Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved is about a life of a former slave, Sethe. She was raised as a slave at a plantation called “Sweet Home.” Their lives were peaceful when Mr.Garner was in charge, because of his generosity and mercy (by slave owner standards), but their lives changed when he died. Then a man called “schoolteacher” took over. Schoolteacher was cruel. When schoolteacher was in charge, Sethe was abused by him and his nephews, which makes her understand that she cant let her children be slaves. She decided to send her children away to Ohio, and then she ran away. But when schoolteacher found Sethe, she had to make a tough decision in order to protect her children. She wanted to kill all her children but only succeeded with the newborn baby with a tombstoned named “Beloved.”
The quotation “I took one journey and i got paid for the ticket” refers to Sethe killed one of her baby girl. Throughout the story, Sethe’s painful memories kept coming back. Then a random women named “Beloved” showed up in their lives. Sethe later came to believe that she was her dead baby girl who came back to her. In this art work, I tried to show that Sethe’s painful memories became the scars on her back; it “grows there still,” and had became a pattern of a “tree,” never to disappear.