Sethe's Change In Beloved

Toni Morrison´s novel Beloved was written and based on the American Civil War era. The author´s use of certain characters in the story provides the reader with an inside to the consequences and results of the Civil War and slavery in the United States. The novel is based upon the characters who have been slaves or have undergone an escape from their masters. The most prominent character in the story is Sethe who had previously been a former slave and remains haunted by this and all the other scarring moments in her past who in vain attempts to repress. Regardless of her past and the hardships that she has faced starting at such a young age and lasting up to her adulthood Sethe has come to become a proud and independent woman who shares an incredible
and immense devotion to her children. Throughout the novel the reader is most struck by Sethe´s motherly instincts and all that she is willing to do for her children. Sethe´s youngest child Denver came across as a very dynamic character who regardless of her intelligence has been scarred by her emotional growth throughout years of relative isolation from the outside world. Morrison keeps Beloved´s identity a mystery. The novel provides the reader with evidence that she could be a traumatized woman as a result of countless of years in captivity, the ghost of Sethe´s mother, or what is most credible Sethe´s murdered daughter who resurrected in Beloved´s body.
The setting in which Morrison wrote the novel was in 1873 in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Though the reader is taken back to the early 1850s to a time in which Sethe was in her teen years still under a master in a Sweet Home plantation in Kentucky and in a prison in Alfred, Georgia. Beloved travels through both the immediate and distant past memories while occasionally including transitions to the present tense. In fact the novel is told from third person by the anonymous narrator. In contrast when the characters become the narrators the novel generally changes to first person in order to further express their personal opinions and memories. Throughout the changing of the point of view in the novel the tone changes as well from character to character usually to greater describe their attitudes toward personal
events.
Being a survivor a very traumatic escape from slavery Sethe was pushed to extreme measures in which she felt that killing her older daughter would be the best attempt to prevent her from being taken back by her old master to the South.
The major conflict of the novel was portrayed and first introduced to the reader when a mysterious figure suddenly appears at Sethe´s home at random, and who calls herself by the name of her dead daughter, Beloved. Now this is where Morison starts to provide her audience with evidence that explains who Beloved is. Following the appearance of Beloved the reader is left with no actual confirmation of who she truly is and is left to decide the explanation in which they believe in the most. Judith Thurman, for instance, writes in The New Yorker that young woman ¨calls herself by the name of the dead baby, Beloved, so there isn’t much suspense, either about her identity of about her reasons for coming back.¨ In the contrary in The New York Review of Books, Thomas R. Edwards agrees that the ¨Lovely, history less young woman who calls herself Beloved…is unquestionably the dead daughter´s spirit in human
form¨. Following the major conflict that was introduced in the novel the rising action consists of the introduction of a new character, Paul D who has come to live with Sethe and Denver. After only a few days of being invited in to stay with them a new love ignites between Sethe and Paul D. In his attempt to live in peace with his new family Paul D chooses to try to chase the ghost who has haunted the house for several years. Shortly after Beloved appears at the house and causes old memories to surface in Denver, Paul D, and Sethe. Beloved is a novel which included a plentiful amount of metaphors that resulted in the striking read to Morrison´s audience. For instance, when Paul D appears at Sethe´s house for the first time after many years apart, she shows him her back in which she refers to as a ¨Tree¨. In Sethe´s perception the countless amount of scar tissue has become a living tree. To most people trees are a symbolism of live and vibrancy, but in her eyes and at this certain point in her life she has no actual life in her, so what she refers to as the ´´tree´´ on her back is just a constant reminder of the life that was struck out of her with every dehumanization act against her due to slavery. In this novel where slavery becomes the basis color becomes very powerful. Just alone slavery is the conflict between white-skinned and dark-skinned people so all the colors mentioned in the story is a representation of conflict. However, when it seems like life has become hopeless and Sethe begins to give up on herself she relies on the thought of colors because colors are safe.