Who Is Sethe's Transformation In Beloved

How terrified would you be if your life was not controlled by your own free will? In the story Beloved, by Toni Morrison, she explores this kind of encroachment onto freedom under slavery. Particularly, she does this through the main protagonist of the novel, Sethe. Throughout the story, Sethe as a character highlights oppression due to slavery, both before and after its abolition. We see, throughout the novel all the ways that Sethe is oppressed directly by slavery while still being involved in the terrible institution that it was. Sethe’s initial instance of oppression under slavery is the virtually nonexistent childhood relationship with her mother. This is due to her mother being hanged while Sethe was young. Another way she was oppressed was the way she was savagely beaten. This is highlighted whenever Sethe reveals the scars in the shape of a tree on her back to Paul D. The final, and most horrifying, example of abuse is when Schoolteacher’s sons take Sethe’s milk from her in an act of

The main societal freedoms that were taken from Sethe by slavery was the role of motherhood and community member. In the novel, the most shocking decision of any character is the decision to kill her own children. This impactful decision, which comes from a state of pure shock and terror at seeing Schoolteacher again, is not an isolated incident. After committing this egregious and regrettable act, whether under duress or not, she is ostracized by her community. This is evidenced by the abandonment of the house by Sethe’s two boys before the novel, and the eventual abandonment by Paul D. This forced isolationism, due to the action she was compelled to take under slavery, causes her life after slavery to be devoid of much of the meaning that people draw from