“Beloved is my sister. I swallowed her blood right along with my mother’s milk. The first thing I heard after not hearing anything was the sound of her crawling up the stairs”.
I take this as Denver’s feeling very close to Beloved as she drank her blood along with her milk. This is such a religious action of Christianity. Jesus says that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood, otherwise we have no life in us. I think Toni Morrison deliberately added this into her writing to show a sign of unity between Beloved and Denver. “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” I think Beloved was symbolized as something very much superior that of God himself. However, I feel as if Denver and Beloved would always be connected to each in a way more than Sethe and Beloved would ever be. It was almost an act of salvation between Denver as she was trying to have a connection with her dead sister Beloved. This act was an significance of the sisterly relationship between Denver and Beloved. In theory, as her mother Sethe robbed her of the relation she could’ve had with Beloved.
