book review of beloved by toni morrison

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by Toni Morrison ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1987

Morrison traces the shifting shapes of suffering and mythic accommodations, through the shell of psychosis to the core of a...

Morrison's truly majestic fifth novel—strong and intricate in craft; devastating in impact.

Set in post-Civil War Ohio, this is the story of how former slaves, psychically crippled by years of outrage to their bodies and their humanity, attempt to "beat back the past," while the ghosts and wounds of that past ravage the present. The Ohio house where Sethe and her second daughter, 10-year-old Denver, live in 1873 is "spiteful. Full of a [dead] baby's venom." Sethe's mother-in-law, a good woman who preached freedom to slave minds, has died grieving. It was she who nursed Sethe, the runaway—near death with a newborn—and gave her a brief spell of contentment when Sethe was reunited with her two boys and first baby daughter. But the boys have by now run off, scared, and the murdered first daughter "has palsied the house" with rage. Then to the possessed house comes Paul D., one of the "Pauls" who, along with Sethe, had been a slave on the "Sweet Home" plantation under two owners—one "enlightened," one vicious. (But was there much difference between them?) Sethe will honor Paul D.'s humiliated manhood; Paul D. will banish Sethe's ghost, and hear her stories from the past. But the one story she does not tell him will later drive him away—as it drove away her boys, and as it drove away the neighbors. Before he leaves, Paul D. will be baffled and anxious about Sethe's devotion to the strange, scattered and beautiful lost girl, "Beloved." Then, isolated and alone together for years, the three women will cling to one another as mother, daughter, and sister—found at last and redeemed. Finally, the ex-slave community, rebuilding on ashes, will intervene, and Beloved's tortured vision of a mother's love—refracted through a short nightmare life—will end with her death.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1987

ISBN: 9781400033416

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1987

LITERARY FICTION

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by Toni Morrison

by Toni Morrison edited by David Carrasco Stephanie Paulsell Mara Willard

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SEEN & HEARD

HOUSE OF LEAVES

by Mark Z. Danielewski ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2000

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...

An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.

Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad.  The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized).  As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest ) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses).  Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture.  Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."

Pub Date: March 6, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-70376-4

Page Count: 704

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000

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by Mark Z. Danielewski

THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992

ISBN: 1400031702

Page Count: 592

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992

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by Donna Tartt

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Common sense media reviewers.

Haunting Pulitzer Prize winner about slavery's impact.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

This book puts human faces on a very difficult per

This book intentionally details disturbing inciden

Author Toni Morrison is the first African American

Several beatings, a strangulation, and a scene in

Characters have sex, including Beloved, who has se

racial slurs and some other swear words

One or two brief scenes of alcohol use by adults.

Parents need to know that this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is on many high school required reading lists because it's a classic that will leave a lasting imprint on readers. It's true that Beloved is the 26th book on the American Library Association's Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books for 2000-2009 and has been…

Educational Value

This book puts human faces on a very difficult period of American history. Though a work of fiction, it will help readers get a better understanding of slavery's injustice and the impact it continued to have on people and their families even after they became free.

Positive Messages

This book intentionally details disturbing incidents to make readers think deeply. Sometimes the best lessons are learned by not glossing over the horrors. The messages in this powerful book bring up a wide variety of sensitive topics, from slavery and racism to school reading lists and censorship. (See our ideas for topics you might want to discuss with your kids.) But the anti-slavery and anti-racism messages and the love of a mother for her children are powerful, important ones for readers.

Positive Role Models

Author Toni Morrison is the first African American to win the Nobel Prize for literature, and this book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Her work challenges readers to think about slavery's impact, as well as how racism and injustice continue to shape African-American identity.

Violence & Scariness

Several beatings, a strangulation, and a scene in which a desperate mother murders her own infant with a handsaw rather than have her returned to slavery. There are also scenes of sexual violence, including forced fellatio, a man holding down a nursing woman while another man suckles her breast, and references to men having sex with cattle.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Characters have sex, including Beloved, who has sex with Sethe's lover, Paul D., and becomes pregnant.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

racial slurs and some other swear words (like "goddamn").

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is on many high school required reading lists because it's a classic that will leave a lasting imprint on readers. It's true that Beloved is the 26th book on the American Library Association's Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books for 2000-2009 and has been challenged for its violence, sexuality, and more: It features a gritty infanticide, racial language, horrific sexual assaults, and even references to sex with animals. But teens are mature enough to handle the challenges this book presents. At this age they can decide for themselves what they think about disturbing personal and historical events. Beloved is a beautiful, powerful book that will help all readers learn about the horrors of slavery -- and leave them thinking about what it means to be a strong, heroic, or moral person.

Where to Read

Community reviews.

• Parents say (10)
• Kids say (7)

Based on 10 parent reviews

One of the most beautiful and thought provoking books I ever read

What in the world, what's the story.

Sethe is a formerly enslaved woman who chooses to kill her children rather than allow her family to be captured back into slavery. She succeeds in killing only her second youngest, who later returns to haunt the house in which the family lives -- first in ethereal form and then as a woman calling herself Beloved. The novel takes place primarily in the years after the Civil War, though it often flashes back to the time of slavery. The story moves seamlessly back and forth through time, capturing Sethe's girlhood, her time on the plantation, and the lives of the various secondary characters. When Paul D. arrives and begins helping them see a way past their pain, Beloved's presence becomes all the more vivid.

Is It Any Good?

This a difficult and often gruesome book, but there's a reason it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize: It's a masterful work by one of the best storytellers alive today. In Beloved , Morrison not only will help readers connect to a painful part of American history, but she'll also encourage them to struggle with some difficult subjects, including the possible heroism of a woman who murders her own child.

This is a book whose intention is to disturb: Teen readers might have to grapple a bit with the complex storytelling, as well as with the intense subject matter, but that's sometimes the best way to confront difficult subjects. Parents may want consider reading this classic along with their kids and using our discussion ideas to tackle the difficult topics it raises.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about why this book is on the ALA's banned/challenged books list. What do some people find so threatening? Do you agree with them? The book is meant to be disturbing -- but is that ever a reason to ban a book?

This book provides excellent opportunities to talk about slavery, as well as racism and injustice, even as they exist today. In the context of the book, were the ex-slaves truly "free"?

This book is often on high school and college reading lists -- why does slavery continue to be an essential topic to study?

Book Details

• Author : Toni Morrison
• Genre : Literary Fiction
• Book type : Fiction
• Publisher : Vintage Books
• Publication date : August 1, 1987
• Number of pages : 324
• Last updated : June 16, 2015

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Reviews of Beloved by Toni Morrison

Summary | Excerpt | Reviews | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio

by Toni Morrison

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• Literary Fiction
• Historical Fiction
• Midwest, USA
• Ind. Mich. Ohio
• 19th Century
• Black Authors
• Strong Women
• War Related

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About this Book

Book summary.

Beloved is Morrison's undisputed masterpiece. It elegantly captures hers trademark touches: elegant prose, fantastical occurrences, striking characters, and racial tension.

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement.

I24 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of a baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims. The grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen years old--as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered it (that was the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny hand prints appeared in the cake (that was it for Howard). Neither boy waited to see more; another kettleful of chickpeas smoking in a heap on the floor; soda crackers crumbled and strewn in a line next to the doorsill. Nor did they wait for one of the relief periods: the weeks, months even, when nothing was disturbed. No. Each one fled at once--the moment the house committed what was for him the one insult not to be borne or witnessed a second time. Within two months, in the dead of winter, leaving their grandmother, Baby Suggs; Sethe, ...

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Beloved by Toni Morrison Book Review Or Just Some Book Thoughts

Toni Morrison’s Beloved is another classic that has taken me a while to come to. Why? As with many revered books, that is a question with a very long answer!

Beloved is obviously in a league all it’s own. I have a lot to learn about READING from it. In all honesty, alot of the book- particularly in the first half- was difficult to fully understand on initial reading. I’m glad I persevered – there is so much about it to note that I’m curious to know what I’d find on re-read

I’m possibly the last person on these internets to read Beloved so I’m not going to re hash plot. If you want that, do have a look here or here . I’m going to write a bit about a few themes and points that struck me

Memory, “Rememory” and shared experience

Morrison’s use and communication of individual memory is what I found most powerful in this novel. There are a few pages where Beloved and Sethe’s combined memories are expressed in tandem. Here, what is being remembered seems to extend before either of their beings . The memories , “rememory” and repetition in this book built an omnipresence that went beyond Beloved, the character or the book. A spirit. This story very is haunting. It is not a book you can read, put down and (ironically) forget.  

The role of memory and personal history in Beloved is so significant both in understanding the relationship between the characters and understanding day to day life in slavery away from a Euro- centric focus. A striking point is that the characters had been at some point been bound by slavery and suffered. The trauma of that history was extremely present in every character and yet the focus is more on how Black people behaved with each other- and loved each other, endured within the limited agency they did have. Good or bad, this is what they did do. These were the individuals in a history we think we know. It is not a story from a white perspective and it is not text book.

An important aspect of memory is that people sharing an experience will have different versions of it. An example being how Sethe, Paul D. and Baby Sugar remembered The Clearing vs how the outsiders like Janey remembered The Clearing and Baby Sugar herself. Even the naming of places/ events in personal memories (The Clearing, The Lowest Of The Low)- emphasised the role of summoning the past in this narrative

A fictional story based on an unforgettable real life character  

I love books sending me off on a Google trail! Beloved is a fictional novel but so much research went into it. Sethe’s character is based on the real life story of Margaret Garner. She was an enslaved African American woman who, with her family, escaped Maplewood Farm (Kentucky)  in 1856, pursuing  freedom. Unfortunately, they were caught by the enslaver and law enforcement. Having suffered slavery herself, Garner killed her two year old daughter rather than have her suffer the same fate.  Morrison was impressed with Garner’s intellect, ferocity and willingness to risk everything for freedom. She took the inspiration to imagine the characters and stories-Toni Morrison wrote this in her foreword to Beloved: 

The historical Margaret Garner is fascinating, but, to a novelist, confining. Too little imaginative space there for my purposes. So I would invent her thoughts, plumb them for a subtext that was historically true in essence, but not strictly factual in order to relate her history to contemporary issues about freedom, responsibility, and women’s “place.” The heroine would represent the unapologetic acceptance of shame and terror; assume the consequences of choosing infanticide; claim her own freedom. The terrain, slavery, was formidable and pathless. (Beloved xvii)

Here’s a link to find out more about Margaret Garner, including the newspaper clippings from the 1850s and differences from Sethe’s character

Another link about the cas e and Toni Morrison’s quotes for context

Toni Morrison wrote so we could read actively 

The reader has to work in this story in order to figure out relationships and histories. A lot of it unravels as you read but if curiosity chases you too, you will probably try and figure it out as you go along. It made me think about how a lot of literature I come across now has the thinking done for you, there’s very little to figure out. That’s not a complaint, I like an easy read sometimes but it’s interesting that a lot of books are not asking us to unravel plot any more. Why is that? Or maybe they are and I  haven’t been reading those books alot?

