Toni Morrison and Beloved Essay

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WHAT DOES BELOVED SYMBOLIZE?

Issue: Beloved seems to play a large role in taking over Sethe, Denver And Paul D’s lives what could she symbolize, what is her significance?

SETHE

Issue: Beloved seems to play a large role in taking over Sethe, Denver And Paul D’s lives what could she symbolize, what is her significance?

-Memory of her daughter, her soft skin and her breathe smelling like milk

-Sethe offers motherly love, in which she spends more time with Beloved, just as if its her own child.

-Sethe’s way of filling the void of her dead daughter.

-Offers Beloved to stay because she thought she was hopeless and dirty

-Sethe loses her daughter, She had no mother and it seems as if Beloved gained Motherhood from her

-Sethe kills her own children, mainly killing her daughters brutally.

-Beloved also becomes more dependent and more obsessed
PAUL D.

-Dark memory of Enters a Chain-gang because of his attempt to kill his slave owner in Sweet Home.

-Looked away from memory

-The power that Beloved has on house 124, she tends to play mind tricks with Paul D but its really his own mind playing tricks on him

-He sleeps with Beloved, but it could be Paul D’s way of getting freedom of his longing love of Sethe.

-He favors her and calls her the “next best thing”

-He is constantly has dream like obsessions of tobacco in a tin can, which had reminded him of freedom

DENVER

-She never liked Beloved and viewed her as a baby and poorly dirty and dark. She generally viewed her as a baby.

-Denver wants to own Beloved. Denver is described as a lonely person but she becomes obsessed because its her first friend

-Denver isolates herself and she likes to hide from the world. Denver hates leaving 124 and she seeks comfort in the house with the lingering spirit

-She treats Paul D coldly as attention is taken away from her. Beloved helps her fill that void of broken relationships

-Beloved plays the role in changing her identity as she steps out of 124 and becomes friends with Paul D and goes to college

“All that leaving: first her brother, then her grandmother—serious losses since there were no children willing to circle her in a game. None of that mattered as long as her mother did not look away” (Morrison 7).
“I spent all of my life outside loving Ma’am so she wouldn't kill me, loving her even when she braided my hair at night” (Morrison 110).

“He didn’t come here for me; he wanted my mother. At first. Then he wanted my sister, too, but she got him out of her so I’m so glad he’s gone” (Morrison 110).

“She is the one. She is the one I need. You can go but she is the one I have to have. (Morrison 79)

“Denver was shaking now and sobbing so she could not speak. The tears she had not shed for nine years wetting her far too womanly Breasts” (Morrison 8)

PAUL

“he didn't hear the whisper that the flakes of rust made either as they fell away from the seams of his tobacco tin. So when the lid gave he didn't know it. What he knew wapart he was saying, "Red heart. Red heart,"(Morrison 63)

“"What kind of evil you got in here?” (Morrison 4)

“shudder ran through Paul D. A bone-cold spasm that made him clutch his He didn't know if it was bad whiskey, nights in the cellar, pig fever, iron bits, smiling roosters, fired feet, laughing dead men, hissing grass, rain, apple blossoms, neck jewelry, Judy in the slaughterhouse, Halle in the butter, ghost-white stairs, chokecherry trees,face, sausage or the loss of a red, red heart.” (Morrison 124).

SETHE

"Love is or it ain't.Thin love ain't love at all." (Morrison 88) “I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place--the picture of it--stays, and not just in my rememory, but out
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