The names in Beloved have unspoken meanings. Denver’s name, as I see it, could represent Sethe’s desire to escape from her painful past on Sweethome. The character of Beloved, whose name is both a direct reference to her own death and a symbol of the past that refuses to be forgotten, challenges the idea of ownership over one’s life and history. Throughout the novel, names serve as a way for the characters to reclaim their identities and confront the trauma they’ve experienced, showing the powerful relationship between personal identity and the legacy of slavery.

In addition to reflecting their histories, I also think the names in Beloved highlight the characters’ struggle for power and control. For example, Sethe’s choice to name her children after places or significant events in her life shows her attempt to reclaim some control over her life and future, despite the traumatic past she cannot escape from. The characters’ names especially Beloved’s, show how they are constantly haunted by their past, and how they must confront it in order to move forward. In this way, names become more than just labels—they represent a form of resistance, survival, and the strong desire to reclaim control over their lives and stories, separating themselves from their experiences of slavery.

In Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel, Beloved, one of the main characters, Beloved, makes her first appearance in the book by emerging mysteriously from a river. Her entrance is very unexpected, and quite random. Soaking wet and exhausted, she climbs out of the water near 124 on a summer afternoon. However, her strange arrival is far more than an introduction to a key character. Several factors of the event have profound significance and meaning within the novel, such as the river and rebirth.

First, the river symbolizes the Middle Passage, which was the forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to America. Beloved’s arrival, coming from the river, represents the arrival of those enslaved Africans packed onto ships. Not only does Beloved represent Sethe’s personal tragedy, but the collective tragedy of slavery as a whole. I really thought it was interesting and thoughtful how Morrison used details such as the river to enhance both the story and the broader perspective/event.

Additionally, Beloved’s rebirth represents trauma, specifically how it can linger within individuals. Beloved represents Sethe’s unsolved guilt and grief of her dead child, showing how Sethe’s trauma comes back, and greatly affects her. Despite Sethe trying to move on and bury her past, it still came back, which is shown by the unexpected arrival of Beloved, and the great burden she imposes on Sethe. I thought Beloved’s introduction was an underrated way of representing trauma in terms of a cycle, rather than something that comes and goes. Also, I liked how well it shows trauma can be dynamic.

In Toni Morrison’s book Beloved, flashbacks are often found for many different characters. These can sometimes overlap, giving the audience more context into the history of these complex individuals. For me, putting the underwhelming ending aside, found that this plethora of flashbacks and glimpses into the histories of the characters was a very good way of telling the story. While some may say there were too many, for this kind of story, the use of flashbacks was an excellent way to build community and connections between the characters. The story also utilizes point of view changes, and that is most times how we can differentiate these experiences. Whether they are in the present or the past.

Overall for me, this story was not the greatest book we’ve read in the class. However, through the use of perfect storytelling, use of flashbacks, and changes in point of view, I can understand how this is a very important book to teach, and have people understand.

The book Beloved by Toni Morrison contains many complex and even confusing layers. Most of the time, questions that readers have early on don’t get answered until way later. However, there are some pressing matters that seem to not be answered at all. Where did Beloved go? Was Beloved even real? Where did Howard and Buglar go?

The most important unanswered question, at least in my opinion, is what happened to Halle? The only thing Morrison gave readers was that Sethe’s husband was last seen on Sweet Home by Paul D. What happened next is up to the imagination of the audience.

I’m sure everyone already has their own view on how the rest of Halle’s life unfolded, but for now, I’ll focus on mine. I believe that Halle survived Sweet Home and the wrath of the Schoolteacher. After the Schoolteacher had Sixo killed and the rest of his slaves ran away, he was only left with Halle, who was too traumatized to go through with his own escape plan. Halle would remain trapped in the prison known as Sweet Home paying the price for everyone else leaving until he mustered up the courage to do so himself.

After escaping, Halle would spend his life trying to find his lost family, only to here about the death of his child at the hands of Sethe. Did Halle ever reach his family? That’s a question for another time.

Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a beautifully complex work of literature that explores and comments on many ideas and themes that are still current in our society. I particularly found interest in how Morrison explores motherhood for African American women in a slavery/post-slavery era. Morrison most direct examinations and comments are through the main character Sethe, however I also see how she used her Mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, to further communicate her ideas.