Beloved is a gothic/ horror story

I probably should have known the genre going in but I didn’t! This has made me wonder what else I’m missing in this genre. 

There is a lot of beautiful writing within such a terrifying  narrative. Some of the prose even sounds poetic. I always appreciate stories with a folklore/mythical  element woven into it which I think Beloved did.  In the characters’ memories and punishments inflicted on enslaved people, it is truly a horror to realise that the characters are remembering depravity that was a matter of routine. 

One thing I did find strange though – why didn’t Sethe always know it was Beloved? It seemed obvious 

There are some books that beg a second read to absorb properly and this was a difficult read. Both literally and psychologically. I think I will have to read it again to appreciate it properly. I do think this probably isn’t the best Morrison to start with, the style and craft is fairly complex. I am very interested explore more of Toni Morrison’s fiction and there is an extensive catalogue for me to get into. What would you recommend first?  

My edition of Beloved is the Plume edition published in 1988 . Lucky to find it secondhand from Crofton Books

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Book Review: Beloved by Toni Morrison

Author: Toni Morrison

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

Genre: Historical Fiction, Magical Realism

First Publication: 1987

Language:  English

Major Characters: Baby Suggs, Sethe, Beloved, Paul D Garner, Denver

Setting Place: The outskirts of Cincinnati, Ohio in the years just before (1855) and directly following (1873) the Civil War; flashbacks to the Sweet Home plantation in Kentucky

Theme: Slavery, Motherhood, Storytelling, Memory, and the Past, Community

Narrator: Third person omniscient, with first-person passages from various points of view

Book Summary: Beloved by Toni Morrison

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby.

Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Her new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement by Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison.

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.

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”

The house is an ominous character in Beloved by Toni Morrison; it had a life of its own. I felt the hopelessness of Sethe and Denver who had no place else to go.

The love story in Beloved by Toni Morrison is a different kind of love story, a love story that involves a couple, Sethe and Paul D, who were once slaves. How can people move on from being slaves to being in free relationships? As slaves they became accustomed to their loved ones, their parents, children and lovers being sold or running away. The past has left scar marks like the scars in the shape of a chokeberry tree on Sethe’s back.

“Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be.”

For Toni Morrison this is part of her personal history, and she makes herself the voice of this legion of ghosts whose stories some people would like to remain buried and forgotten. With her artistic sensibilities, she takes a real case of a woman pushed beyond the limits of endurance by the system ( Margaret Garner ) and makes it a poem of pain and redemption, of the awakening of individual conscience and of the sense of belonging to a community of the oppressed.

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Toni Morrison | 4.12 | 323,966 ratings and reviews

Ranked #3 in Slavery , Ranked #5 in African American — see more rankings .

Reviews and Recommendations

We've comprehensively compiled reviews of Beloved from the world's leading experts.

Esi Edugyan I was shocked by the blunt force of its subject matter and its exquisitely torqued prose. It remains one of my most adored novels. (Source)

Bianca Belair @ylc130 I went to the library when I was in the 3rd grade and read Beloved... I remember being so confused and my Mama having to explain it to me... I later read it as an adult and it hit me completely different. GREAT BOOK! (Source)

Farah Jasmine Griffin Beloved was Morrison’s fifth novel. It’s a gripping story, inspired by a famous abolitionist case, the true story of a woman who runs away from slavery with her children, but when the slave catchers catch up with her, she kills one of her own and tries to kill the others, rather than returning them to slavery. (Source)

Rankings by Category

Beloved is ranked in the following categories:

• #15 in 11th Grade
• #82 in 12th Grade
• #15 in 16-Year-Old
• #82 in 17-Year-Old
• #82 in 18-Year-Old
• #36 in 20th Century
• #90 in Adulting
• #22 in African
• #33 in African American History
• #23 in American
• #26 in American Literature
• #26 in Americana
• #25 in Award-Winning
• #61 in Awarded
• #8 in Black Author
• #70 in Bucket List
• #38 in Buzzfeed
• #57 in Catalog
• #41 in Censorship
• #41 in Class
• #90 in Controversial
• #25 in Conversation
• #91 in Diverse
• #54 in Ghost
• #24 in Ghost Story
• #27 in Gilmore Girls
• #48 in Gothic
• #14 in Graduate School
• #89 in High School
• #35 in High School Reading
• #97 in Historical Fiction
• #73 in Important
• #64 in Justice
• #52 in Leather
• #72 in Life Changing
• #30 in Literary
• #72 in Literature
• #12 in Magical Realism
• #26 in Memory Improvement
• #85 in Modern
• #41 in Modern Classic
• #74 in Modern Fiction
• #81 in Modernism
• #35 in Motherhood
• #8 in Multiculturalism
• #32 in New York Times Bestseller
• #8 in Nobel
• #84 in Oprah
• #70 in Poster
• #16 in Postmodernism
• #12 in Pulitzer Prize
• #42 in Purple
• #28 in Racism
• #100 in Sad
• #26 in South
• #47 in Time
• #46 in Trauma
• #63 in Trigger Warning
• #18 in University
• #61 in Used
• #30 in Women

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A review on the Beloved novel by Toni Morrison

A critical analysis.

Beloved is a novel written by the Author, Toni Morrison, in 1987. It was published around the same time. The novel has been a success because it has been one of the best-selling in America. It has also drawn attention because it has featured on mainstream media such as the New York Times and Oprah Winfrey’s Show. Additionally, the author artistically and realistically presents a number of rather disturbing life issues. They are, but not limited to, African slavery in America, freedom, identity destruction, masculinity, and the concept of home. Though disturbing, readers can really relate to since they still affect our society today. Clearly, realistic representation in Toni Morrison’s Beloved is something readers look for. The book has good readership and more people should read this book.

Ideas in the Novel

This is not only the most dominant ideas in the novel, but also one of the most memorable aspects of American History. It reflects upon how the African Americans were severely mistreated and robbed of their human identity by their counterparts, the white Americans. But, despite the tough times, the African Americans were very hopeful – some, like Paul D in the novel, went to an extent of eloping from the plantations, others, like Sethe, going further to kill their young ones so they never fall prey to slavery. Halle is another slavery victim who also tries to rescue his mother from slavery. Dehumanization in the novel is symbolized by cattle and how they are generally treated.

This is directly connected to the theme of slavery. In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, African American slaves such as Paul D. and Sethe experience dehumanizing slavery in the white men’s plantations. But, they get hopeful that someday they will be independent and live a normal human life. So they decide to escape to achieve their dreams. Halle tries to free his mother from the pangs of slavery. After escaping, Paul D and Sethe meet at 124 Bluestone road and together, they continue enjoying freedom.

Toni Morrison’s Beloved represents the idea of home as a place to host a family unit. This is also directly related to slavery because of the way Africans were separated from their homes. After an episode of slavery at the plantations, Sethe and Paul run away to start their own home in Cincinnati. At some point, Paul runs away from his home and goes back when he feels like.

Identity loss

Losing identity means changing very important aspects of personality such as beliefs, values, and behavior. According to Toni Morrison’s novel, slavery does not just mean physically treating African Americans like animals. It also extends to systems and institutions that came up later including naming of individuals. As African Americans, Paul D, Baby Suggs, Sethe, and Halle, have their names reflecting the loss of their identities. The fact that black people helplessly suffered in the hands of other people only backs up the idea of identity loss.

The history of the novel

Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, is about a black woman, Margaret Garner, who escaped from the pangs of slavery in Kentucky in early 1856. She was headed to Ohio, which was a free state. The main theme of the novel is slavery and involves two main characters, Sethe, and Paul D. The history of this novel is very important because it reflects on the history of the entire American black community. This is a history that is still fresh on their minds. Beloved is a piece of American Literature that brings together both Historical fiction and horror. It is also one of the novels that have successfully presented criticism in an uncensored manner and still remained to be one of the best- selling. Up to date, the novel still attracts a lot of readership and continues to do well.

The problems of the Novel

The main problem presented in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, is not being able to comfortably and openly tell her story. This could be explained by the use of symbolism in the novel. Toni Morrison reflects upon the trouble that black people had while trying to trace their identity and origin and deal with their problems. Therefore, she tries to take people back to those dark days of slavery for better understanding. Therefore, narration especially on such traumatizing ordeals can be as hard for any other author.

Plot of the novel

Sethe runs away to start life at 124 Bluestone Ohio as a cook. While here, she lives with her daughter, Denver, and Baby Suggs, her mother-in-law. Baby Suggs dies leaving Sethe and Denver behind. Inspired by her past experiences, Sethe had murdered Beloved, her daughter of 2 years, to save her from slavery. The baby’s ghost still haunts the house. But, Sethe has sort of made peace with it. Paul D arrives at 124 Bluestone and moves in with Sethe and they start an independent life together. They are so in love that Denver, who is now big enough, gets jealous. After some time, the haunting by baby Beloved’s ends. But, a woman by the name Beloved arrives at their home in 124. This startles everyone, especially Sethe, since she had murdered her daughter, who also went by the name Beloved. Both Paul and Sethe are left with no choice but to allow Beloved to stay.

This news spreads like bush fire. Her stay is characterized by financial times so hard the neighbors join hands to offer help. Denver gets a job. One way when going to work, Sethe mistakes her boss for her slave master. She gets mad and attacks him. She is stopped by Denver and other women, leading to Beloved running away forever. Sethe gets mentally ill. Paul D comes back and Sethe gets better. Denver focuses on getting a college education. From then on, the quality of life of black people at 124 gets better.

Description of Main Characters

Noble – loves the fact that she is black.

Loving – Opinions are different, but it was out of love that Sethe saved her child from the cruelty that comes with slavery.

Morally upright – She did not like the idea of murder as protection from slavery.

Self-driven – she is focused on having a better life for her family and herself. She gets a good job and works towards going to college.

Understanding – she doesn’t blame her mother for killing Beloved.

This refers to the baby, the ghost, and the woman.

Baby-like – Ribbons and bright clothes excite the woman just as much as a baby would be.

Loving – he falls in love with Sethe and they live together.

In a nutshell, the impact of Toni Morrison’s Beloved cannot be understated. It is worth reading for a better understanding of our society today.

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By Arthita Banerjee

Toni Morrison was a writer extraordinaire, her impact on people’s lives went far beyond the page. She was the very first black woman to be awarded the Nobel prize for Literature, laying the groundwork for generations to come. We all stand tall on her shoulders, to say the least.

Her best known work, the ‘ Beloved’ , moves in terrains nobody has dared explore before. 

When you think of a story addressing, revisiting slavery- all it normally does is tread along the sidelines, use grisly, graphic tales of horrors in an attempt to educate, by invoking a sense of pity.

Morrison, however doesn’t want you to look at the black experience through a monochromatic lens. She implores you to look for the complex shades of grey, even in the most enduring and trying times. While you maybe disgusted by the actions of the characters but you are never to see them as less than people, puppeteered by the slave masters and a mere product of the cotton plantations.  

