Beloved 795book that demarcates the end of slavery, the legacy
of slavery remains with us even now.
Although freedom is typically idealized and
over-simplified, Morrison shows that freedom is
instead contextual. For those freed slaves without
resources, especially those unprepared due to a
lack of education and experience to survive in the
“free” world, Emancipation led to their own set
of problems. Paul D. recalls the freed slaves he
encountered on his travels who are “so stunned,
or hungry, or tired or bereft it was a wonder they
recalled or said anything.” However, for Denver,
who has never been enslaved, freedom is a given,
and she cannot understand why her mother can-
not let the past go. This range of experiences is
Morrison’s gift to us, helping us see slavery and
freedom as individuals experienced it rather than
as historians have retold it.
Nancy Wilson
GrieF in Beloved
When Paul D. enters Sethe’s house, “a wave of grief
soaked him so thoroughly he wanted to cry. . . .
[He] looked back at the spot where the grief had
soaked him. The red was gone but a kind of weep-
ing clung to the air where it had been.” Although
grief is a central theme in Beloved, nothing in a
slave’s life was ever simple. For example, although
“crawling already?” baby was murdered by her own
mother, Sethe was acting out of love and despera-
tion for a situation beyond her control. No wonder
the reaction to the child’s death is so compli-
cated—her family feels grief, of course, but that
grief is often tinged with anger, resignation, guilt,
and denial.
For Sethe’s children, the loss of “crawling
already?” baby is less about grief for their sister
and more about what they have lost personally. For
instance, although she befriends the ghost at 124,
Denver resents the fact that her sister’s death has
alienated her from friends and community: “All
that leaving: first her brothers, then her grand-
mother—serious losses since there were no children
willing to circle her in a game or hang by their knees
from her porch railing.” It is not surprising, then,
that Denver describes the ghost as “rebuked. Lonely
and rebuked.” This is precisely how Denver feels.
Because she is a child, Denver cannot see beyond
her own grief to forgive her mother or to recognize
her mother’s grief. On the other hand, compared to
the adults around her, Denver’s grief is manageable
and survivable precisely because she does not fully
recognize the endemic nature of grief among slaves.
In contrast, for Baby Suggs whose “past had
been like her present—intolerable,” grief for
“crawling already?” baby is one grief too many. In
response, Baby Suggs escapes into a dream world
in which she can contemplate color as opposed
to the sorrow that has followed her into freedom
and indeed into her very home. Unfortunately, by
retreating from family and community, Baby Suggs
contributes to her own undoing. “Baby Suggs died
shortly after the brothers left, with no interest
whatsoever in their leave-taking or hers.” She dies
alone, of grief.
Like Baby Suggs, Paul D. has grieved intensely
all of his life, and he also shuts down. His tale of
grief reads like a litany: “It was some time before
he could put Alfred, Georgia, Sixo, schoolteacher,
Halle, his brothers, Sethe, Mister, the taste of iron,
the sight of butter, the smell of hickory, notebook
paper, one by one, into the tobacco tin lodged in
his chest. By the time he got to 124 nothing in this
world could pry it open.” Given Paul D.’s survival
strategy, it is not surprising that Paul D. literally
drives the grief out of 124. Unfortunately, as the
appearance of Beloved demonstrates, fighting one’s
grief will lead to its manifestation in another, poten-
tially more hazardous form.
Sethe does grieve, but guilt prevents healing.
Not only has she murdered her own child, she has
also set into motion the grief that leads to Baby
Suggs’s death, the running away of Howard and
Buglar, and the loneliness of Denver. “However
many times Baby denied it, Sethe knew the grief at
124 started when she jumped down off the wagon,
her newborn tied to her chest in the underwear of
a whitegirl looking for Boston.” Sethe’s guilt blocks
her memory and feeds Beloved’s vengeance, which
nearly destroys Sethe. Although Sethe does survive,
she takes to Baby Suggs’s deathbed, suggesting that
for Sethe, too, the grief is almost too much to bear.
However, Sethe has Denver and Paul D., and in that
sense the novel ends with hope.