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Beloved:
Chapter 1
 ‘by 1873 Sethe, and her daughter Denver were its only victims’ - is this
gendered because they are both girls? ‘victims’ important, victims of the ghost
of a baby
 ‘suspended between the nastiness of life and the meanness of the dead, she
couldn’t get interested in leaving life, or living it’ – Baby Suggs – fatalistic,
depressive ‘nastiness of life’
 ‘The welcoming cool of unchiselled headstones; the one she selected to lean
against on tiptoe, her knees wide open as any grave
...
Ten minutes, he said
...
’
Sexualisation of a woman, using her as payment for her child’s grave
stone
 ‘his young son looking on, the anger in his face so old; the appetite in it quite
new’ –
 ‘She thought it would be enough, rutting among the headstones with the
engraver, his young son looking on, the anger in his face so old; the appetite
in it quite new
...
Enough to answer one more
preacher, one more abolitionist and a town full of disgust’

 ‘Who would have thought that a little baby could harbor so much rage?’
 ‘We could move’ – domestic space presented as unwelcome/scary – Baby
Suggs’ reply to this particularly significant, as if you can’t escape your
sorrows: ‘What’d be the point?
...
’
 ‘Being alive was the hard part’ – in reference to Baby suggs

 ‘Same, but to listen to her, all her children is dead
...
’ – gendered experience, maternal instinct

 ‘red and undulating light that locked him where he stood’ –
supernatural/ghost/energy
 ‘Halle’s girl – the one with iron eyes and backbone to match
...
Sit down too long,
somebody will figure out a way to tie them up
...
’ – gendered – male – effects of enslavement on men – repressed
sexuality ‘each one would have beaten the others to mush to have her
...
But he too, as it turned out, was nothing but a
man’ – Halle
 ‘men and women were moved around like checkers’
dehumanisation/ownership/enslavement ‘Baby Suggs knew, let alone
loved, who hadn’t run off or been hanged, got rented out, loaned out, bought
up, brought back, stored up, mortgaged, won, stolen or seized’

 ‘What she called the nastiness of life was the shock she received upon learning
that nobody stopped playing checkers just because the pieces included her
children
...
A lifetime
...
Irony
...
”
 ‘A blessing she was reckless enough to take for granted, lean on, as though
Sweet Home really was one
...
How fine and loose and free
...
A person
that wept, sighed, trembled and fell into fits’ 124, personifying the house,
due to the supernatural elements of it?
 ‘a white dress knelt down next to her mother and had its sleeve around her
mother’s waist’ supernatural, religious, purity of white,
 “I’m laughing now, but it’s true
...
I was hungry to do it
...
All jaws and hungry
...
’

 ‘made her think that maybe she wasn’t, after all, just a crawling graveyard for a
six month baby’s last hours’
 ‘Anything dead coming back to life hurts’ theme of death/supernatural – ‘A
truth for all times, thought Denver’
 ‘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’ displacement, domestic
setting – importance of location
 ‘even thought it’s all over – over and done with – it’s going to always be there
waiting for you
...
’
 ‘With a table and a loud male voice he had rid 124 of its claim to local fame’
loud male voice
 ‘Would it be all right? Would it be all right to go ahead and feel? Go ahead
and count on something?’ anxiety surrounding human emotion, repressed
feelings – caused by pain? – anxiety emphasised by questions
 ‘Every dawn she saw the dawn, but never acknowledged or remarked its color’
lack of life/
 ‘oblivious to the loss’
 ‘When she woke the house crowded in on her’ personification of the house,
the space – alive with memory which Sethe elaborates on: ‘there was the
door where the soda crackers were lined up in a row; the white stairs her baby
girl loved to climb; the corner where Baby Suggs mended shoes…And of
course the spite of the house itself
...
’
Displacement
 ‘The closed portion of his head opened like a greased lock
...
’ Inescapable, foreboding – history of
slavery – suggesting that it’s intrinsic maybe?

Chapter 4
 Break from the ominous and sadness of the house – racial tension
underlying in pickaninnie’s quote but mainly extremely happy – carnival
 ‘Risky, thought Paul D, very risky
...
’ Foreboding, identity ‘used to be slave woman’ –
still not free

 ‘She didn’t want to meet Lady Jones or Ella with her head wrapped like she
was going to work
...
’ American-slang term in English which refers to a
racist and derogatory caricature of dark-skinned children of African descent

 ‘Breathless with the excitement of seeing white people loose’
 ‘it was a small price to pay for the fun they might not ever have again’
foreboding
 ‘the shadows of three people still held hands’ – family

Chapter 5
 First meet Beloved
 ‘A young coloredwoman drifting was drifting from ruin
...
’ Escape, freedom,
 ‘hunted and hunting for, were men, men, men
...
The whites didn’t bear speaking on
...
’ Silent –
voiceless, left so by the whites and the sorrow inflicted upon then
 ‘out of love and a breakneck possessiveness that charged her, hid like a
personal blemish Beloved’s incontinence’ human concern amongst human
nature – perhaps could be a para, it connects to the reader, standing out
amongst the cruelty and brutality of enslavement and its long term
effects – Denver to Beloved – Denver’s connection to her, linked to the
ghost of the house? The ‘plan’ of the spirit – Beloved: Hear Boy leaves
when she arrives
...
’ Mother/daughter
relationship
 ‘Sethe looked at her daughter and thought, Yes, she has been lonesome
...
’ Loneliness of Denver, intrinsic to her characterisation
...