It’s truly an extraordinary task to write a review for Toni’s magnum opus but if I must mention, it’s an equally daunting task trying to take it all in the first time you read it – her nurtured, her nemesis, the beloved. 

Morrison demands you really read her book. It is of little consequence that you may be familiar with the writing style of a Faulkner or a García Márquez, when you sit down with Beloved, you need to have a little artistic interpretation of your own, as a reader, otherwise it ain’t cutting ice with her writing. 

The book is definitely not your run-of-the-mill linear tale, there is no beginning and no end to it, just juxtapositions of the horrors of the past, told through flashbacks, memories and dreams, all effortlessly blending into the present – a constant reminder of how alive the past is. The narration and the structure of the book is also compounded by an ever-switching point of view of the characters. Even the dead ones, sometimes, have their bit to say.

Beloved, is a tapestry of the imperative, very distinctive black experience that’s hard to look in the eye. Distinctive, because the characters have a voice of their own, devastatingly enough, not a choice, but you learn the complexities in their own words, through their own nightmares, their doings as well as their undoings. Her writing is almost lyrical, poetry flowing like prose and her words, definitely incomparable. By her storytelling, she manages to elegantly dignify even the indignation suffered by her people.

Set in the mid 1800s, the book is based on the real life account of Margaret Garner, a fugitive slave on a Kentucky plantation, who, in an attempt to escape the slave catchers along with the letter and the spirit of the unforgiving law- the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and out of utter desperation, does the unthinkable. 

The great American painter, Thomas Satterwhite Noble, historically represents the very story in his painting ‘ The Modern Medea ’. A wood engraving of the art-piece can be found at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Margaret’s story, told through Morrison’s Sethe, explores the physical, emotional and to an extent spiritual devastation wrought by slavery.

The central character in the book is Sethe, and the book opens with the words, “Sth, I know that woman.” Several linguists argue that “Sth” is the sound of a woman grinding her teeth, it’s metaphorically conclusive for her actions which you are left free to judge but it’s sure to alter your perception, through her journey. 

The story follows the residents of house 124, a black family dismantled by their former enslavement, some years after the end of the Civil War. Sethe, along with the two young boys of the family, her mother-in-law Baby Suggs, and her daughter Denver live haunted by a raucous, and at times violent, spirit of a baby. It works its way into driving her family out, one after the other and ultimately her own community ends up isolating her. 

The story seams into gothic fiction, but it’s unlike any you have read before. It focuses on the haunting of the soul, that things cannot be unseen, unfelt or unremembered. The baby ghost is Sethe’s own child. 

Toni was disappointed that the book wasn’t “welcomed into the horror genre, when it is in fact a classic of horror.” However, as a reader I thought that the terror that is felt in the book is hardly about the ghost itself. It has so little to do with the supernatural and everything to do with the reality of the severe dehumanization of an entire people. It’s the horror of making the reader acknowledge that slavery existed, and Toni banging the ceremonial gavel with the order that it should and it must, haunt us all.

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JAUNTED BY THEIR NIGHTMARES Date: September 13, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition Section 7; Page 1, Column 3; Book Review Desk Byline: By MARGARET ATWOOD; Margaret Atwood is the author of ''The Handmaid's Tale,'' ''Bluebeard's Egg'' and the forthcoming ''Selected Poems II.'' Lead: LEAD: BELOVED By Toni Morrison. 275 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $18.95. Text: BELOVED By Toni Morrison. 275 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $18.95. ''BELOVED'' is Toni Morrison's fifth novel, and another triumph. Indeed, Ms. Morrison's versatility and technical and emotional range appear to know no bounds. If there were any doubts about her stature as a pre-eminent American novelist, of her own or any other generation, ''Beloved'' will put them to rest. In three words or less, it's a hair-raiser. In ''Beloved,'' Ms. Morrison turns away from the contemporary scene that has been her concern of late. This new novel is set after the end of the Civil War, during the period of so-called Reconstruction, when a great deal of random violence was let loose upon blacks, both the slaves freed by Emancipation and others who had been given or had bought their freedom earlier. But there are flashbacks to a more distant period, when slavery was still a going concern in the South and the seeds for the bizarre and calamitous events of the novel were sown. The setting is similarly divided: the countryside near Cincinnati, where the central characters have ended up, and a slave-holding plantation in Kentucky, ironically named Sweet Home, from which they fled 18 years before the novel opens. There are many stories and voices in this novel, but the central one belongs to Sethe, a woman in her mid-30's, who is living in an Ohio farmhouse with her daughter, Denver, and her mother-in-law Baby Suggs. ''Beloved'' is such a unified novel that it's difficult to discuss it without giving away the plot, but it must be said at the outset that it is, among other things, a ghost story, for the farmhouse is also home to a sad, malicious and angry ghost, the spirit of Sethe's baby daughter, who had her throat cut under appalling circumstances 18 years before, when she was 2. We never know this child's full name, but we - and Sethe - think of her as Beloved, because that is what is on her tombstone. Sethe wanted ''Dearly Beloved,'' from the funeral service, but had only enough strength to pay for one word. Payment was 10 minutes of sex with the tombstone engraver. This act, which is recounted early in the novel, is a keynote for the whole book: in the world of slavery and poverty, where human beings are merchandise, everything has its price, and price is tyrannical. ''Who would have thought that a little old baby could harbor so much rage?,'' Sethe thinks, but it does; breaking mirrors, making tiny handprints in cake icing, smashing dishes and manifesting itself in pools of blood-red light. As the novel opens, the ghost is in full possession of the house, having driven away Sethe's two young sons. Old Baby Suggs, after a lifetime of slavery and a brief respite of freedom - purchased for her by the Sunday labor of her son Halle, Sethe's husband -has given up and died. Sethe lives with her memories, almost all of them bad. Denver, her teen-age daughter, courts the baby ghost because, since her family has been ostracized by the neighbors, she doesn't have anyone else to play with. The supernatural element is treated, not in an ''Amityville Horror,'' watch-me-make-your-flesh-creep mode, but with magnificent practicality, like the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw in ''Wuthering Heights.'' All the main characters in the book believe in ghosts, so it's merely natural for this one to be there. As Baby Suggs says, ''Not a house in the country ain't packed to its rafters with some dead Negro's grief. We lucky this ghost is a baby. My husband's spirit was to come back in here? or yours? Don't talk to me. You lucky.'' In fact, Sethe would rather have the ghost there than not there. It is, after all, her adored child, and any sign of it is better, for her, than nothing. This grotesque domestic equilibrium is disturbed by the arrival of Paul D., one of the ''Sweet Home men'' from Sethe's past. The Sweet Home men were the male slaves of the establishment. Their owner, Mr. Garner, is no Simon Legree; instead he's a best-case slave-holder, treating his ''property'' well, trusting them, allowing them choice in the running of his small plantation, and calling them ''men'' in defiance of the neighbors, who want all male blacks to be called ''boys.'' But Mr. Garner dies, and weak, sickly Mrs. Garner brings in her handiest male relative, who is known as ''the schoolteacher.'' This Goebbels-like paragon combines viciousness with intellectual pretensions; he's a sort of master-race proponent who measures the heads of the slaves and tabulates the results to demonstrate that they are more like animals than people. Accompanying him are his two sadistic and repulsive nephews. From there it's all downhill at Sweet Home, as the slaves try to escape, go crazy or are murdered. Sethe, in a trek that makes the ice-floe scene in ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' look like a stroll around the block, gets out, just barely; her husband, Halle, doesn't. Paul D. does, but has some very unpleasant adventures along the way, including a literally nauseating sojourn in a 19th-century Georgia chain gang. THROUGH the different voices and memories of the book, including that of Sethe's mother, a survivor of the infamous slave-ship crossing, we experience American slavery as it was lived by those who were its objects of exchange, both at its best - which wasn't very good - and at its worst, which was as bad as can be imagined. Above all, it is seen as one of the most viciously antifamily institutions human beings have ever devised. The slaves are motherless, fatherless, deprived of their mates, their children, their kin. It is a world in which people suddenly vanish and are never seen again, not through accident or covert operation or terrorism, but as a matter of everyday legal policy. Slavery is also presented to us as a paradigm of how most people behave when they are given absolute power over other people. The first effect, of course, is that they start believing in their own superiority and justifying their actions by it. The second effect is that they make a cult of the inferiority of those they subjugate. It's no coincidence that the first of the deadly sins, from which all the others were supposed to stem, is Pride, a sin of which Sethe is, incidentally, also accused. In a novel that abounds in black bodies - headless, hanging from trees, frying to a crisp, locked in woodsheds for purposes of rape, or floating downstream drowned - it isn't surprising that the ''whitepeople,'' especially the men, don't come off too well. Horrified black children see whites as men ''without skin.'' Sethe thinks of them as having ''mossy teeth'' and is ready, if necessary, to bite off their faces, and worse, to avoid further mossy-toothed outrages. There are a few whites who behave with something approaching decency. There's Amy, the young runaway indentured servant who helps Sethe in childbirth during her flight to freedom, and incidentally reminds the reader that the 19th century, with its child labor, wage slavery and widespread and accepted domestic violence, wasn't tough only for blacks, but for all but the most privileged whites as well. There are also the abolitionists who help Baby Suggs find a house and a job after she is freed. But even the decency of these ''good'' whitepeople has a grudging side to it, and even they have trouble seeing the people they are helping as full-fledged people, though to show them as totally free of their xenophobia and sense of superiority might well have been anachronistic. Toni Morrison is careful not to make all the whites awful and all the blacks wonderful. Sethe's black neighbors, for instance, have their own envy and scapegoating tendencies to answer for, and Paul D., though much kinder than, for instance, the woman-bashers of Alice Walker's novel ''The Color Purple,'' has his own limitations and flaws. But then, considering what he's been through, it's a wonder he isn't a mass murderer. If anything, he's a little too huggable, under the circumstances. Back in the present tense, in chapter one, Paul D. and Sethe make an attempt to establish a ''real'' family, whereupon the baby ghost, feeling excluded, goes berserk, but is driven out by Paul D.'s stronger will. So it appears. But then, along comes a strange, beautiful, real flesh-and-blood young woman, about 20 years old, who can't seem to remember where she comes from, who talks like a young child, who has an odd, raspy voice and no lines on her hands, who takes an intense, devouring interest in Sethe, and who says her name is Beloved. Students of the supernatural will admire the way this twist is handled. Ms. Morrison blends a knowledge of folklore - for instance, in many traditions, the dead cannot return from the grave unless called, and it's the passions of the living that keep them alive - with a highly original treatment. The reader is kept guessing; there's a lot more to Beloved than any one character can see, and she manages to be many things to several people. She is a catalyst for revelations as well as self-revelations; through her we come to know not only how, but why, the original child Beloved was killed. And through her also Sethe achieves, finally, her own form of self-exorcism, her own self-accepting peace. ''Beloved'' is written in an antiminimalist prose that is by turns rich, graceful, eccentric, rough, lyrical, sinuous, colloquial and very much to the point. Here, for instance, is Sethe remembering Sweet Home: ''. . . suddenly there was Sweet Home rolling, rolling, rolling out before her eyes, and although there was not a leaf on that farm that did not want to make her scream, it rolled itself out before her in shameless beauty. It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too. Fire and brimstone all right, but hidden in lacy groves. Boys hanging from the most beautiful sycamores in the world. It shamed her - remembering the wonderful soughing trees rather than the boys. Try as she might to make it otherwise, the sycamores beat out the children every time and she could not forgive her memory for that.'' In this book, the other world exists and magic works, and the prose is up to it. If you can believe page one - and Ms. Morrison's verbal authority compels belief - you're hooked on the rest of the book. THE epigraph to ''Beloved'' is from the Bible, Romans 9:25: ''I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved.'' Taken by itself, this might seem to favor doubt about, for instance, the extent to which Beloved was really loved, or the extent to which Sethe herself was rejected by her own community. But there is more to it than that. The passage is from a chapter in which the Apostle Paul ponders, Job-like, the ways of God toward humanity, in particular the evils and inequities visible everywhere on the earth. Paul goes on to talk about the fact that the Gentiles, hitherto despised and outcast, have now been redefined as acceptable. The passage proclaims, not rejection, but reconciliation and hope. It continues: ''And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people; there shall they be called the children of the living God.'' Toni Morrison is too smart, and too much of a writer, not to have intended this context. Here, if anywhere, is her own comment on the goings-on in her novel, her final response to the measuring and dividing and excluding ''schoolteachers'' of this world. An epigraph to a book is like a key signature in music, and ''Beloved'' is written in major. 'OTHER PEOPLE WENT CRAZY, WHY COULDN'T SHE?' Sethe opened the front door and sat down on the porch steps. The day had gone blue without its sun, but she could still make out the black silhouettes of trees in the meadow beyond. She shook her head from side to side, resigned to her rebellious brain. Why was there nothing it refused? No misery, no regret, no hateful picture too rotten to accept? Like a greedy child it snatched up everything. Just once, could it say, No thank you? I just ate and can't hold another bite? I am full God damn it of two boys with mossy teeth, one sucking on my breast the other holding me down, their book-reading teacher watching and writing it up. I am still full of that, God damn it, I can't go back and add more. Add my husband to it, watching, above me in the loft - hiding close by - the one place he thought no one would look for him, looking down on what I couldn't look at at all. And not stopping them - looking and letting it happen. But my greedy brain says, Oh thanks, I'd love more - so I add more. And no sooner than I do, there is no stopping. There is also my husband squatting by the churn smearing the butter as well as its clabber all over his face because the milk they took is on his mind. . . . And if he was that broken then, then he is also and certainly dead now. And if Paul D saw him and could not save or comfort him because the iron bit was in his mouth, then there is still more that Paul D could tell me and my brain would go right ahead and take it and never say, No thank you. I don't want to know or have to remember that. I have other things to do: worry, for example, about tomorrow, about Denver, about Beloved, about age and sickness not to speak of love. But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day. . . . Other people went crazy, why couldn't she? Other people's brains stopped, turned around and went on to something new, which is what must have happened to Halle. And how sweet that would have been. From ''Beloved.''