In chapter 2, we get a glimpse of the life Baby Suggs has endured when she thinks back on her eight children and how she lost every one of them. Slavery was an institution that not only reminded enslaved people that they had no self-autonomy, but they also had no rights to their children. Their children were not theirs and they were simply product producing more product.

Morrison shows us this multiple times throughout the passage, but I felt particular impact when she writes, “Halle she was able to keep the longest… Given to her, no doubt, to make up for hearing that her two girls, neither of whom had their adult teeth, were sold and gone and she had not been able to wave goodbye” (28).

There are three things that struck me when I first read this.

1. Baby Suggs says she “got” to keep Halle the longest. Morrison’s language her reveals that Baby Suggs doesn’t even consider Halle her own and in reality she is simply bidding the limited time she has with him. Her own child, that she gave birth to and raised, is not hers, but the institution of slavery.
2. I noticed how Morrison italicized the word “hearing” as to add importance and emphasis to it. Morrison does this because there is significance that Baby Suggs only heard of her children being sold, she wasn’t even aware or saw it happen. The decision was made totally independent of her as to remind her that as property she had no voice or right to even know what happens to other property
3. Finally Morrison strikes me with her reminder that Baby Suggs children were taken before they even got their adult teeth. We are being informed that Baby Suggs had no time. She was not granted the ability to know her children.  It once again reminds us that her relationship with her children is not on her time. Suggs has no control over anything that happens and she is another checker piece in a greater game.

It is not wonder as to why Baby Suggs continues with “That child she could not love and the rest she would not” (28). The institution of slavery was specifically designed to make Suggs feel this way. The constant reminder that her children were not her own was intended to remind slaves that they were property, not people.  That slaves were unable to participate in motherhood as they were not considered mothers.

Morrison’s ability to convey such complex ideas and themes in such a short amount of word count reinforces in my mind that Beloved is a work of genius that all people should read.

Throughout the story of Beloved, we are told all about Sethe’s past through different points of view. If you did not read this book closely, you might think that this story is Sethe’s, how she escaped and came to 124, and why Beloved is haunting her. Though if you take a closer look you start to see that this isn’t the story Morrison is trying to tell. The story of Beloved is not a story about slavery. It is a story about how the trauma after slavery affects the community and affects both the generation that was enslaved and also the kids of the enslaved generation. Which is why I believe that this is really Denver’s story.

Denver is part of the generation of kids born outside of slavery, to former slaves. Denver experiences trauma throughout the book just like Sethe does, however it is a different kind. She doesn’t have the trauma of living through slavery, but she does have the trauma of her mother’s actions after slavery. Denver cannot escape the community trauma either. I think this book serves as a showing of how generational trauma occurs. Morrison wants people to realize that the effects of slavery don’t just affect one generation, but all the generations after. I think Denver is the main character of this story, and it is a story about her grappling with the generational trauma that she is enduring.

In Beloved by Toni Morrison, when Beloved first shows up at 124 she’s weak and can barely even keep her eyes open. “Everything hurt but her lungs most of all. Sopping wet and breathing shallow she spent those hours trying to negotiate the weight of her eyelids” (60). However, as the book goes on Beloved seems to get more and more powerful. In the next chapter, Paul D claims that he saw Beloved pick up a rocking chair single-handed. And just two chapters later, Paul D sees Beloved glowing. “Beloved was shining and Paul D didn’t like it” (76). By the end of the book before disappearing, Beloved can completely control Sethe. “Beloved didn’t move; said, ‘do it,’ and Sethe complied” (284).

And as Beloved’s strength grows, she gets meaner and meaner. When Beloved first arrives, she’s thankful for Sethe and Denver’s help. “She smiled then and Denver’s heart stopped bouncing and sat down” (66). But as the book goes on, signs of what Beloved will become start to become apparent. When Beloved is glowing, Paul D suspects something is off about Beloved saying “Women did what strawberry plants did before they shot out their thin vines” (76). And by the end of the book, Beloved is demanding and the townspeople refer to her as “the devil-child.”

