Themes!

Themes:
-People can’t escape their past, can’t keep running away from your problems because they come back to haunt you

Even when Sethe escapes slavery, it keeps following her, the four men find her in Cincinnati and Beloved comes back, representing slavery

-even if slavery is over, it’s never truly “gone,” pain is always there, “Beloved” has the theme of the extreme horrors of slavery that are lasting.

Beloved comes back to haunt 124, and the reason for her reincarnation and the violence that was committed against her was a direct result of slavery because Sethe felt she had no choice but to kill her children.

Sethe’s back symbolizes pain she still feels, the tree on her back is a lasting reminder of her life and the torture she experienced at Sweet Home

Paul D’s tin can heart is an effect of his enslavement, slavery causes his tin heart to close up permanently

Ch. 22-23: no periods = no end to the suffering the slaves endured

-Family is important: Paul D. doesn’t feel complete until he finds Sethe whom he wants to create a family with; Sixo created a family w/ the Thirty-Mile Woman, the story is oriented in the family as a unit as shown by Paul’s fixation on the fact that he never had a family and also by Halle and Sethe’s devotion to their loved ones.

-Community history/personal history: Sethe’s personal history affects who she is; Ella has history b/c she was raped by two white men; their history affects who they are and how they act in every way, every single person has a personal history

-Theme of if one concentrates too much on the past, one stops living in the present. Sethe is so involved and disturbed by her past regrets and experiences that she can’t concentrate on being happy and simply living. Her past and her fixation on it pervades her entire life and being, it affects who she is and the relationships (or lack of) that she has with everyone around her

Pg. 26 “Would there be a little space, she wondered, a little time, some way to hold off eventfulness to push busyness into the corners of the room and just stand there a minute or two, naked from shoulder blade to waist, relieved of the weight of her breasts, smelling the stolen milk again and the pleasure of baking bread? Maybe this one time she could stop dead still in the middle of the cooking meal—not even leave the stove—and feel the hurt her back ought to. Trust things and remember things because the last of the Sweet Home men was there to catch her if she sank?”

-Pg.29 “…hoping he wouldn’t mind the fact that she was not prepared, that though she could remember desire, she had forgotten how it worked, the clutch and helplessness that resided in the hands; how blindness was altered so that what leapt to the eye were places to lie down, and all else—door-knobs, straps, books, the sadness that crouched in corners and the passing of time—was interference.”

-Any form of slavery kills the spirit of the enslaved, depriving them of their free will and potential to think, dream, or hope.

Pg.29 “His dreaming of her had been too long and too long ago. Her deprivation had been not having any dreams of her own at all.”

-There is a recurring theme of disappointment in the men. However, the reason why the men are disappointing to their women is because of the slavery. It has destroyed them so that they can’t be depended on; even Halle who was such a good son to Baby is not there for Sethe and she never finds out what happened to him.

Pg.31 “But maybe a man was nothing but a man, which is what Baby Suggs always said. They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely that was, they studied your scars and tribulations, after which they did what he had done: ran her children out and tore up the house.”

Pg. 32 “A man ain’t nothing but a man,” said Baby Suggs. “But a son? Well now, that’s somebody.”

-The theme of the “simple joy” of freedom. Here, Morrison compares freedom to the corn silk. Although freedom seems like such a simple and obvious principle for all people to have, the slaves were deprived of it, and to have it was shaking for the slaves.

Pg.37 “No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simple joy could shake you. How loose the silk. How fine and loose and free.”

-There is a theme of the difficulty that slaves experienced even after they were freed. Sethe experiences the pain of her slavery long after she comes into freedom. Just like Sethe’s feet hurting when they come back to life, the slaves “hurt” when they become “human” again. pg.46 “It’s gonna hurt, now,” said Amy. “Anything dead coming back to life hurts.”

-Theme of permanence of the past’s lasting effects. Because slavery was so horrible, because it was so cruel, its effects continues on in black and white people. The white people were affected by it because of the “jungle’’ they created and the way the black retaliated. The blacks experienced it in their everyday life because it completely affected their outlook on life.

Pg.47 “Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it’s not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it’s gone, but the place—the picture of it—stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world.”

-Freedom doesn’t mean anything if you’re alone.

“God take what He would,” she said. “And He did, and He did, and He did and then gave her Halle who gave her freedom when it didn’t mean a thing.” (pg.33)

Baby Suggs’ freedom “didn’t mean a thing” because she was in freedom alone, it was insignificant without anyone to share it with, no children, husband, or Halle. She doesn’t feel like her freedom is important at all until Sethe comes with the children to 124.

Sethe is lucky because she can make her freedom mean something when she has Denver to love. She still feels unfulfilled without her partner, Halle, and she always wonders about him, but her life begins to feel more fulfilled when Paul D. enters the picture.

Also, Paul D.’s freedom doesn’t mean anything until he comes to 124 and wants to create a family with Sethe. Before, he floated around and he was comfortable not needing anything from anybody. But after meeting Sethe, he found a place he wanted to stay in and someone he wanted to stay with.