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Read below our complete notes on the novel “Beloved” by Toni Morrison. Our notes cover Beloved summary, themes, characters, and analysis.

Introduction

Chloe Anthony Wofford, aka Toni Morrison (1931-2019), was an African American writer and a Nobel laureate. Her first novel was The Bluest Eye, which was published in 1970. She worked as a teacher as well as a fiction editor at a famous publishing house. Before writing this novel, she left her job there and sensed a feeling of freedom, which she wanted to express in her novel, and thus it came in the form of Beloved .

Beloved was an attempt to make the world feel what freedom meant for black people back then when there was slavery, and now when still there is segregation, though not explicit. It was written in Albany, NY, and published in 1987. It is a portrayal of slave women who were  treated as birth-giving machines and produced as many slaves as they could. There were no families, and whites used them like animals. It is the reenacting of the “civilized” life of white slave owners.

She started working on this novel in the early 1980s but gave it full-time attention when she left her job. The inspiration behind the story was a newspaper clipping regarding a slave woman’s story of escape in 1856. This story inspired Toni to write the novel. Her name was Margaret Garner, and she was born a slave. She escaped with her husband and children because she didn’t want her children to live life like them in chains. 

They escaped to Cincinnati and secured a place in a safe house. They were chased by their master (slave owner) and tried to capture them. She slit her two-year-old daughter’s throat and wounded her other children. She was captured later. This was an audacious attempt to rebel against slavery.

It tells of the conditions of black women in American society and the Fugitive Slave Act, which gave slave owners the right to chase slaves. It gave them the right to get back their fugitive slaves who had fled from south to north. Thus slaves were reclaimed this way, and new horrible stories of cruelties were created. Women were raped, men and children were starved, and civilized American society prospered. 

If American history is studied, the secret behind its prosperity is innocent people’s blood, whether it is that of native Americans or black slaves. And still, it continues, though tools and forms of exploitation have changed.

Toni wrote this story as a tribute to those whose blood has been shed, but nobody remembers them. It is a work of fiction and an assurance to black people that their miseries can never be forgotten. Some critics have criticized it for its dedication, which is ‘Sixty million and more,’ and they think it as a comparison between Jews killed in Holocaust and African Americans who perished in slavery. But a simple which is worthy of being asked that weren’t African Americans humans or Jews something more human?

Beloved earned much fame and won several prizes; one of them is the Pulitzer Prize. It is considered one of the best novels written after the second world war. It was a unique attempt to write about black women and their rights. Toni was given the Nobel Prize in 1993 for her black women’s writings. She taught at different universities and died in 2019.

Beloved Summary

This novel is divided into three parts, and inside these sections, there is no clear division based on title or chapter number, rather page break divides the chapters.

A child’s soul haunts 124 Bluestone Road; her throat was slit by her own mother. It is Cincinnati, and Sethe lives with her ten years old daughter, Denver, here. She is a former slave, and her sons have fled. On the tombstone of the child, ‘Beloved’ is engraved. For this engraving, she didn’t have money and had to fulfill the physical desires of the engraver.

She comes to wash her feet at a pump in a chamomile field. This evokes in her mind memories of her days in slavery and fellow slaves. Paul D, a fellow slave at ‘Sweet Home,’ a plantation, arrives there and meets her after 18 years. She tells Paul of the cruelties of their supervisor then, and he embraces her at the retelling of the horrible past.

Paul D had always desired her and wanted her to be his wife. He is happy at his luck to find her. They grow intimate in a little while, and Paul fulfills his physical desires from her. After that, they feel shy, and she mildly regrets having him allowed to do this. She thinks that all men are the same and try to reach their ends through any possible means. He has revived some bad memories back in her life that she wanted to forget. Then she remembers her husband and his mother. Her mother in law, Baby Suggs, had six husbands. From them, she had eight children, but all were taken away except Halle, her husband.

Denver remembers the time when she came back home, and a ghost was there to welcome her. This leads to the recollection of the story of her birth, which was told to her. Her mother worked on the plantation and got pregnant with her. She fled and was found by a good woman named Amy Denver, half dead. She rescued her and helped her deliver the child who was named Denver.

She then remembers the story told about the pink tombstone and red blood of the child, which her mother related to the ghost. Sethe remembers Mrs. Garner’s brother-in-law, who came there after her husband’s death and did oversee them.  Paul D stays there and asks if Denver has any problem, but Sethe tells her that she lives a charmed life and would be fine.

Denver asks Paul D about his stay that how much time he will spend with them. Sethe reprimands her over this question and asks her never to ask it again. Paul asks her if she asks this question from every man who comes there to stay, which angers Sethe. He asks her not to love her daughter that much because she is a former slave. Then they go to the carnival together, holding each other’s hands. Sethe thinks this as a good sign. Denver is happy with the attention she receives. This instance is a single instance of their normal family life.

A woman arrives at 124 and stays there for a night. When Sethe, Denver, and Paul arrive, she stands up and asks them for water. Sethe, at the sight of her, feels the need to water as she had felt when she was delivering Denver. They take the woman home, and she sleeps for four days. She only asks for water and is ill. When asked about her name, she tells them it is ‘Beloved.’

Denver stays with her day and night and takes care of her. Paul thinks there is something strange with her and she is pretending to be ill. He and Denver have seen her lift chair with one hand. Her appearance seems funny to Paul.

Beloved is attracted to Sethe, and she asks her about her diamonds. She remembers the diamonds that Mrs. Garner gave her at her marriage. She feels amazed because she wants to tell Beloved a story that she had decided to keep a secret. Then she tells her about her mother, who was hanged and the fact that she was her mother’s only child and named after her father. Denver is not interested because there is nothing about her in this story. A strange question that is raised in Sethe’s mind is that how  Beloved came to know about that story.

Paul D questions Beloved incessantly about how she came here and who she is, which she is unable to tell. He wonders how Sethe and Denver have come to accept her this way. Beloved likes to ask questions, but she doesn’t want to be questioned. Paul D wants her to be taken out of this place and be kept somewhere else. Then Denver comes to her rescue and takes her away to her room.

Sethe and Paul discuss her husband, Halle, who has left her. Paul tells her that he was aggravated by the incident that took place in the barn, and this made him leave the barn forever. She tells him that he should have come to her rescue, which Paul responds by saying that he couldn’t. The last time Paul saw him, he had his face buttered, and he was in a miserable state.

Beloved and Denver dance in Denver’s room, Denver asks her about the place from where she came. She tells her that it was a dark and closed place in which there were many people, some of them were dead. She tells her that she came there to see Sethe. Then Denver asks her to stay there, and she agrees.

Then she asks Denver to tell her about the story of her delivery, and she relates of her birth in the boat and Amy Denver, who helped Sethe deliver her. She also tells her that she was almost dead at the time of delivery, but it was Amy who revived her and saved her from death.

Sethe wants to make a decision about Beloved, Paul D, and Denver. She misses her mother-in-law, who was so helpful in such situations and gave valuable advice. She takes Beloved and Denver with her and goes to the rock near the river where Baby Suggs used to sit. She remembers her soothing hands and how she welcomed everybody to her home. She remembers her own arrival there. She decides to keep Beloved there and spend her life there, but she feels that somebody is strangling her. Denver tells her that it can’t be Baby Suggs’ because her hands were soothing.

Sethe decides to live her life with Paul D, and this upsets Beloved. She leaves for river clearing Denver chases her there. She blames her for strangling Sethe, and she denies it. She decides to stay careful if Beloved tries to kill her mother. When Sethe looks at them, they look like two sisters.

This chapter is a flashback to the time when Paul D was held by his white masters. He was sold by his former master to a new one who was innovative in his cruelties. He used to bind all workers with a chain and made them sleep in wooden boxes. These boxes were sunk in a deep ditch. After raining for several days, they were able to free themselves and reached a Cherokee village. There they were freed of their chains and asked about the way to the north. They told him to walk in the direction of the flowering trees, and thus walking on this blossom track, he was able to reach 124.

