How Beloved helps the people, and particularly Sethe, to remember their past
...t be seen in the way she wants to raise Denver: ‘To Sethe, the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay. The ‘better life’ she believed she and Denver were living was simply not that other one (…) As for Denver, the job Sethe had of keeping her from the past that was still waiting for her was all that mattered. [p42] You can clearly see how desperate Sethe is in hiding the past. However, when she says ‘the past that was still waiting for her’, you become aware of the fact that Sethe does know the past will come back to her some day. She is just too afraid to face it. That is where Beloved comes into the story. Beloved arrives at the time when Sethe least expected it. She had just dared to think that the ‘happily ever after’ life might actually work for her, Denver and Paul D. Deciding to discard the past with yesterday’s trash, Sethe finds herself facing the one thing she needs to face. Though at first she doesn’t realize who Beloved really is, she feels an instant connection with the girl. Beloved makes very good use of that connection, and uses the familiarity she shares with Sethe to ask a lot of personal questions to her. At first, Sethe enjoys telling some nice stories of her past; she finds it ‘an unexpected pleasure’ to talk about it. Slowly but surely, Sethe’s memories are revealed. At first, there are stories of her ‘marriage’ to Halle, but then she also talks of how she didn’t know anything of her mother, except her ‘mark’, and all the harsh indignities she had to suffer at Sweet Home. After talking about all these memories, the most difficult one comes back; the day she murdered her baby, Beloved. From that day on, not only did her child stop living, she died as well inside. ‘The hot sun dried Sethe’s dress, stiff, like rigor mortis.’ [p153] When Sethe is arrested for her deed and taken away in a cart, she completely shuts down. Her body as well as her mind is stiff, like rigor mortis, a corpse. She is frozen in time. When Sethe has this ‘rememory’ of what happened that day, it marks the beginning of a new life for her and Beloved. She finally realizes – or, better said: accepts – that Beloved is her crawling already? baby she murdered. However, her initial feelings of happiness for the return of her child do not last long. At first, Sethe believes that Beloved is not mad at her at all for doing what she did, that she understands why she had to do it. She couldn’t have been more wrong, because Beloved is very angry at her mother. Her childhood and identity was taken from her, and she needs to know where she comes from: ‘…[she] left me there with no face of hers. Sethe is the face I found and lost in the water under the bridge.’ [p214] Beloved doesn’t turn up out of love for her mother; she turns up because of unfinished business. She says that Sethe didn’t give her a face. She has no name, no identity, no roots. She is anonymous. Beloved cannot go on like that; she is stuck between this life and the afterlife. The only thing she ever tells people about where she comes from is the only memory she has; standing on a bridge, looking over the water that passes by. The water represents the journey of life, and to the afterlife. But she cannot go there; she is stuck in limbo, frozen in time, unable to move forward. Beloved needs to understand where she comes from, just as Sethe needs to remember it, for both of them to go back into the water. Sethe is still not ready to give Beloved what she needs –an identity – and the relationship between the two becomes more and more intense. When Sethe makes the step of acknowledging Beloved as her daughter, and returns the (obsessive) love she has for her, the two become locked in a very destructive relationship. Beloved is like a parasite, feeding of Sethe’s guilt that she has for what she has done to her child. Sethe tries with all her might to justify her actions, why she reacted the way she did on that damned day, but Beloved just isn’t interested. Though the manner in which Beloved makes Sethe recall her deeds is absolutely detrimental to Sethe, it does force Sethe to face her past. Slowly but surely, Sethe starts to question her actions, wondering whether what she did really was the right thing. After a while, the guilt becomes far larger than her feelings of justification. She doesn’t want to be forgiven, and sl...