Sethe's Past In Beloved

The past is something that can never truly be forgotten. A person’s past can shape who they are in the present and can be a large influence on how they behave and interact with others. Whether it’s a past of happiness or a past of hardships, there is no denying that the past cannot merely be left behind. In Beloved, Sethe’s past as a slave affects her relationships with others and influences her actions throughout the story, showing how she struggles to confront her past, and how she must accept it in order to fully live in the present.

Sethe was a slave on a plantation called Sweet Home, which is where most of her painful memories that she is trying to repress are from. At the very beginning of the novel, Sethe remarks that “she might be

The most prominent example of this is when she tries to kill her children, and succeeds in killing one of them. Sethe is haunted by her past as a slave and never wants her children to have to go through that kind of suffering, so when Schoolteacher shows up at 124, Sethe tries to kill all of her children. Sethe is so disturbed and traumatized by her past experiences as a slave that she thinks it would be better for her children to be dead than to be enslaved. Sethe tells Paul D “‘I took and put my babies where they’d be safe’” and “it’s my job to...take them away from what I know is terrible. I did that’” (Morrison 164-165). Sethe thinks that slavery is a fate worse than death, and so she takes it upon herself to try to ensure that her children never have to suffer a fate of slavery. Her past experiences influence her actions in the present by making her attempt to kill all of her children so that they don’t have to experience slavery. Sethe’s past experience with her own mother also influences her decision to try to kill her children. Sethe suspected that her mother tried to run away, but was caught and hanged. This causes her to believe that her mother was abandoning her, and this idea is part of what leads her to make her own choices as a mother. “...she was my ma’am and nobody’s ma’am would run off and leave her daughter, would she?” (Morrison 203). Sethe does not want her kids to face the same abandonment

Beloved is also a symbol of the past, and serves to represent the painful memories of slavery that Sethe has buried and tried to forget. She also represents Sethe’s most painful memory, which is when she tries to kill her children. “Beloved is Sethe's "ghost," the return of her repressed past…” (Krumholz). With the appearance of Beloved, Sethe is forced to confront her repressed past and try to move forward towards the future. “It amazed Sethe because every mention of her past life hurt...but as she began telling about [her past], she found herself wanting to, liking it.” (Morrison 58). Even though all previous mentions of her past have been painful for Sethe, causing her to never want to talk about it, she finds that she is able to tell Beloved about it, and even enjoys doing so. This shows how, even though Beloved’s dredges up the most painful of Sethe’s memories, she also helps her recover from them. “Beloved embodies the suffering and guilt of the past, but she also embodies the power and beauty of the past and the need to realize the past fully in order to bring forth the future…” (Krumholz). Sethe needs to be able to confront and accept her past before she can fully live in the present and look towards the future, and Beloved serves as the catalyst for her recovery. Beloved is “the fleshed-out symbol of a memory Sethe and the others