Paul D has left 124 gradually, and he sleeps in the storeroom. Beloved visits him and asks him to have intimate physical relations with her, which he refuses. He tells her that the only person he loves is Sethe. He is sure that Beloved can’t harm him, but it is happening, and he is unaware of it. He, at last, fulfills her wishes and accedes to her demand, and at that, the lid of tobacco tin opens. While making love, he repeatedly says, ‘red heart, red heart.’

Denver feels dissatisfied with the attention she receives from Beloved. When she pays attention to her, she feels it as a lovely experience. Sethe asks Beloved questions regarding her past, which she is unable to answer. She assumes that she was a white man’s slave who exploited her, and now she has erased her bad memories. Denver believes that she is the ghost of her sister, who died long ago.

One day she and Beloved go to the cold room to fetch cider jug, and there in the darkness, Beloved disappears. She looks for her, but she is nowhere, suddenly she appears in front of her. She tells her not to go anywhere because she can’t bear this loss after numerous others.

Paul D thinks about his past when he was one of the ‘men’ who Mr. Garner listened to, but with the arrival of another supervisor, he made them believe that they were not humans. He again thinks if he is a man because he is entranced by Beloved, and he, without any resistance, has sex with her. He considers telling this all to Sethe, and he leaves for her restaurant. When he arrives there, he decides not to tell her.

He then asks her to have his child; she responds that the two girls at home are enough. She thinks that she has got her dead daughter back in the form of a beloved.

Paul D and Sethe go upstairs to bed. Beloved asks Denver to make Paul go away. Denver thinks that if this happened, her mother would be mad at Beloved. Beloved’s tooth comes out as she is pulling it and feels if her body will fall apart. She always has a fear that her body will fall apart into pieces. When Denver tells her why she didn’t weep, she starts weeping. Denver holds her in her arms, and she is assured that she would be fine.

In this chapter, there is a flashback to Sethe’s coming at 124. Baby Suggs delayed the celebration of her coming because she didn’t want to be an immature celebration and lost soon. This was a great celebration, and ninety people were fed. There is also a remembrance of how Baby Suggs herself came there.

She was a slave and freed after paying when she broke her leg. Her slave name was Jenny Whitlow, she changed it after her husband’s name, which was Suggs, and he used to call her baby, so she chose the name ‘Baby Suggs.’ Her son Halle made efforts to free her and to pay for this, he worked hard and ultimately was able to do so. She, after her liberty, tried to find her children but lost this cause.

The flashback continues. At 124 sheriff, Sethe’s master, his nephew, and a slave catcher arrive. At their arrival, they see a man and an older woman near the shed. They enter there and find a woman who has killed her own child and is trying to kill another baby by hitting its head against the wall. This kid is saved in time. The sheriff comes to take hold of the kids, but Baby Suggs interrupts and saves them. Then she replaces the dead child with the living one and takes the dead child to another room.

The sheriff calls for a wagon and takes Sethe in it; she proudly steps out of the house and enters the wagon. Denver is in her arms, and she firmly holds her.

Paul D has a newspaper in his hand and looks at the picture of a woman and tells Stamp Paid that it is not Sethe. Stamp knows the story, but he doesn’t tell him what has happened. Instead, he reads him the story from the newspaper. He knows what the incidents that took place in the shed were. He wonders if this all has happened.

Paul D takes that clipping with him and shows it to Sethe. She, instead of laughing, tells him all that had happened. She tells him that she has not shared all the details with anybody, not even Baby Suggs. She tells him how elated she felt at securing her children from that place. The idea of making them free made her ecstatic. She didn’t want them to go back to plantations. He tells her that her love is thick, and she responds by saying that the love that is thin is not love.

He tells her that the path she chose was not right while she defends her decision by saying that she has two feet, not four. Paul leaves without saying goodbye.

Paul D is coming towards 124; he hears loud sounds coming off the house. He feels responsible for Sethe because he is the one who saved her child. He has come to this place just once and not ever after that. Sethe now firmly believes that her dead daughter is back because she hears the sound of the song that she herself made for her children. Stamp thinks about why she killed her own child and after a lot of thinking comes to the conclusion that white had forced her to do so.

Sethe has decided to live peacefully with her children. She remembers the escape plan Halle had made, but only she was able to escape with her children but later recaptured. Stamp believes that 124 is occupied by dead slaves, and he knocks the door, but no one comes, and thus he leaves.

Now, when she has started believing that Beloved has come back to her. She thinks about how to tell her about the reason behind her killing. She thinks of life at Sweet Home, where she was abused, and she told Mrs. Garner. This led to the schoolteacher’s outrage, and she fled with her children. She looked for Halle, but he was nowhere, and she couldn’t see him ever after that.

Later, when they came back to recapture her, she killed her child because she didn’t want them to be abused in slavery by their masters. She recalls the time she wanted to die and be laid with her daughter in the grave, but then she remembered her children. She decided to live for them. Now she is serene because Beloved has come back.

In this chapter, Denver confesses that she had swallowed the blood of her sister with her mother’s milk. She remembers the time when she started growing intimate with the ghost. She reminds of the reasons that made her mother kill Beloved. She wants to tell Beloved to be careful of her mother and stay away from her.

She doesn’t feel easy with Paul D and wants him to leave. She wants to reunite with her father, and if her mother leaves with Paul, she would be fine. She wants a happy family, which would be she, Beloved, and her father.

Beloved talks like babies and tells of the same experiences as Sethe. She relates the hard times when they were shackled and men with no skin given them food. The place was extremely unhealthy. She sees a woman with the same face as her. She wants to separate her from herself, which Beloved doesn’t want to. She then sees this woman in 124, and the face is Sethe’s. She and Sethe can be together.

Beloved continues in the stream of consciousness, and Sethe, along with other people, went into the sea. Denver, Sethe and Beloved talk with each other. Sethe promises not to leave her again, Beloved tells her of her coming from the other side while Denver warns her not to be close with Sethe.

Paul D is sitting in front of the church and remembers the time of his slavery. He thinks of the difference between Mr. Garner and the schoolteacher and finds none. To both, they were slaves. He again doubts his manhood and thinks of Sixo and Halle as men. He remembers how they tried to escape, and Sixo was burnt tied to a tree. He was laughing because one fugitive slave woman had his child in her womb. He at that time thought about Sethe, who, with her children, had left, and he was sad because he couldn’t see her again.

Stamp Paid and Paul talk, they discuss how Stamp changed his name to this and helped fugitive slaves in their freedom. Paul expresses his doubts regarding the presence of the killed girl in 124. Stamp asks him if he is sure this is the girl who was killed. He also asks him if it is the reason he left 124.

XVI, XVII, XVIII

The situation worsens at 124, Sethe has become insane at the sight of Denver’s employer. She thinks he is the schoolteacher and tries to kill him, but he is saved. Paul D returns and finds Sethe alone at home and feels the same sentiments for her what Sixo had felt for Thirty-Mile Woman. He asks her to stand with him and make tomorrow together because they share their yesterday. Beloved is gone, and there is no trace left of her, nor do the people want to remind of that bad memory. They think of it as a story that shouldn’t be passed on.

Beloved by Toni Morrison Characters Analysis

Sethe is the protagonist of the novel. She is an escaped slave and is a proud, noblewoman. Her ideal role in this novel is that of a mother; she tries to do anything possible for her children. She has lived a miserable life herself, but she doesn’t want her children to live life like this and, for this purpose, escapes the plantation.

She kills her daughter because she thinks its better to kill her than to hand her to the slave owners. She, like her mother-in-law, is a character that is a representation of the true human spirit. Society thinks unfair of her, but she doesn’t care about it. Instead of accepting help from others,  she prefers to earn her livelihood by working herself, and that shows her desire not to hurt her ego.

She is not hurt by physical and sexual abuse, but the schoolteacher’s verbal abuse hurts her. She doesn’t want encounters with her past but still is entrapped in it. She is a strong woman, accepts her past, and moves to the future, trying to lead a new life with Paul D.

Beloved is Sethe’s murdered daughter. She was two years old when her mother escaped saving her children from slavery. She was caught by her master, and to save her daughter; she killed her. She comes to their life years later in the form of a ghost. She is disguised as an eighteen-year-old girl and tries to occupy the home. 

She attempts to drive her mother’s lover out of her home but fails, and instead, she is driven out. Her character is mysterious in the novel. There are chances that she has been kept enslaved by a white man to fulfill his sexual needs, and now she is an ordinary woman.

There are some chances that she is a ghost because, at her sight, Sethe loses control over her urination. Another instance of it is the knowledge that she has regarding Sethe’s past life. There is a sign of scar near her chin, and it may be the sign of a wound that had been there when Sethe killed her daughter. Some scholars muse that it is the ghost of Sethe’s dead mother.

Whoever may be, she but it is clear that she is an allegorical figure, and she represents enslaved black women. She vanishes at the end of the story, but she is nowhere gone. She is forgotten by people, but the novel preserves her. She is a past that is both painful and destructive. She revives the repressed memories and gives people a chance to tell the stories they didn’t want to remember.

She is the most intelligent girl and a dynamic character. She is an introspective and sensitive person who stays in her closet and thinks about the matters in her life. She is a charmed child and thought to have contacts with supernatural beings. She is eighteen years old and still doesn’t want to get out of her home and wants to live life in seclusion. She is the most affected in the events of the novel.

She has been told that her mother has killed her elder child and spends life in fear that she may be killed too. She wants her father back in her life and doesn’t like Paul D’s coming into their life. She is a teenager who is in search of her identity. She craves attention because,  in contrast to normal children, there is a lot that is missing in her life. She evolves throughout the novel and becomes independent. She is the one who comes out of home and asks the community for help to drive out Beloved.

She finds a job for herself and then opts to go to college. She faces odds in the form of negligence from her mother and malevolence of Beloved.

Paul D is Sethe’s fellow slave at Sweet Home. He is, and his other friends are candidates to be Sethe’s husband, but she chooses Halle. After this decision, they still fantasize about marrying her. He has suffered physical and emotional brutality. He has buried emotions in his heart and never expresses them. He has been through his hardest times and believes that one shouldn’t attach himself to anything too much.

He tried to escape from his master like Sethe and others but failed and was captured. He was sold to a new owner, and he tried to kill the master. He was kept in chains, but he tried to escape and was fortunate in this attempt. He then wandered at different places and didn’t try to settle at any place. He was in love and wanted to marry her and ended up in 124. He came to her house, and they came to a relationship, but he was disliked by Beloved and Denver. He left Sethe’s house.

He came to know how Sethe had killed her daughter and started to hate her for it. He then reconciled himself with this incident and came back to her intending to spend life with her.

Baby Suggs was Halle’s mother and a former slave. She has died before the start of the novel. She spent her life with different husbands, and each child had a different father. Her last child was Halle, and he was the only child she was able to raise. She had become crippled when he was growing up. He bought her freedom, and she set up a matriarchy.  She was a generous person.  She had a prominent role in her society and helped those in need. She was the one who gave Sethe and Denver shelter and tried to be their support.

