Archetypes In Toni Morrison's Beloved

Beloved Paper A myth is simply a way for humans to orient themselves in the world. Why did Sethe kill her own daughter and not think twice before doing it? What made that thought even cross her mind, an action that took her daughter away from her forever? It may be hard to understand this from ones point of view. Toni Morrison, in the novel Beloved, uses the character Beloved to function as a mythic archetype in the society to help the reader understand things and answer complex questions in the book, like Sethe’s actions and why she did what she did. Archetypes represent universal patterns of human nature. In Beloved, the character Beloved is the anima; she is a projection of the other characters’ desires. To Sethe, Beloved comes to her
with the aim of waking her up and to make her see the real world around her. Morrison uses Beloved as a mythic archetype to explain the reasons behind the actions African American slaves take, and to show how slavery and the effects of it will always exist in the world, no matter how hard people try to forget. Morrison uses Beloved to help explain to the reader why Sethe tried to kill her children, and how it was only an act of love and not an act of hatred or craziness. Sethe killed Beloved in fear of her children returning to slavery and having to live a life like hers when she was a slave. “I couldn’t let all that go back to where it was, and I couldn’t let her nor any of em live under schoolteacher. That was out” (Morrison192). Sethe thought anything would be better than letting her kids live as slaves for someone like schoolteacher. “She just flew. Collected every bit of life she had made, all the part of her that were precious and fine and beautiful, and carried, pushed, dragged them through the veil, out, away, over there where no one could hurt them. Over there. Outside this place, where they would be safe” (Morrison 192).To let schoolteacher take her children would be letting him destroy everything good in herself, all the “life” she made.Yet no one understood why that thought would even cross Sethe’s mind.
Not even former slaves that lived near her and went through similar situations. All the people in town ignored Sethe after this and acted as if she didn’t exist anymore. For example, Ella, one of Sethes old friends says, “I ain’t got no friends take a handsaw to their own children” (Morrison 221). They thought she was crazy. So a person reading this book who didn’t go through anything similar to Sethe’s experience will have a hard time understanding what and why Sethe did too. So Beloved helps get this through to the reader. Beloved returns, and once Sethe realizes it is her daughter, she goes all out to try to make it up to her. “And instead of looking for another job, Sethe played all the harder with Beloved: lullabies, new stitches, the bottom of the cake bowl, the top of the milk. If the hen had only two eggs, she got both” (Morrison 282). This shows how Sethe did love her daughter. She still loves her, and it also shows that the reason behind killing her was only out of fear and love. Sethe was a slave for most of her life and she knows what it is like. There was no way she would want her own children to have to go through
all of the things she went through and experienced, and maybe even worse. “‘I took and put my babies where they’d be safe’” (Morrison 193). She tried to kill her children as a way to put them out of the misery of living life as slaves. The character Beloved acted as a way to show the reader how much Sethe really loves her children and how she would do anything to protect them. Sethe is traumatized from her past of being a slave and going through that experience, and that was why she would do anything to protect her kids from having a life like hers; a life as a slave. Even if it meant killing them. “..if she thought anything, it was No. No. Nono. Nonono” (Morrison192). Sethe’s actions were driven by her past; she knew how it is like to be a slave and never could imagine her children living the way she had to. So she did what she had to keep them away from schoolteacher and slavery overall. Morrison used Beloved as a way to help the reader understand the reasons behind slaves, or former slaves’ actions, no matter how crazy they may seem to some people. Beloved enters each of the other characters lives as a projection of their desires. In the end, her main goal was to wake the characters up. For example, “What he knew was that when he reached the inside part he was saying, ‘Red heart. Red heart,’ over and over again. Softly and then so loud it woke Denver, then Paul D himself. ‘Red heart. Red heart. Red heart’” (Morrison138). Paul D needed to be able to get his emotions out and all of the feelings he has had built up inside him during his slave years. Beloved gave him just that; she was his way of escaping and letting go of it all. “Now her mother was upstairs with the man who had gotten rid of the only company she had” (Morrison 23). Even when Beloved was a ghost, she was the closest thing Denver had to her. Denver was lonely and needed company; she needed someone in her life that she can relate to and connect with and that is exactly what Beloved gave her. “I can forget it all now because as soon as I got the gravestone in place you made your presence known in the house and worried us all to distraction. I didn’t understand it then. I thought you were mad with me. And now I know that if you was, you ain’t now because you came back here to me and I was right all along: there is no world outside my door” (Morrsion 217). Sethe needed desperately to forget the past. She wanted to forget what she did and all the consequences that came along with her decisions. When Beloved returned, Sethe saw it as a sign of forgiveness and that now she can finally forget what happened in the past and live in the present, with her long lost daughter Beloved. So Beloved was a projection of Sethe’s desire. She gave Sethe what she desired most, and that was to take the load of the past off her shoulders. That was the one thing Sethe was in need of; a way to forget her memories of what she did in the past, a way to make herself feel less guilty of what she had done. After all those years when Beloved was the ghost in the house, Sethe was actually almost starting to forget and live her life like a normal person. Having Paul D and Denver, Sethe felt like they were a family and that everything was going to be ok from now on. “..all the time the three shadows that shot out of their feet to the left held hands. Nobody noticed but Sethe and she stopped looking after she decided that it was a good sign. A life. Could be.” (Morrison 57). Then, when Beloved comes back and Sethe has her daughter back, she thinks everything is perfect at the moment. At first, Sethe forgets everything and her main focus is to try to make up for all those years that her daughter Beloved was not with her. “Sethe was trying to make up for the handsaw” (Morrison 295). Sethe had her daughter back and all that mattered to her now was Beloved and only Beloved. “I’ll tend her like no mother ever tended a child, a daughter” (Morrsion 236). So Beloved functions as a projection of Sethe’s desire; Sethe forgot the trauma of her actions in the past… only for a while at least, because Beloved was there for a reason. Beloved functions as the anima, or a soul with a female form, in the book Beloved.
