The Most Apparent Part of Beloved S Journey Is How Others View Her. in the Beginning Of

The role of a person can change many times in the course of a lifetime. Some people hold onto the relationships they have and some people roll around the world meeting people and leaving them. There is no better example of the perpetual wanderer than the title character Beloved in Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved. Because it is made obvious to the reader that Beloved represents the unnamed baby girl born to Sethe at the beginning of the story, the reader knows a great deal of her history from the time she is killed to the time she disappears from memory. The most apparent part of Beloved’s journey is how others view her. In the beginning of the story, it is obvious that Sethe must have loved her daughter very deeply. She loved her to the point that she had sex with a total stranger to have “Beloved” engraved into a headstone for the grave of the dead baby girl. Beloved remembers this great love but does not act on it but instead on the hate that originates from the knowledge that her mother killed her to protect her from men who came to recapture slaves. Sethe’s love for her daughter is so strong that she’d rather kill her own child rather than make her daughter live owned by a master. After the baby dies, the baby’s ghost plays a much more destructive role in the household. The ghost is spiteful of her mother’s love for the one child who still lives with Sethe. The occupants of the house live in fear of what the spirit may do, but none are so afraid as Denver, the remaining daughter. She seems to be the only one to notice how spiteful the spirit is, and cannot seem to ignore the hurtful things it does. However disdainful the spirit and Denver are towards each other, when it reenters the house as the 19 year old “Beloved,” the baby girl has grown into a young woman who strangely gets along with Denver as though they were made for each other. The only person Beloved likes more than Denver is Sethe, to whom she directs all of her focused attention. The hate that the reader sees originally is still there, but directed instead at Paul D. and used to try and force him out of the house in shame. She uses Paul D as a way to get more attention for herself, and when Beloved becomes pregnant, it becomes painfully obvious that Beloved is getting exactly what she wants. As a pregnant young woman in another woman’s home, Beloved steals the attention, love and needs of Sethe, and becomes stronger and stronger as Sethe becomes pitifully weaker. If Sethe had had the strength to stand up to the baby ghost in the first place, maybe she would not have found herself so strongly focused on Beloved. Through this connection, Beloved finds herself introduced to new experiences but robbing Sethe of the relationships that she ought to have been enjoying. Eventually, however, Beloved fades away, never again remembered. What causes a person to be so central a part of so many lives and fade away so quickly is unknown. The fact that Beloved was always apparent in the house is a painful thought, yet it s a poignant one. Meaningful too, is the idea that just as she was asserting herself to be the pillar of strength of the household, she faded away never thought or spoken of again. Throughout the short “life” that was hers, Beloved was more known and unknown than any other character in the novel and it makes her a frightening aspect of life. Perhaps she represents the fear we have of greatness and the equal fear we hold of being forgotten.