For people of Cincinnati, her personality is an emotional and spiritual inspiration. Her health starts to fail after Sethe’s killing of her young child. She is the inspiration behind Denver’s coming out of the house when due to Beloved, the condition has worsened. She has been the head of black people’s gatherings in the past. This is the reason people help Denver when she comes and asks them for it.

He is a figure of salvation and has saved many people from slavery. He is welcomed at every home in the town. He saves Denver and Sethe’s life. His life is changed by a sacrifice during enslavement, and he vows to help people in need. He feels angry about the society’s neglect of Denver and Sethe and questions their responsibilities.

Schoolteacher

He takes charge of the plantation after the death of Mr. Garner and is a cruel man. Like the rest of slave owners, he doesn’t consider slaves as human beings. He brings rigid rules and punishments at the plantation for the slaves. Shortly, he is an evil incarnate.

Halle is Baby Suggs’ son and Sethe’s husband. He is a kind, sincere, and generous person. He understands the reality of slave owners and isn’t in any misconception regarding it. He goes mad at Sethe’s abuse by the schoolteacher’s nephews.

She is a woman of mixed races. She has blonde hair, and she hates it. Though she is alienated in society, she still understands her responsibilities and helps those in need. She is doubtful of what Denver tells her, but still, she arranges to send food to Sethe’s household.

She is also a former slave. She was abused by her owner and his son. She believes that bad memories should be forgotten. She leads the people when there is an attempt made to get out Beloved of 124.

Mr. and Mrs. Garner

They were the owners of Sweet House and the plantations where Sethe and her fellows worked. They are apparently benevolent to their slaves but are after all slave owners. They strategically manipulate the slaves and use them for their purpose, thus keeping them away from thinking about rebellion.

Mr. and Mrs. Bodwin

These are siblings and white abolitionists. They are the ones who bring Denver and Sethe freedom. These characters are somewhat contradictory, but they are far better than the rest of the white people. They believe that all human beings are holy regardless of their color.

She is a young, compassionate white girl. She is an indentured servant and helps Sethe deliver Denver. She is an idealistic and talkative girl. She helps Sethe when she is ill. Denver is named after her by her mother as a tribute to her services.

Paul A, Paul F, Sixo

Pauls are Paul D’s brothers, and they work on the same farm with him. Sixo is their fellow slave who dies with Paul A in an attempt to escape from the plantation.

Beloved by Toni Morrison Themes

Slavery erases all the human feelings of a person, and the same is the case with love. Paul D knows this fact and believes that while being in love and being a slave at the same time is risky. The same happens with Sethe, who tries to give her children maternal love and, as a result, loses her daughter. 

She earns guilt as an additional supplement. There is a clear line drawn between love and slavery. Love and freedom are defined in this novel as the ability to choose things which is impossible in slavery. In slavery, one doesn’t even have the choice about oneself, then how can he/she chose other things.

Guilt is an undeniable reality that accompanies a wrong. In Beloved, Sethe is haunted by the guilt and becomes incarnate in the form of Beloved. She remembers the wrong she has committed to her daughter and tries to reassure her that she did it out of love. She tries to take care of her and pays much attention to her neglecting Denver. This is done to atone for the crime she has committed. For this purpose, she even forgets herself and tries to please Beloved. She gets rid of this guilt, ultimately when Beloved is driven out of her house.

Loss of Identity in Slavery

Slavery brings physical, emotional, and spiritual destruction. The memories of slavery and the miserable days are not forgettable even after their freedom. Slaves lose identity as human beings, and the only thing they know about themselves is being a slave. There are multiple examples in this novel which show the self-alienation of different characters. Paul D hears screams and is not sure whether these exist in real. Slaves were considered animals by their owners and traded as a commodity.

The majority of the characters in this novel are in doubt whether they are human beings in real or not. There are feelings of mental and physical disintegration in slaves, and all these contribute to the loss of identity.

Past Vs. Present

If people have some past memories, there is a constant fight going on between their past and present. In this novel, Sethe tries to bury her past. She tries to get rid of the memory of her daughter’s murder but isn’t able to do so; her ghost haunts her. Paul D’s arrival adds to the misery, and she remembers all the things that happened on the plantation and incidents that took place after that.

Paul D has buried his memories in his heart, though they come back and haunt him, he is able to show no emotional reaction to them. Beloved comes and revives the buried memories in Sethe’s mind and ruins her mental stability. She starts raving and is recovered only when Beloved is driven out of the house.

Supernatural

There are a lot of supernatural elements in this novel. For instance, there are ghosts, charms, risen babies, and this shows the expression of the past in the present. These are the past memories and incidents which express themselves in present dominating the conscious. Human beings often accept these delusions as supernatural elements. In this novel majority of the characters believe in the supernatural and, in some cases, have experienced the supernatural. This shows their bad memories from the past.

Importance of Community Solidarity

The importance of the individual in his survival is of prime importance, but society’s role can’t be neglected. Individuals need support from society before taking any step. This is shown in Beloved when Sethe comes to Cincinnati. The fugitive and freed slaves are supported and provided by the community at Cincinnati, and an example of it is the residence provided to Sethe at 124. Another instance of it is Beloved’s arrival at 124; she occupies the house. The residents are not able to live their life normally, and then again, society comes to help Sethe and her daughter to get rid of Beloved.

The community’s role is important; it becomes necessary in societies like that of former slaves. They don’t have families or blood relations; rather, their community plays this role, and they share good and bad times together.

The Powers and Limits of Language

Language is manipulated by those in power, and it is shown in this novel. The slaves try to use language in the same way if it could change their fate. They change their names to get rid of their memories. They try to forget their bad days by renaming things. Once the schoolteacher tells the slaves that they are the definers and they interpret or redefine things. He tells the slaves that they have to obey and not to argue. This shows the abuse of rhetoric by the powerful.

In normal cases, home is a term which signifies comfort and security. In the case of this novel, the concept is the opposite. The former slaves have led a life in which all the terms have changed their meanings, and home is an inclusion. Before their freedom, they had no homes, and their residences were uncomfortable places, which instead of rest were a source of jeopardy.

Now after freedom, all the memories of that life haunt them, and when they are given a comfortable life, they don’t fit with it. This novel term ‘Sweet Home’ is used for one place, and it is the farm owner’s residence. This shows the ironic existence of such a place and the inability of the former slaves to adjust to it.

To the general public, slavery means evil, and the slave owners evil incarnate. In Beloved, the author has attempted to find its denotations and connotations in a different way. She has explored the good and bad aspects as well as the grey areas. She has shown slave owners in the evilest form. 

There is also a portrayal of slaves in dark aspects when Sethe kills her own daughter. There are also some slave owners shown who consider slaves human beings. The issue of slavery is thoroughly discussed in this novel, and it is the reader’s choice to make an opinion regarding it.

Beloved by Toni Morrison Literary Analysis

Beloved is a masterpiece of African-American literature, and it encapsulates the experiences of slaves in a relatively short time and space. It expertly tells of what miseries the slaves had to face, and this is shown through artistic use of the imagery. Figurative language is employed successfully to let the reader imagine and place him/herself in place of a slave. 

It gives an exquisite experience of the “great” American civilization. It puts forward the ironies of the society, which presents itself as the protector and champion of human rights. Above all, Beloved is an immortal human experience that is understandable and can be felt in any period of time.

It is a work of Gothic fiction that relates a family drama and coming of age of some characters. Denver is the most evident example. It can also be credited as historical fiction because it tells the story of millions of slaves and people’s history of the United States.

The tone of the novel is elegiac, mourning the miseries in the lives of African Americans. It can be inferred from Sethe’s talks and thinking as well from the dedication which dedicates it to sixty million and more. It is an obvious reference to those who suffered.

There is also hope in the tone, telling of the good days, as Paul D thinks that he will have happy days with Sethe. There is a lot of love and an indication not to look back, and that makes it optimistic, asking the reader to make life beautiful.

Setting of the Novel

Spatially this novel is set in a small country house, and there are references to different places in Kentucky and Ohio. 124 Bluestone is not just a house; it is a small world that tries to depict all the experiences of slave life. Temporally this novel is set in the pre-civil war era. There are references to Sweet House, which is situated in Ohio, Fugitive Act of 1851, and many other references that clarify its setting.

Point of View

The author doesn’t stick to a single narrative style and uses more than one. She switches between many styles, and that happens before informing the reader. Often the switching is so subtle that the reader doesn’t understand it and is stuck in one place. Third-person omniscient and third-person limited are used in a major part of the novel. There are also traces of universal omniscient and first-person narrators.

Significance of the Title

The title plays an important role in creating drama in this novel. The reader is confused about who is beloved and of whom. There are numerous people who can be called beloved in this novel, and it can be inferred that humanity is beloved. This is evident from the dedication which doesn’t dedicate it to specific people. It’s for all, though it figuratively refers to African Americans.

Significance of the Ending

In the end, we see that everything has changed. Sethe and Paul D dedicate themselves to each other and decide to start a new life. Denver gets a job and will enter a college while Beloved is driven out. The story doesn’t end here. Beloved has gone, but her story isn’t easy to forget, she will be remembered. The Past will be used to move the present.

Epigraph and Dedication

The epigraph and dedication make the message universal, and it is a ray of hope for all those bearing hardships. The epigraph is taken from the Bible, and the dedication is to sixty million and more, which makes it ambiguous but clear for humanity.

Writing Style

Toni Morrison, like the rest of modernist novelists, writes in a complicated way. She writes with all her senses, and that ofttimes makes the novel hard to understand. Her metaphors are laden with meanings, and an example of it is ‘rusted tin box of tobacco’ for the heart, which conveys the compact message. She is an impressionist writer and employs the same tool here in this novel.

More From Toni Morrison

• The Bluest Eye

Short Stories

Toni Morrison

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On the edge of Cincinnati, in 1873 just after the end of the Civil War, there is a house numbered 124 that is haunted by the presence of a dead child. A former slave named Sethe has lived in the house, with its ghost, for 18 years. Sethe lives at 124 with her daughter Denver . Her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs , died eight years previously after languishing for years with exhaustion and seeming overwhelming sadness. And her two sons, Howard and Buglar , ran away from the haunted home just before Baby Suggs’ death.

Paul D , a former slave who used to work on the same plantation, called Sweet Home, as Sethe, arrives at 124 and moves in, making a kind of family with Denver and Sethe. Paul D awakens painful memories for Sethe and Denver is jealous of the attention and affection that Sethe gives to him. But just as Denver is getting used to the new familial arrangement, a strange woman appears at the house. She calls herself Beloved and says that she doesn’t know who she is or where she is from.

Beloved asks Sethe many questions about her past and somehow seems to know about things only Sethe knew, such as about a pair of earrings Sethe received as a gift from the wife of her former master. Denver loves having Beloved around the house and eagerly tells her about the miracle of her own birth: Sethe escaped from Sweet Home while pregnant with Denver and almost died of hunger and exhaustion while trying to make it to Ohio. But a white woman named Amy Denver found Sethe, cared for her, and helped her get to the Ohio River , where she gave birth to Denver. Sethe named Denver after the kind white woman.