Beloved’s Power throughout the novel is a result of the stories told by Sethe. Beloved is obsessed by Sethe’s past and “it became a way to feed her” (69). Beloved is Sethe’s baby who she killed when Schoolteacher came to take her children. And when Beloved comes back from the dead, so do Sethe’s traumatic memories. Beloved represents all of the memories that Sethe tries to forget and kill. At first, Sethe says that telling stories of her past to Beloved feels good. But Beloved gets more and more demanding as memories that Sethe tried to move past come back to her. In the end, Sethe realizes that she needs to get away from Beloved to reconnect with her community and move forward. “Sethe is running away from her, running, and she feels the emptiness in the hand Sethe has been holding. Now she is running into the faces of the people out there, joining them and leaving Beloved behind” (309).

One of the most astounding and notable features of Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved is that the timeline is not displayed out for the reader on a linear scale, but is revealed to the readers slowly through the use of flashbacks resulting from the characters’ PTSD, as well as normal recollections. Occasionally when referring to a flashback, Morrison uses the word “rememory” instead of “memory.”

Initially, I thought that “rememory” was a word that I had not heard of because it was a product of the time and culture, or meant to sound like a product of the time and culture. I thought that perhaps Black Americans that recently escaped from slavery actually used or the word interchangeably with “memory,” or that Toni Morrison made it up and included it because she wanted to emphasize to her readers the differences between themselves and Black Americans in 1873. However, upon further examination, I came to the conclusion that Morrison included the word in the novel to distinguish regular memories, like the one Denver had of her mother telling her the story of giving birth, to flashbacks of trauma like the ones Paul D and Sethe had about Sweet home.

While Morrison never explicitly draws a line between a rememory and a memory, she gives the impression that rememories are less concrete than memories, and that they are trauma-related. Sethe most often used the word “rememory” when referring to a memory of sweet home, or memory of a feeling rather than a concrete action. In the clearing, for example, when Sethe is debating whether or not she should pursue a relationship with Paul D, she considers the rememory of the way it was “when he cradled her before the cooking stove.” Alternatively, Morrison uses the word “memory” when Sethe is recollecting a time with Baby Suggs before the party where schoolteacher showed up, a memory of Sethe’s that is happy and clear: “Sethe smiled then, at the memory of it” (Morrison 91).

As “rememories,” with their trauma indication and unreliability, are overall an objectively worse way of remembering something than a regular memory, Morrison’s use of the word “rememory” serves to remind the readers that, after someone is enslaved and has experienced trauma, they cannot relive their memories happily like others, but have to experience tainted, dark, unreliable flashbacks.

In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Sethe tells Paul D the story of her getting away from Sweet Home and what she did to make sure her children would not have to live enslaved. Paul D is shocked by this news and tells her that what she did was wrong and there must have been another way. When she questions this, he tells her “You got two feet, Sethe, not four” (194). Here, he compares her actions to that of an animal. While it is true that animals such as hedgehogs and some fish kill their young, they also usually eat them. While this is an obvious difference between Sethe’s actions and animal actions, Sethe also killed her baby because of her horrific experiences, something animals that do the same thing do not have.

What Sethe did is not an animalistic action. When she was faced with an impossible choice of letting her children be taken back to Sweet Home or killing them and in effect, saving them, she chose what she thought would bring them the least pain. Sethe did what she did out of love; even Paul D tells her that her love is “too thick”. She did not want her children to have to endure the abuse of schoolteacher nor slavery in general. Sethe’s love, protection, and consideration of her children is what separates her actions from those of an animal, and she should not be judged harshly for what she did.

Throughout Beloved, I noticed several instances in which the entire community of this unnamed Cincinnati suburb came together to forget two major events. The first was when Sethe killed Beloved and went to jail, and the second was Beloved herself. While it is not surprising as to why the community would want to forget these events, what interested me is how everyone seemingly simultaneously agreed to just not talk about them at all.

It was almost like everyone just subconsciously understood each other at the same moment, and they all agreed upon the same thing. I thought this was especially interesting because at its core it really just shows the special ways in which communities can function when they are as tight knit as the one in this particular fictional Cincinnati suburb.

It also made me wonder though: how does this dynamic come about? I wondered what type of environment, what types of the peoples, and what type of experiences are required in order to form a community like the one in Beloved. I believe that this dynamic most commonly comes as a result of communal hardships, such as an event where a woman kills one of her children and attempts to kill the rest too. Though, I also believe that this communal dynamic is a result of the events that happen in the novel, but also that the resulting dynamic is a representation of just how important events were for the community. What I have come to realize is this: major events do shape a community, and yet the reaction of said community shapes future events as well.