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Why Does Sethe Lost In Beloved

1421 Words6 Pages

A story about a damaged family, and a world of mystical elements- Beloved, by Toni Morrison, does a great job of exploring themes of self loss, and the ability to love others. In truth, Sethe never seems to truly love anyone, but Beloved. Sethe goes through disgusting, traumatic events, but still ends up a functional, caring person. She maintains her sanity, her ability to love and care for others, but the one thing that she ultimately loses is the ability to love herself. Sethe has been sexually assaulted by two young boys, and later on, slits her own daughter’s throat. The result is that years later, that dead daughter comes back to haunt (in the flesh). Why does Beloved come back? Because she is the physical embodiment of what Sethe has lost. Love for herself, her sexual energy and force, the ability to open up other people, and Beloved (as a baby) wants revenge for what Sethe did to her. Beloved has all these qualities and comes back to complete herself and Beloved. In the beginning of the story, life is going …show more content…

Beloved develops a love and even caution of losing Sethe, because she doesn’t want to deny herself of the love again that was lost so long ago when Sethe abandoned her. Referring to both the self-love embodiment and Beloved herself. Beloved then latches on to Sethe and manipulates her until she is dependent on Beloved. She does this because since Beloved is Sethe’s love for herself, she wants Sethe to love herself- also Beloved, so that Sethe can be complete once again. But that's not what ends up happening. This loving ends up turning into a very unhealthy, one-sided relationship, and once Beloved has the necessary power over Sethe, she starts to abuse her. Beloved, which throughout the exposition will be another name for Sethe’s love for herself, does this because she is angry. Angry at the fact that Sethe would abandon her. Now that she’s back, she will take revenge on

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Rhetorical Analysis Of Beloved

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The novel Beloved by Toni Morrison fundamentally relies on the relationship between the former slave Sethe and the daughter she murdered as an infant, only known to the reader as Beloved. In one scene, Beloved is attempting to make Sethe feel guilty as Sethe argues that her attempted murder of her children was out of love, and that she intended for them to be “together on the other side.” Beloved’s response, in which she points out that, after she “died,” “ghosts without skin stuck their fingers in her and said beloved in the dark and bitch in the light,” shatters the intensely loving, devoted tone that Sethe attempts to establish in favor of a more dramatic, graphic tone and creates intense juxtaposition, a device which is continually used throughout the text. (254) The phrase “ghosts without skin,” overall, exemplifies Beloved’s immature perspective.

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While people pass from this life into the afterlife their lives reside in the memories of their loved ones. The novel Beloved by Toni Morrison follows Sethe- a mother, Baby Suggs, a depressed grandmother, and a doomed household. The narrative is based on the timeframes of pre and post civil war, following the story of a mother escaping from a life of slavery. During her escape, she murders her own child who is assumed to haunt the 124 house. This scene is opened in a discussion of the cold and bland state of Ohio, where the characters reside.

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The fully dressed woman that walks out of a stream is the reincarnation of Sethe's dead child or an actual living human who is inhabited by the spirit of her dead daughter. Although the human figure appeared to be a woman, she has characteristics of a baby such as she, “had new skin, lineless and smooth” (61), meaning that the girls skin was as smooth as a baby’s, and the girl moving by “holding on to furniture” (67) while she was walking portraying something that baby’s do to keep them balanced when they are learning how to walk. Beloved appears out of nowhere at 124 and appears to have travelled a long way to get there. Then she introduces herself and immediately Sethe starts thinking about the headstone of her dead child, “Engraved in her baby’s thumb

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In Beloved by Toni Morrison, the author often utilizes many different writing techniques to emphasize the story’s main idea that one cannot let past mistakes dictate one’s life and future. Morrison’s application of nonlinear exposition in Beloved helps convey the novel’s main theme by allowing the reader to witness Sethe’s journey to self-acceptance through her personal flashbacks and Paul D.’s point of view. From the beginning, the author incorporates a flashback to illustrate how Sethe is burdened with guilt from killing her baby daughter. Morrison makes it clear to the reader that Beloved is constantly on Sethe’s mind.

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A key feminine quality for women in general around this time period was their capacity for being a mother. Throughout the story, Beloved is one of the many memories that haunts Sethe which she tries to repress in vain because she attempted to murder her own child in order to save them from the same physical, emotional, and sexual abuse that she endured during her time working at Sweet Home. However, Morrison depicts this as an act of kindness. Sethe 's character is given a connection to the audience for her motherly instincts, but also a way for the audience to reflect on the fact that her attempted murders were out of motherly love and protection. Placing Sethe in the scope of many women of the time who had lived without the harshness of slavery are forced to confront the weight of a decision that they never had to make nor most likely ever will.

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In the narratives, Beloved and Claire serve as physical manifestations of Sethe and James' trauma and essentially catalyze or initiate their process of healing. By forcing the protagonists to confront their pasts, they are able to demonstrate vulnerability and gain control of their identity. Beloved serves as this catalyst character as her identity becomes intertwined with Sethe’s, leading Sethe to find internal clarity. “You forgot to smile/ I loved you/

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All the while, Beloved is distracted by her need for revenge on her mother, taking advantage of the attention Sethe gives her. Instead of realizing that this attention is all she really desires, Beloved takes a turn for the worse, slowly wearing her loving mother

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The character Beloved is an anomaly in the story, and is the whole crux of the plot of the story as well. Her name, or lack thereof, is allegorical and the most defining character trait that she has throughout the whole book. As a character, she is a mysterious entity who latches onto Sethe and her family who feeds off their attention, and reveals little to nothing about who she is. Besides these traits, her name leaves most readers to believe that this character is the ghost of Sethe’s unnamed baby that she murdered; as we know the baby’s headstone has the word “Beloved” written on it due to Sethe misinterpreting what the pastor said

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Beloved is the haunting and complicated story of Sethe, a mother who’s past experience with slavery terrorizes her and her family in the form of a specter or revenant who becomes known as Beloved. The book is primarily set at the home of Sethe and her daughter Denver in the late 1800’s in Cincinnati Ohio. The story is not told chronologically or from the perspective of one protagonist. To read this book is to be inside the complicated thoughts, feelings, and memories of its characters. I choose to select this book because it was the first book that that a serious and lasting impact on my thinking.

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While thinking she did such a good deed in murdering her own daughter and trying to kill her other children brings regret onto her soul. This helps feed one of Beloved’s motives. Beloved seems to feel some kind of betrayal over the fact that she was killed by her own mother. When Beloved shows up Sethe’s guilt is at its worst. Before Beloved had shown up Sethe had finally felt at peace and started to make what seemed like a family again.

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Beloved Repulsion In Tori Morrison’s novel, Beloved, the author explores the idea of the massive devastation that slavery has. The negative impact of no knowledge of self-worth and self-alienation, being very dangerous, is one that haunts slaves so far that it continues to reach those who are able to reach freedom. Morrison presents the haunting, taunting temperament of the novel through a child, a spirit of a slave’s daughter murdered by her own mother to avoid slavery but has a different kind of slavery; an eternal captivity. The child is the thought spirit of Sethe’s dead daughter but is the age she would have been if she was still alive.

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She suffered separation at an early age, and thus she is obsessed by the idea of a reunion. Since she cannot return to her mother's womb, Beloved seeks reunion through death. She began torturing her mother and blaming her for the ruthless behavior of filicide: The bigger Beloved got, the smaller Sethe became; the brighter Beloved's eyes, the more those eyes that used never to look away became slits of sleeplessness.

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