Paul D recalls his experience working on a chain gang. He and the other slaves eventually escaped together and had their chains cut by a group of Cherokee. Paul D wandered north and stayed with a kind woman in Delaware for some time, but he was unable to settle. He felt an urge to wander and did so for years before coming to 124.

Missing Baby Suggs, Sethe takes Beloved and Denver to the clearing in the woods where Baby Suggs used to have spiritual gatherings before she fell into her exhausted state. Sethe wishes that Baby Suggs were there to rub her neck and suddenly she feels other-worldly fingers massaging her neck. But then the fingers begin to choke her until they finally let go. Denver thinks that Beloved is somehow behind the choking, but Beloved denies it.

Beloved gradually and mysteriously forces Paul D out of the house by making him restless, so that he ends up sleeping outside in the cold house. When he is sleeping outside in the cold house one night, she persuades him to sleep with her and stirs up his painful memories. Beloved tells Denver that she wants Paul D out of 124.

The novel moves back in time to follow Baby Suggs as she waits for Sethe and her son Halle (Sethe’s husband). Sethe has snuck her children out of Sweet Home and sent them ahead to 124, and she and Halle are supposed to escape together and come to the house. Halle never arrives, but Sethe does, and Baby Suggs is happy to have at least Sethe and her children reunited. She hosts a grand celebration for the neighboring community and her meager stores of food miraculously furnish a huge feast for ninety people. After the celebration, she feels uneasy, and realizes that she has offended the community with an excessive display of joy and pride. She senses that something bad is coming as a consequence.

Soon after the celebration, four horsemen come to 124: Schoolteacher (who became the owner of Sweet Home after the kinder original master died), his nephew, a slave catcher, and a sheriff. They have come to take Sethe and her children back to Sweet Home to work as slaves. The offended community does not warn Sethe or Baby Suggs, and when Sethe sees Schoolteacher coming, she gathers her children and runs to a shed. When the four horsemen find her, she has killed one child with a saw and is ready to kill her other children. Schoolteacher decides that she is crazy and not worth bringing back to work. The sheriff takes Sethe off to jail.

Back in the present, a former slave named Stamp Paid (who helped Sethe escape to 124 eighteen years ago) tells Paul D about Sethe’s killing her own child. Paul D confronts Sethe about it, and then leaves 124. Feeling guilty for causing Paul D to leave Sethe, Stamp Paid goes to 124 to talk to Sethe. But she does not come to the door. Stamp Paid hears strange voices from the house and sees Beloved through a window.

Within the house, Beloved causes Sethe to remember more and more of her painful past. The novel follows Sethe’s stream of consciousness as Sethe maintains that her killing her child was an act of love. Sethe believes that Beloved is the returned spirit of her dead child. The novel then follows the thoughts of Denver and Beloved. In a series of vivid but fragmented recollections, Beloved remembers being taken on a ship from Africa to the United States, the "middle passage" of the Atlantic slave trade.

Sethe begins to get weaker and weaker, falling under the sway of Beloved, whose every whim Sethe obeys. Denver ventures out of the house in search of work, to try to get food and provide for the household. She goes to the house of the Bodwins , who once helped Baby Suggs settle at 124, and tells their maid Janey about Beloved and the situation at 124. The community rallies together to supply food to 124.

As news spreads of Beloved’s strange presence at 124, a group of women join together to rescue Sethe and Denver from her. They gather around 124 and break into song, in a kind of exorcism. Mr. Bodwin approaches the house and Sethe mistakes him for Schoolteacher. Crazed, she tries to attack him but is restrained by Denver and other women. Beloved disappears.

After Beloved’s departure, 124 seems to become a normal household. Sethe has mostly lost her mind, but Denver is working and learning, hoping one day to attend college. Paul D returns to 124 and promises to always care for Sethe. The inhabitants of 124 and the surrounding community gradually forget about Beloved entirely, even those who saw and talked to her.

Critique of “Beloved” by Toni Morrison

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Title and Author: “Beloved” by Toni Morrison

Introduction: Published in 1987, Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” is a profound novel that delves into the legacy of slavery and its enduring impact on African American identity. The narrative follows Sethe, an escaped slave, and the haunting presence of her deceased daughter, Beloved, exploring themes of memory, trauma, and the struggle for identity.

Summary: Sethe lives with her daughter Denver in a house haunted by the spirit of her dead child, Beloved. The arrival of Paul D, a fellow former slave, stirs up painful memories and forces Sethe to confront her past. As Beloved’s presence becomes more tangible, the novel explores the depths of Sethe’s guilt, loss, and the enduring scars of slavery.

• Themes: “Beloved” explores significant themes such as memory, trauma, motherhood, and the quest for identity. Morrison vividly portrays the psychological scars left by slavery and the complex process of healing and reconciliation. The novel emphasizes the importance of confronting painful histories to achieve personal and communal healing.
• Character Development: Sethe is a richly developed character embodying strength, resilience, and profound pain. Her struggle with the haunting memories of her past and her interactions with Beloved and Denver reveal layers of her character. Beloved, as a symbolic representation of unresolved trauma, challenges Sethe and those around her to face their hidden fears and memories. Denver’s growth from isolation to a sense of self and community provides a hopeful trajectory within the narrative.
• Writing Style: Morrison’s poetic and intricate prose seamlessly weaves together past and present, creating a narrative that is both haunting and redemptive. Her use of magical realism blurs the lines between reality and the supernatural, deepening the emotional and psychological impact of the story. Morrison’s language is rich with symbolism and evocative imagery, enhancing the thematic depth of the novel.

Interpretation: “Beloved” can be interpreted as a commentary on the enduring impact of slavery and the complexities of freedom. The novel’s exploration of memory and trauma underscores the necessity of acknowledging and confronting the past to heal. Through Sethe’s journey, Morrison invites readers to engage with the emotional and historical depths of African American experiences and the universal human struggle for identity and belonging.

Evaluation: “Beloved” is a powerful and moving exploration of the lingering effects of slavery. Morrison’s masterful storytelling and deep empathy for her characters make this novel a monumental work in American literature. The themes of memory, trauma, and identity are universally relevant and powerfully conveyed. The novel’s complexity and emotional intensity ensure its place as a significant and transformative literary work.

Conclusion: Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” is a landmark in American literature, celebrated for its emotional depth, innovative narrative techniques, and profound thematic exploration. The novel invites readers to experience the haunting legacy of slavery through its richly developed characters and evocative prose. Its lasting impact on literature and society underscores its significance as a work that speaks to the universal human experiences of trauma, resilience, and the quest for identity.

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A Beginners Guide to Toni Morrison

Posted: March 21, 2024 | Last updated: March 21, 2024

One of the world’s most famous and influential authors, Toni Morrison’s canon spans decades and topics. Morrison’s work dedicates itself to examining the Black American experience, from short stories to essays and speeches to her beloved novels. The author mines the systems of racism and how they can be fixed and explores the depths of complex human emotions like grief, trauma, love, and joy.

Morrison is the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first Black woman to serve as senior fiction editor for Random House, and an incredible force known as the “ Conscience of America. ” 

1. The Bluest Eye (1970)

Morrison’s debut novel,  The Bluest Eye , occasionally appears on the banned books list because of the controversial topics it explores, such as incest, racism, and child molestation. Set in Lorain, Ohio, the novel follows the life of Pecola, a young Black girl growing up in the United States after the Great Depression.

Unafraid of difficult conversations, Morrison doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable subjects and allows those uncomfortable subjects to guide her into an important conversation about perception beyond beauty and how perception can negatively impact us all. Pecola, the main character, desires nothing more than blue eyes, but the blue eyes she wants represent her desire to see the world differently just as much as she would like to be seen differently.

2. Sula (1973)

Sula tackles the ideas of gender, race, community, and that strange place between “good” and “evil” as Morrison tells the story of Nel and Sula in the small Black community of Bottom, Ohio. 

Using Nel and Sula as opposing characters, Morrison makes room for a conversation about “good” and “right” versus “evil” and “bad.” She sets up a dynamic that specifically allows readers into the moment that divides the two women, which will provide the framework for the judgment of their adulthood to allow readers room to formulate their thoughts on Nel and Sula outside of the community’s judgments.

While Morrison still examines race in  Sula , the deeper purpose of the novel rests in exploring one’s self, the enduring love of friendship, and how our histories affect us all.

3. Song of Solomon (1977)

Song of Solomon follows the life of Macon “Milkman” Dead III, a Black man living in Michigan who seeks to understand his ancestry. At its core,  Song of Solomon , the title pulled from a book of the Bible, confronts racism and the intergenerational scars it leaves. 

While Morrison’s work mostly consists of female protagonists,  Song of Solomon tells the story from Milkman’s perspective. In Conversations with Toni Morrison , she wrote, “I chose the man… because I thought he had more to learn than a woman would have. I started with a man and was amazed at how little men taught one another in the book… So that the presence of Pilate, and the impact that all the other women had on Milkman’s life, came as a bit of a surprise to me.” Though it might not be told through a woman’s perspective, Song of Solomon is a powerful story to explain the oft-overlooked significance of Black women in the Black man’s experience.

4. Tar Baby (1981)

In her fourth novel, Morrison explores the intersections of race and privilege, wealth and class, and love and reality. 

In  Tar Baby , Morrison puts Black and White relationships front and center and, in doing so, allows room to play with and peel back the layers of the Black female experience in a racialized world. Tar Baby is a more metaphorical examination of the racism of gender and race, with the more literal examination focused on identity.

To read  Tar Baby is to understand Morrison’s transition from the literal and bold statements she made in her first three novels. 

5. Recitatif (1983)

“Recitatif” focuses on Twyla and Roberta, two girls who meet in a children’s shelter. One girl is Black, and the other is white, though Morrison intentionally forgoes explaining which is which. Twyla and Roberta stay friends throughout their time at the shelter but eventually go their separate ways.

They reunite multiple times in their lives, many times at high tension points in racial relations in the United States, and they continue to explore their relationship with one another because of and despite their race and the climate of the country. 

6. Beloved (1987)

One of Morrison’s most famous novels,  Beloved, tells the story of Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman living in a haunted Cincinnati home. The novel grapples with the trauma of slavery and what that does to individuals and families.

The non-linear narrative follows Sethe and her daughter, Denver. Eight years before the start of the book, Sethe and Denver lost Baby Suggs, Sethe’s mother, and Howard and Buglar, Sethe’s sons, ran off. At the start of the book, Paul D., a formerly enslaved man who was enslaved on the same plantation as Sethe, arrives. He quickly moves in with Denver and Sethe, and a few days later, a strange woman named Beloved arrives. Paul D. and Beloved butt heads throughout the novel, and as tensions rise in the house, the entire household risks falling apart at the seams.

