Beloved -- Treatment of Ghost

Beloved -- Treatment of Ghost

Beloved by Toni Morrison, published in 1987, was written in the tradition of slave narrative. Set in 1870s, the story revolves around lives of Sethe, Paul D, Denver and Beloved and explores the effects of slavery both pre and post the Civil War. Ghosts play an important role in the book. They serve several purposes including psychological and physical. The ghost of Beloved is according to some an effect of slavery that can be felt even when it's gone and according to others, its only a figment of Sethe's imagination that helps her mitigate the immense guilt she felt at abandoning her child.

When the novel opens, we see Sethe living with her daughter Denver and two sons in an area where she is purposefully avoided and shunned by others. No one speaks to her because she is accused of killing her daughter, Beloved eighteen years ago. Eighteen years is a long time but Sethe fully understands the seriousness of her crime, more in a moral than legal sense. She longs for her daughter whom she had killed when schoolteacher tried to take her back into slavery after her escape to Ohio- a free state.

At the very outset, we realize that both Sethe and Paul D. are still enslaved. They have been unable to break free of their past and are so enslaved in their minds that freedom has had little or no positive effect on their lives. Sethe lives in isolation with her daughter and a ghost that has a crippling impact on their lives. Sethe felt that 124 Bluestone was haunted but when she suggested escape from this place, Baby Suggs reminded her that evils of slavery haunted every house. Baby Suggs' last words of advice are extremely important for they show that the effects of slavery might take very long to subside. She says: "there was no bad luck in the world but white people. 'They don't know when to stop'" (104). In other words, the ghost symbolized Sethe and Paul D's past. The sudden reemergence of this ghost indicated that evil of slavery had not yet left the black community. As Baby Suggs mentions: "Bit by bit, at 124 and in the Clearing, along with the others, she had claimed herself. Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another" (95). The leaving of ghost near the end symbolizes suppression of immediate effects of slavery but the author mentions that footsteps of ghost can still be heard.

Sethe is a slave girl who attempts to escape slavery, only to be caught again and in an attempt to protect her children, she kills her daughter Beloved. This is the most dramatic turning point in her life and one that plagues her entire character. The sense of guilt grows stronger with time so much so that it results in re-appearance of Beloved in the form of a ghost and it is only then that Sethe's scars can heal. In some ways, it was because of what Sethe's mother had done to her and this resulted in her killing her own daughter and later suffering the consequences. Sethe's mother, known as ma'am, in the novel was hanged for running away but Sethe took it as a sign of abandonment. She felt that her mother had left her behind to survive on her own and this gave birth to anger and resentment which she later took out on her own children. While Nan assured her that ma'am had not left her and that she actually loved her, Sethe on some level of her consciousness refuses to accept that. Despite numerous assurances that "She threw them all away but you...You she gave the name of the black man. She put her arms around him. The others she did not put her arms around. Never. Never" (62), Sethe suffered a deep sense of deprivation. There was a whole in her personality that couldn't be filled and was only further worsened with the killing of her child, Beloved.

Sethe's was thus a broken spirit. She was obsessively attached to her dead daughter as she felt that they were the only clean and lovable part of her. "The best thing [Sethe] was, was her children. Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thing -- the part of her that was clean" (250). She had been made to endure a lot which most slave women experienced during enslavement. They were brutally raped, used and beaten and often had to work as prostitutes. "I got close. I got close. To being a Saturday girl. I had already worked a stone mason's shop. A step to the slaughterhouse would have been a short one" (203-204).

Sethe's sense of abandonment was what gave her an imbalanced torn personality. She wanted a mother's love which she was denied and then she later did the same thing to her daughter and thus suffered immensely. In a way she was both Beloved and herself since she could feel Beloved's feelings of deprivation, abandonment and loss. When she killed Beloved, it was like an act of revenge. It was as if she was avenging all that her mother had made her feel when she left her behind or would leave her Nan while she worked in the fields. Sethe, as a child, was unable to comprehend why her mother was away from her or why she was hanged. But on psychological level, this miscomprehension or inability to comprehend led to resentment that welled up inside her so much so that she killed her own daughter. However it was impossible for her to forgive herself or to forget what she had done.

Sethe pleaded for forgiveness, counting, listing again and again her reasons [for fleeing Sweet Home without Beloved at her side]: that Beloved was more important, meant more to her than her own life. That she would trade places any day. Give up her life, every minute and hour of it, to take back just one of 'Beloved's tears. Did she know it hurt her when mosquitoes bit her baby? That to leave her on the ground to run into the big house drove her crazy? That before leaving Sweet Home Beloved slept every night on her chest or curled on her back? Beloved denied it. Sethe never came to her, never said a word to her, never smiled and worst of all never waved goodbye or even looked her way before running away from her. (241-42)

Sethe's sense of guilt is so profound that she actually imagines the return of Beloved. For many critics, Beloved was not a real presence. It is often asserted that Beloved was merely a figment of Sethe's imagination and since her sense of shame was very strong, she imagined the re-appearance of her lost daughter. She would once announce, "my girl come home. Now I can look at things again because she's here to see them too" (201). Sethe actually begs her daughter to come back so she can comfort her and make her understand why she did what she did: "You came right on back like a good girl, like a daughter which is what I wanted to be and would have been if my ma'am had been able to get out of the rice long enough before they hanged her and let me be one" (203).