Beloved

Project#2 –Draft

In the novel Beloved written by Toni Morrison, Sethe was the main character of the novel a former slave who escaped from the Kentucky plantation, Sweet Home, with her children to Cincinnati, Ohio where the pivotal scene of the novel occurred when her slave owner came to recapture her and her children. Sethe attempted to kill all her children, but succeed in killing one her two year old daughter, in order to prevent them taken back to Kentucky and lived as slaves.  If she did not murder her child, the whole novel would lead to a different direction.   No one would take the life of one’s own child, if there were not enough reasons to make such a tough decision and terrible act. I think the scene that Sethe’s slaying of her daughter is vital because which reflect the whole novel of before and after her action and it was also embedded with the courage and the powerful love of a mother and the cruelties of the slavery.

Sethe was the kind of mother who loves her child and wanted to give the best of her which she felt was her milk. She was very upset and angry when her owner Mrs. Gardner’s brother in law, a schoolteacher; and his two nephews took her milk just before she tried to escape from Sweet Home. She explained Paul D who also was a slave worked together with Sethe in Sweet Home came and met her in Cincinnati that, “After I left you, those boys came in there and took my milk. That’s what they came in there for. Held me down and took it” (19).  Instead of getting angry and mad for she was held down and felt the pain of the sexual assault that she received from her owner, she got angry for them for taken her milk which she thought her milk was her best and valuable things that she wanted to keep and give only to her children not others. Therefore, she repeatedly told Paul D that “And they took my milk …And they took my milk” (20).  Sethe was showing the deepest love of a mother to her child to give the best of her which  supported her action that she used her best ability to protect her children from taken back to Sweet Home and living as slaves that Sethe believe was hell.

Cruelty of the slavery did not stop for Sethe after her milk had been taken and she was beaten with the cowhide while she was pregnant with her second daughter. She told Paul D that “Schoolteacher made one open up my back and when it closed it made a tree. It grows there a still” (20). That is why she said that she had a tree on her back which actually what she meant was the scar of the wound that left after she was beaten by her owner.  She described the tree to Paul D as “A chokecherry tree. Trunk, branches, and even leaves. Tiny little chokecherry leaves. But that was eighteen years ago. Could have cherries too now for all I know” (18).  The scar on her back always reminded her of the painful experiences of being a slave and traumatized her of taken back her and her children to Sweet Home and stay as slaves again.

                One reason that Sethe killed her daughter is that she knew the painful experience of a slave and she had also enjoyed and experienced the life of freedom for twenty eight days in 124, therefore, she knew the experience of both  and  she knew which would be the best for her children.  Later she wanted to explained Beloved why she killed her (child) that

“That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn’t like yourself anymore. And though she and others lived through and got over it, she could never let it happen to her own. The best things she was, was her children. Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thing — the part of her that was clean.” (295)

Sethe said that being a slave was not only simply about the terrible work that has to work, but can take whole self of you for whatever came up in the mind of the white. They can kill you, hurt you and dirt you. She meant” dirt “was literally rape you or invade your private part and you felt yourself as no longer clean, but she said she and other slaves lived through with it. Her children were her best things and she would not allow her children to become slaves and dirty them. That was her decision to take the clean life of her daughter to protect from dirtying which she believed was far worse than dying once.

All the painful experiences and the traumas that Sethe had in her past pushed her to make such a terrible decision and created such a cruel and vital scene of the whole novel to take the life of her own children.

Inside, two boys bled in the sawdust and dirt at the feet of a nigger woman holding a blood-soaked child to her chest with one hand and an infant by the heels in the other. She did not look at them; she simply swung the baby toward the wall planks, missed and tried to connect a second time, when out of nowhere… (175)

Sethe killed her one daughter and held her to the chest, wounded her two sons and held the baby (Denver) by the heel and swung to the wall of the woodshed.  I can imagine the hatred, courage and the love of a mother from this quote. Sethe’s  hatred of her slave owners who traumatized her in past  came to get her and her children and the courage that she showed the comer that she would kill all to prevent them from taken back to Sweet Home. She was holding one to her chest, one by heel and two lying by her feet, to protect them from taken back.

In conclusion, Sethe’s action of killing her child might not be acceptable and might be disgusting, but the love she had for her children is powerful. The later scene of the novel is occurred due to the fact of her dead daughter.  In other words, there would not be the baby ghost who haunted Sethe’s house, her two sons, Howard and Bugler would not run away. Sethe and her younger daughter Denver would not isolated in their own home and Paul D would not horrify and leave Sethe, and Sethe would not be so obsessed with Beloved who believed to be embodied spirit of Sethe’s dead daughter. That is why I think this scene is vital to the whole novel.

Work cited

Morrison, Toni.  Beloved.  New York:  Alfred  A. Knopf, 1998.  Print.