/The jungle
• Whites and Blacks affected by Slavery
• “Serious work of beating back the past”

28. Who Is Beloved? What Is Her Function?
Growth? Destuction?
• Murdered daughter, Sethe’s mom, effects of
Slavery, the past, ghost, woman kidnapped,
middle passage, others? Collective memory
of slavery, all disremembered and
unaccounted for?
• Going to pieces, grows like baby, water,
crying, greedy for attn, choking Sethe, My
face, glowing, pregnant and flourishing
while Sethe is dying
• Thirst for stories of past/strangles Sethe
• Paul D- “reminds me of something, loke
like I’m supposed to remember.” –p.234

29. • Beloved enslaves others like Paul D,
Sethe, and Denver
• Beloved forces Sethe and Paul D to
confront the past, to remember, and to feel
what they’ve denied- “ Red Heart-Ocean
deep place”
• Denver learns of Sethe’s past from
Beloved-earrings, songs, scar, etc.
• Paul D learns of Sethe from Stamp Paid
because of Beloved
• The Community becomes united to
exorcise Beloved to right the wrong of not

30. • Beloved pieces together the past for all
including the reader
• Morrison pieces together and corrects
misleading info. about slavery for a
common good
• Handprints in a cake to footprints
appearing at end. Silver Fish? It is a
hard story to retell but it must be told
to bring healing like it did to those in
novel like Denver, Paul, Sethe,
Community, etc.

31. Sethe’s Choice to murder?
“Ultimate gesture of a loving mother...
to kill my children is preferable to
having them die.”
• It means nothing without the historical and
cultural context. Blame slavery.
• “Trying to outhurt the hurter.” Paul
doesn’t agree and doesn’t understand. He
thinks whipping is worse than stealing
milk.
• We feel connected to Sethe (POV) telling
us why and how pp. 162-193

32. • Baby Suggs gives up preaching victory
and love of body, mouth, heart.
• Dirty you so bad you couldn’t like
yourself no more.” “Jungle whitefolks
planted in them”
• Are blacks to blame for working so hard
to disassociate from whites? Another
slavery?
• The Definers denied freedom, power,
motherhood, feeling, thinking, self, life.
• Community for being jealous?

33. Chapters 19-23 and other
difficult sections?
• 19-Stamp Paid hears “unspeakable
thoughts” put to words
• 20-Sethe
• 21-Denver
• 22-Beloved-her words like her body are
broken dislocating foreign- Hot thing?
Brand, spiritual possession, life?
• 23-all 3 voices-Stream of Consciousness
• See text for other questions and clarification