Beyond the fact that  Beloved stands as Morrison’s most famous work, it earns a spot on any Morrison beginner’s reading list because of the challenge reading it offers.  Beloved is not easy. It defies the “warm and fuzzy” feelings fiction so often provides. In  Beloved , Morrison leans into the teaching and less into the gratification, hoping that readers understand humans as flawed, complex, and not always “good.”

7 . Jazz (1992)

Jazz plays out against the backdrop of the Harlem Jazz Age of the 1920s. Morrison explores another non-linear narrative as she tells the story of a love triangle between Violet, Joe, and Dorcas.

As the second in Morrison’s  Beloved trilogy,  Jazz continues the theme of violence as romance and the challenging ways that love works in life. Critics have called Jazz one of Morrison’s most challenging works as it seeks to cover a lot in a short period. Still, Morrison also said it was her favorite novel to write, earning it an essential spot on any Morrison lover’s reading list.

8. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992)

Morrison’s first work of nonfiction, Playing in the Dark, explores “the effect that living in a historically racialized society has had on American writing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries .” She writes about the place of Black Americans in the overall American literary landscape, exploring the way white authors represent them and the way Black people represent themselves.

As a Black woman author writing in a post-Civil Rights Movement era, Morrison’s perspective on whiteness and the literary imagination couldn’t be more important. In addition to her experience as a writer, Morrison served as the senior fiction editor for Random House and deeply understood how whiteness affected literature, making her particularly well-poised to dive deep into the conversation.

9. The Nobel Lecture in Literature (1993)

In 1993, Toni Morrison became the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Upon accepting her award, Morrison gave an incredible speech to the gathered audience in Stockholm, Sweden. The speech she gives tells a folk story that serves as a representation of the work Morrison sought to accomplish with her writing.

While her Nobel Prize speech might not feel as grand as some of her other writings, it still deserves a read by anyone seeking to get to know Morrison’s writing and her canon overall. Even in her death, her incredible, history-making success as a writer deserves to be celebrated at every opportunity.

10. Arguing Immigration: The Debate Over the Changing Face of America (1994)

This essay collection spans political parties and covers a host of issues. While Morrison didn’t write all of  Arguing Immigration , she contributed an essay titled “On the Backs of Blacks,” which confronted the United States’ systemic historical racism.

Morrison’s essay alone puts  Arguing Immigration squarely into the “must-read” category for Morrison’s canon, but what makes it stand out especially is how the book serves as a representation of how Morrison continued to work in conversation with the world around her even as she moved back in time to plumb the depths of history for understanding.

11. The Dancing Mind (1996)

In 1996, Morrison accepted The National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.  The Dancing Mind collects Morrison’s speech on the importance of writing, the challenges, and the beauty of writing.

Reading  The Dancing Mind allows audiences to understand Morrison’s perspective on the art of writing. Reading this book allows for a look behind the curtain of her craft and stands out as especially essential for her fans, who are also aspiring authors.

12. Paradise (1997)

Morrison’s first novel, after winning the Nobel Prize, centers on the town of Ruby, Oklahoma , an all-Black town founded by the descendants of formerly enslaved individuals.  Paradise completes Morrison’s  Beloved trilogy and, like the two other titles in the series, examines the idea of violence as love. 

In this final installation, Morrison explores religion and holiness in a way none of her other novels quite manage. Paradise centers on a building that historically served as a Native American boarding school. These institutions were notorious for the trauma they inflicted, and then they became a haven for women on the fringes of society. 

13. The Big Box (1999)

Morrison’s first illustrated children’s book tells the tale of three children confined to a cardboard box by adults. The children want freedom and to express themselves, but they have to figure out how to do so within the confines of the cardboard box.

Not all titles by famous authors have to be serious, and while  The Big Box certainly possesses underlying adult themes, overall, it feels fun and lighthearted. When diving into an author’s canon, reading their off-the-wall, out-of-the-norm titles serves just as important of a purpose as reading their prize winners.

14. Love (2002)

Set in a small town in Ohio,  Love tells the story of Christine and Heed, two women brought together by their love for the same man, Bill Cosey. Christine, Cosey’s granddaughter, and Heed, his widow, once loved one another, but after a fight divides them, they have to learn how to live with each other in Cosey’s mansion after his death. Confronted with the pressures of society as well as the other women of Cosey’s life, the two women face their demons and struggles.

Love presents exactly what the title would suggest – many forms of love. Throughout the novel, the emphasis on platonic and self-love takes center stage. While this novel didn’t receive the critical acclaim others did, it still can’t be missed in a quality read of Morrison’s work.

15. Remember: The Journey to School Integration (2004)

Over decades, Morrison collected countless archival photos that depicted major historical moments in the work to desegregate school systems. Remember tells the fictional story of the children who experienced schooling in the era of “separate but equal.” The fictional representation of the children allows audiences to enter an otherwise underexplored perspective.

Reading Morrison’s take on a child’s perspective during an incredibly traumatic time in American history allows audiences to understand both the time and Morrison’s feelings on desegregation. 

16. What Moves at the Margin (2008)

This collection of Morrison’s non-fiction writing gathers her essays, reviews, and speeches from 1971 to 2002. The first section, “Family and History,” includes writings about Black women, Black history, and her own family. The second section, “Writers and Writing,” explores writers she admired and books she reviewed or edited at Random House. Finally, “Politics and Society” allows Morrison to share her feelings on the role of literature in the greater American society. 

Getting the best understanding of a writer and their ability requires reading all of their work, even their speeches or the reviews they wrote for other authors. Truly knowing them as a writer and author begins with digging into the work that doesn’t get as much exposure as their popular works. Morrison’s  What Moves at the Margin allows readers to see into her mind more and her character’s less. 

17. A Mercy (2008)

In  A Mercy , Morrison traces the evils of slavery back to the budding nation’s earliest days, furthering the work she did in  Beloved by examining a fraught mother-daughter relationship and the effects of trauma through generations. Set in a small town in Oklahoma,  A Mercy follows the story of Florens, a young enslaved woman sold to Jacob Vaark, an enslaver who seems to collect women, including his wife, whom he purchased. 

A Mercy reaches further in history than any of Morrison’s other novels and feels almost like a tie that brings together all of her other novels. 

18. Burn This Book: Notes on Literature (2009)

Edited and contributed to by Toni Morrison,  Burn This Book: Notes on Literature explores censorship and the value of the American right to free speech. The essays cover a range of topics, all relating to literature and how authors exercise their right to free speech, even as they challenge censorship and how their speech is hindered.

Sure, Morrison’s essay contribution to  Burn This Book can’t be missed, but the most important reason to read it lies in the fact that she edited the collection. She selected all the essays, choosing exactly what she knew would connect everything and tell the story of literature that she sought to express.

19. Home (2012)

Morrison tackles the United States’ treatment of Black veterans in  Home , a novel centered on Frank Money and his relationship with his family. Frank comes home from the Korean War only to realize that nothing about the status of Black men in the United States changes, even as veterans. Returning to his small hometown in Georgia to rescue his sister, Cee, from an abusive situation, Frank must confront the physical and mental scars of his time at war and his subsequent return home. 

Home addresses PTSD in Black soldiers in a way so few novels do. Morrison beautifully weaves together the systemic oppression and racism Black people endured in the South with the painful and challenging situation that Black veterans endured when they returned from the war.

20. God Help the Child (2015)

The last novel Morrison wrote, God Help the Child, explores childhood trauma and the way it shapes lives. The story focuses on Bride, a woman with skin so dark it almost appears blue. A successful, bold, and beautiful woman, Bride struggles internally with the effects of her mother’s abuse. Light-skinned and angry at her child, Bride’s mother failed to offer her the sort of love and kindness she needed until Bride told a lie that changed the life of a woman and forever affected her own.

At the core of God Help the Child rests an understanding of colorism that Morrison navigates incredibly. She examines the way colorism exists as systemic in the wider community of the United States while also examining how it impacts Black people within Black communities specifically.

21. The Origin of Others (2017)

In this non-fiction work, Morrison tackles the idea of the “Other,” exploring how and why Othering occurs and addressing why it plays such a big role in her writing. She digs into the subjects and situations that impact her work, including race, fear, love, borders, and the human condition.

In any upper-level English course, the word “Other” (capital “O”) often gets bandied about. That “Other” comes under incredible scrutiny in  The Origin of Others . Morrison does some of her finest academic, exploratory work in this book. She leaves nothing on the table, digging into every situation and setting to get to the heart of “Other.” 

22. Mouth Full of Blood (2019)

Mouth Full of Blood collects four decades’ worth of Morrison’s non-fiction work into one edition. The book covers everything from her speech to graduates and visitors at America’s Black Holocaust Museum, a prayer for those lost in 9/11, her Nobel lecture, a eulogy for James Baldwin, and so much more.

Released the same year Morrison died,  Mouth Full of Blood is a crucial read for many reasons, but most importantly because it collects never-before-published non-fiction that reflects huge moments in literary history, world history, and Morrison’s personal life. To read Mouth Full of Blood is to understand Morrison.

23. Goodness and the Literary Imagination (2019)

In a deep and powerful exploration, Morrison digs into what goodness is, where it comes from, and how it exists in literature and the literary imagination. Morrison mines handfuls of texts for the essence of and creation of literary goodness, seeking it in texts from across time.

So many of Morrison’s novels confront the idea of “goodness,” and so it feels like a natural next step that she would explore “goodness” in a non-fiction setting.  Goodness and the Literary Imagination focuses all of Morrison’s fiction work into a beautifully crafted, academic exploration that continues and completes the hard work her fiction began.

24. The Source of Self-Regard (2019)

The Source of Self-Regard pulls a smaller and more concise selection of Morrison’s best non-fiction works, hitting the highlights and collecting them all in a slim, accessible edition. The curated selection brings together what many consider the essential Morrison works.

While nothing new comes from  The Source of Self-Regard , the book’s power lies in the precise selections to create the title. Published in the year of Morrison’s death, the book is a tribute to the incredible work completed throughout her career .

25. Morrison’s Eternal Influence

Taught in classrooms worldwide, Toni Morrison’s titles bring together her singular experience as a Black woman and a literary giant and the Black experience throughout the United States. Morrison’s steadfast, unwavering desire to truly understand and examine the Black experience will keep her forever as a pillar of American literary influence and one of the world’s most incredible women.

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Beloved Hardcover – Deckle Edge, October 22, 2019

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• Print length 288 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Knopf
• Publication date October 22, 2019
• Dimensions 9.53 x 1.38 x 6.65 inches
• ISBN-10 0525659277
• ISBN-13 978-0525659273
• Lexile measure 870L
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Knopf; Special Edition (October 22, 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0525659277
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0525659273
• Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 870L
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.36 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.53 x 1.38 x 6.65 inches
• #1,754 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)
• #4,076 in Black & African American Literature (Books)
• #7,082 in Literary Fiction (Books)

About the author

Toni morrison.

Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. She is the author of several novels, including The Bluest Eye, Beloved (made into a major film), and Love. She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize. She is the Robert F. Goheen Professor at Princeton University.

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