As Sethe comes to realize that Beloved is her daughter, she wants to explain why she killed her. Sethe thinks, “How if I hadn’t killed her she would have died and that is something I could not bear to happen to her.” In other words, if Sethe had not killed her child she would’ve died a slave, ad Sethe couldn’t bear to see that. This quotation shows that Sethe killing her child protected her from being captured by schoolteacher and taken to Sweet Home. Sethe’s love for her child is displayed in this quote. Killing her child was the only way to protect her from becoming a slave.
