Often times looking back at life you come to realize even the smallest things helped you get to where you are at this moment. The story of a character in a novel works the same way. When discussing a pivotal point in Sethe’s life that made it the way it is, it is hard to discern when that moment actually was. One could argue if she never married Hale she wouldn’t have lost her kids or killed beloved. Another might even go as far to say if she was never born all of this would have never happened.
Personally, I feel like the most important scene in beloved was the moment when the schoolteacher and his nephews came and saw beloved with her neck slit, the boys laying in blood, and Denver being thrown at the wall. “Inside, two boys bled in the sawdust and dirt at the feet of a n**** 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…the old n**** boy, still mewing, ran through the door behind them and snatched the baby from the arc of its mother’s swing” (175).
Infanticide plays a key role in this novel. It was something that was commonly done amongst slave woman to prevent their kids from enduring the same fate they did. Sethe felt the need to kill her children as she saw no other way to save them. In her eyes there was no hope left for freedom and saw this as the only way. She even says, “… couldn’t let her nor any of ‘em live under schoolteacher.” (200) Regardless of her justifications she was condemned by her neighborhood and the law. She became an outcast and no one spoke to anyone in 214.
Although she feels justified in her action she still feels guilty. Hence the need of hers to justify to beloved her reasoning behind murdering her. Beloved herself is a character the reader isn’t entirely sure about; she could be anyone. In Sethe’s case, beloved could be seen as the personification of this guilt and her need for atonement. As Sethe is constantly shown justifying her committing infanticide to beloved.
Going back to how Sethe was condemned by everyone for her crime, she set off a chain reaction; her boys left her, baby Suggs died and Denver suffered isolation and was picked on by everyone for it. Denver was/is the only child of Sethe’s who remained with her and even she wasn’t happy. Her mothers crime made her just as much of an outcast as it did her mother. Due to her peers making fun of her she began questioning Sethe about her past. Even Paul D, who came back into her life much later, left her after learning about the crime she committed.
Sethe’s whole life after killing beloved was shaped around that moment. Everything that happened to her henceforth was a reaction to that said moment. Had she not taken the initiative and killed beloved her life would be completely different. Maybe not a happy one but one without the constant guilt of having your own child’s blood on your hand.
Sethe wins, so to speak, and prevents her kids from being taken to good home.
“Right off it was clear, to schoolteacher especially, that there was nothing there to claim. The three (now four—because she’d had the one coming when she cut) pickaninnies they had hoped were alive and well enough to take back to Kentucky, take back and raise properly to do the work Sweet Home desperately needed, were not. Two were lying open-eyed in sawdust; a third pumped blood down the dress of the main one—the woman schoolteacher bragged about, the one he said made fine ink, damn good soup, pressed his collars the way he liked besides having at least ten breeding years left. But now she’d gone wild, due to the mishandling of the nephew who’d overbeat her and made her cut and run.”
She ‘saved’ her kids from the cruel fate of slavery. Which raises the question whether or not it was worth it. In the end of the novel, Beloved’s presence is gone, she helped Sethe confront her past and gave her the possibility of having a happy future with Paul D. It’s not easy losing a child but Sethe still has one left to whom she succeed in protecting from being a slave. Maybe not justifiable, but the act is understandable.
Many may argue how Sethe, prior to actually doing the act, thinks about killing her children where she gives her reasoning behind why killing them is the best decision, is what would be an important scene. Had she not had those thoughts then beloved would not have entered her life as a paranormal being. But alas, thoughts are fickle and subject to change so I decided the actual scene where the schoolteacher comes is the one that resulted in the story of beloved. Had she not killed her child she wouldn’t have demons in her past to overcome and conquer.
The most important thing in the novel is beloved’s emergence. Which probably would not have happened if the actual killing scene didn’t happen. Everything else would change the course of the story but even if those events occurred and the killing didn’t beloved would not have taken form the way she did.