Beloveds aim is to wake Sethe up to her surroundings; to show her that everything is not ok and that all those miserable years of being a slave cannot just simply be forgotten. “Sethe was trying to make up for the handsaw; Beloved was making her pay for it” (Morrison 295). Even though Sethe saw Beloved’s return as something good and as a way to lift the weight of her past off her shoulders, Beloved had a reason for being there. She wanted to send the message to Sethe that a trauma in a person’s life will follow them forever. It was as if Sethe was knocked back to reality. Beloved is Sethe’s reminder- her reminder of what she did and how slavery will still have an effect on her even though she ran away and she is “free”, and no matter how hard she tries to forget. “It took longer for those who had spoken to her, lived with her, fallen in love with her, to forget, until they realized they couldn’t remember or repeat a single thing she said, and began to believe that, other than what they themselves were thinking, she hadn’t said anything at all” (Morrison 324). Once Beloved is gone, and the way the past returns to Sethe, all the memories and the trauma, Sethe finally realizes the truth. She was very negatively impacted by slavery, and its effects on her, she finally sees, will never go away. That trauma will carry on with her, no matter what she tries to do to forget it. Having Beloved by her
side, Sethe did at one point forget. “’She is a friend of my mine. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It’s good, you know when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind’” (Morrison 321). When Beloved disappeared though, that’s when it all hit her. “’She left me. She was the best thing’” (Morrison 321). Sethe realizes that once Beloved was gone, it all came back to her; the memories were never gone to begin with. Beloved was there to show Sethe this. Beloved being by Sethe’s side was the way Sethe forgave herself for what she did. “She come back to me of her own free will and I don’t have to explain a thing. I didn’t have time to explain before because it had to be done quick. Quick. She had to be safe and I put her where she would be. But my love was tough and she back now. I knew she would be” (Morrison 265). Sethe gave herself excuses for her actions to try to make herself finally forget everything when Beloved returned. She tried to make herself believe that it was all over since her daughter returned, and by doing so, forgave her for all those long lost years when Beloved was dead and not with Sethe. So the way Beloved disappeared at the end and left Sethe to think, that is when Sethe realized that everything was not ok. After all that she went through in the past, all the horrific experiences and moments she had to face, nothing was going away. Everything will follow along with her. In the end of the book, Morrison writes, “This is not a story to pass on”, and the very last line of the book is, “Beloved” (Morrison 324). This is the message that Toni Morrison was creating all along; that the memory of events in the past that effect people so tremendously, as slavery did to Sethe, will never go away. They will continue to haunt that person, because it is not an easy thing to get by. The things slavery did to Sethe will continue to haunt her even if she is a former slave in freedom. Beloved is the anima whose aim is to show that the trauma of events in the past, especially horrific events like slavery or infanticide, carry into the future of people and can never be forgotten. In conclusion, Toni Morrison used Beloved the character, in the book Beloved, as a mythic archetype, to open the characters’ eyes and make them aware of how the world really works. Even though Beloved cam e into the characters’ lives as a projection of their desires, giving them what they needed most, she had one aim overall. She was there to show them that their life is run by their past. Sethe is a former slave, and even though she is free now, she will never be free of all those memories nightmares. She will always carry them with her. She might try and try again to do all she can to put it past her, but the trauma will always exist in her life, even in her happiest moments; even when she might not realize it. Sethe thought the past was finally in the past and that she can forget everything when Beloved returned to her, but in reality the whole purpose of Beloved was to make her aware that her life is really controlled by the events of her past and it will always be that way. In this way, Beloved was the anima. She came to Sethe like it was fate, and she entered her life as something wonderful; as a way for Sethe to forgive herself for killing her daughter and having death take Beloved from her for all those years. But Beloved had an important purpose the whole time, an aim of waking Sethe up to the truth about the world.