Ghost In Toni Morrison's Beloved

7. “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom… 124 was loud… 124 was quiet” (Beloved 1-94-134)

The book Beloved is composed of three parts, each part begins with an observation about 124, the house occupied by Sethe and her daughter Denver. 124 is haunted by the abusive spirit of Sethe’s dead daughter. At the beginning of the novel, the ghost rages with anger, that is definitely a baby’s. In chapter 5, however, the baby ghost manifest herself in the form of Beloved, who is the reincarnation of the baby Sethe murdered eighteen years ago. Throughout the novel, Beloved will become more powerful, Until, in part two chapter 19, she is said to hold the force of a collective “black and angry dead.” The ghost will cause a lot of destruction on 124 until

Sethe’s passion for her children shines through this passage, she identifies her children as “the part of her that were precious and fine and beautiful;” for Sethe, to allow her owner to take her children, would be to allow him to destroy everything that is beautiful in herself, to destroy all the “life” she had made. To this understanding, Sethe’s murder of her daughter seems a less morally reprehensible crime because it becomes more of an act of self-defense. Morrison withholds judgment on the action, instead throughout the book, Toni focuses her criticisms on the forces of slavery that led Sethe to kill her daughter. In this passage, Morrison condemns slavery as an institution so cruel that it could mutate a mother’s love into murder.

12. This is not a story to pass on. The town, and even the resident of 124, have forgotten Beloved, like an unpleasant dream during a troubling sleep.” (Beloved)

The book ends with this warning from Toni Morison, Beloved have been forgotten by all the townsfolks. Because there is no memory of Beloved, it seems that she never existed. Her life is unrecorded and unacknowledged once she is forgotten. As painful as memories often are, they act as a record of life, a Beloved is not remembered, she never