Character Analysis of Beloved in the Novel by Toni Morrison

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Other essays and articles in the Literature Archives related to this topic include : The Symbolic Significance of the Character Beloved in Morrison's Novel   •  Jazz by Toni Morrison : The Symbolic Significance of the Title  •  Slavery in America's South : Implications and Effects

 

Although throughout “Beloved” Toni Morrison focuses tightly on the relationships and experiences of the small group of individuals who comprise her cast of characters, the circumstances and conversations in which she situates them are general enough to be applicable and relevant to any individual who was enslaved, and this is the power that Beloved has as a character. In other words, as this character analysis of Beloved in the novel by Toni Morrison suggests, Beloved as a character is a symbol for slavery and the consciousness of the slave. Her spectral presence serves as a medium through which Morrison is able to provoke anxieties, fears, regrets, and resentments effectively. The consideration of this full range of feelings allows for a more profound consideration of the general circumstances of slavery, even for a reader who is far removed from the days in which the practice was both common and pervasive.

 

One excellent example of the way in which Beloved’s presence provokes reflection about the philosophical and psychological consequences of slavery can be found in Paul’s reflection about Sethe’s “rough choice.” Over time, Paul has come to understand why Sethe murdered Beloved, and the narrator, revealing Paul’s thoughts, says in one of the important quotes from "Beloved" by Toni Morrison, “‘For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love’” (45). The narrator continues by explaining Paul’s rationale: “‘The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit; everything, just a little bit, so when they broke its back or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you’d have a little love left over for the next one’” (45). In other words, while the reader is perfoming a character analysis of Beloved to obtain the general plot, the characters in “Beloved” by Toni Morrison are doing much the same thing to base their actions upon.

 

Such an observation may be difficult for the contemporary reader to stomach, much less to understand. Living, as we do, in a different historical period and set of circumstances, Sethe’s decision to kill Beloved can seem impossibly cruel. However, the more the reader strives to put himself or herself in Sethe’s shoes, and in Beloved’s, in Denver’s, and in the shoes of every other character affected by Beloved’s presence, the more he or she begins to understand just how complex, how challenging, and how painful slavery was, forcing its victims to compromise everything that was human, everything that was most important to them. The distinct effect as a symbol that Beloved has on each of the main characters shows just how diverse the challenges of slavery could be, and were, for those who lived through it, and why it is important to learn about the ugliest aspects of this system of human abuse.

 

Ultimately, Morrison’s Beloved is incredibly powerful because although it appears to be about a small and closed group of individuals affected by slavery, it is a story that reflects the worst, but also the most important, details about slavery that the contemporary reader needs to know and understand. This lesson is achieved through the figure of Beloved. “Anything dead coming back to life hurts,” it is observed (35). Although Beloved is not coming back to life physically, the presence of her ghost is a persistent reminder about the losses caused by slavery, the complicated relationships among slave families, and the difficult decisions that slaves were forced to make in the limited autonomy that was available to them. Morrison achieves not only a novelistic feat, but a sociological one as well, ensuring that the ghost of Beloved speaks for all of the slaves who died and never had the chance to speak.

 

One reason why telling stories of the past, even through the lens of fiction, is so important is that it is only knowing one’s antecedents that one can know oneself, especially in the context of a larger community of which one is a part, and it only through confronting the challenges and pains of the past that one can become to overcome them and move forward to claim the fullness of possibilities of one’s own life. In Beloved, then, Toni Morrison narrates the history of slavery and its psychological impacts and offers the promise of overcoming—or at least coping with—some of the most difficult legacies of slavery by introducing the character of Beloved, who represents not only herself, but all of the victims of the peculiar institution that was slavery.

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