Beloved

Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved, reveals the effects of masculinity in the society and its power to cast an individual into a struggle against him or herself. In the beginning of the novel, Sethe is seen as a woman who is resigned to her desolate life and isolates herself from all those around her. Yet, she was once a woman full of feeling: she had loved her husband Halle, loved her four young children, and loved the days of the Clearing. And thus, Sethe was jaded when she began her life at 124 Bluestone Road-- she had loved too much.

Morrison's foundation and sense of self was strengthened by the community in which she lived. She was impressed with the cohesiveness of the small black Lorain community that parented and nurtured her for seventeen years. Morrison thinks of it as a "neighborhood," a life-giving and sustaining compound, a village in the traditional African sense.

"So people were taken care of...if they were sick, other people took care of them; if they were old, other people took care of them; if they were mad, other people provided a small space for them, or related to their madness or tried to find out the limits of their madness" (Samuels 5). Beloved needs Sethe with a frightening intensity. She does not see Sethe as separate from herself-like the infant in psychological/psychoanalytical theories, she has not conceived of an identity separate from her mother's. Her need to know stories of Sethe's past is more inclusive than Denver's. While Denver want to know only stories that concern herself, Beloved wants to know everything about Sethe-in part, perhaps, because for Beloved, Sethe is part of her.

Her name reflects the confusion. Sethe named Beloved after the first two words said at the funeral-Dearly Beloved-which she mistook as referring to the dead. "Dearly Beloved," however, actually refers to the people at the funeral. Sethe names Beloved after herself, revealing that she, too, is confused about where her own identity ends and her children's identity begins. Sethe's links to her own mother are painful. Although her mother did not get to raise her, conditions led both of them to the act of infanticide. Sethe's name is a trace of heritage left to her, but although she bears her father's name she does not know the name of her own mother, and she has forgotten the language of her childhood. Nan and her mother were of the generation brought over on a slave ship, and the violence of that act has cut off Sethe's heritage, leaving her with no legacy beyond the history that begin with slavery. She forgets her language, but, like her mother, commits infanticide.

Toni Morrison enhances the effectiveness of Beloved with symbolism. This symbolism has a myriad of origins as well as forms. Number symbols come from astrological sources, while characters' names are allusions from ancient Egyptian mythology, the Bible, and African culture. Furthermore, important color symbols are discernible throughout the novel.

From the very beginning of Beloved, the number ...