 ‘It was that deep down in those big black eyes there was no expression at all
...
’ Beloved
 ‘If there had been an open latch between them, it would have closed
...
’
 ‘She rose early in the dark to be there, waiting, in the kitchen when Sethe
came down to make fast bread before she left for work
...
’
Ominous, foreboding
...
’
 ‘A touch no heavier than a feather but loaded, nevertheless, with desire
...

Some plea barely in control
...
’
Childlike
 ‘They said it was all right for us to be husband and wife and that was it
...
I want you to have them and I
want you and Halle to be happy
...
’ Past – Sethe
 ‘A mighty wish for Baby Suggs broke over her like surf
...
’ – lonely – unidentified – can’t understand that
world, just plagued by the effects that world has had on her mother, and
her own life – maybe why she retells it in her own way in chapter 8?

Chapter 7
 ‘Women did what strawberry plants did before they shot out their thin vines:
the quality of the green changed
...
’ Sexuality
 ‘something in Beloved’s face, some petlike adoration’ childlike
 ‘holding the knife handle in his fist like a pole’ phallic, exercising his male
authority in the house – the most wary of Beloved
 ‘got a smile from Beloved as a reward’ manipulative, controlling presence
 ‘who, like him, had buried themselves in slop and jumped in wells to avoid
regulators, raiders, paterollers, veterans, hill men, posses and merrymakers’
white men – effects of enslavement – effect of white on black
 ‘Move
...
Run
...
Steal and move on
...
Chopping, hacking, busting every goddam minute
of the day
...
Things he can’t chop down because they’re
inside’ gendered – male experience – human fragility/emotion
 ‘I had a bit in my mouth’ – Paul D – dehumanisation,
 ‘Just once, could it say, No thank you? I just ate and can’t hold another bite’ –
enough of bad memories/thoughts – doesn’t want to add the thought of
her husband watching to the memory (milk)
 The ‘churn’, ‘ghost’ ‘back being split open etc these things are all
mentioned to the reader before we are given an explanation –
fragmented narrative connects with the reader
 ‘Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let
alone plan for, the next day’ so fixated on her past, highlighted by the
narrative that skips so often from the past to the present – stuck in her
past, and all the horror it holds – whilst also wanting to block the past

 ‘about how offended the tongue is, held down by iron, how the need to spit is
so deep you cry for it
...
Better than me
...
Son a
bitch couldn’t even get out the shell by hisself but he was still king and I
was…Mister was allowed to be and stay what he was
...
Schoolteacher changed me
...
’

Dehumanisation, stripped of his identity – made to feel as small as a
chicken, less than a chicken – ‘wasn’t allowed’ – rights – male experience?
 ‘One crazy, one sold, one missing, one burnt and me licking iron with my
hands crossed behind me
...

He would keep the rest where it belonged: in that tobacco tin buried in his
chest where a red heart used to be
...
’
 ‘ “In the dark my name is Beloved
...
She is the one I need
...
’ “ possessiveness of Sethe
 ‘and had not remembered that she hadn’t gone there until this very desperate
moment’ importance of location, place to escape to - in reference to
Denver’s play house
 The theme of story telling
 ‘Now, watching Beloved’s alert and hungry face, how she took in every word,
asking questions about the color of things and their size, her downright
craving to know’
 ‘She is not so afraid at night because she is the color of it’
 ‘Denver nursing Beloved’s interest like a lover whose pleasure was to overfeed
the loved’ storytelling – hunger – obsession with the past

 Denver and Beloved reimagine Seethe’s past: pg 13 of 30
 Amy’s song: ‘And those white hands overspread/Like a veil the curly
head…Then she smooths the eyelids down/Over those two eyes of brown/’

Chapter 9
 ‘ “Lay em down, Sethe
...
Down
...
Both of em down
...
Sword and shield
...
Lay all that
mess down
...
” ‘ extracting her past, laying it to rest –
words of Baby Sugg’s
 ‘Before 124 and everybody in it had closed down, veiled over and shut away;
before it had become playthings of spirits and the home of the chafed, 124
had been a cheerful, buzzing house’ domestic theme – displacement essay
 “Everything depends on knowing how much,” she said, and “Good is knowing
when to stop
...
Women stopped crying and danced; men sat down and cried;
children danced, women laughed, children cried until, exhausted and riven, all
and each lay about the Clearing damp and gasping for breath
...
They despise it
...
’ Referring to whites
 “they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight” past – baby suggs  “lungs that have yet to draw free air”
 “Those white things have taken all I had or dreamed,” she said, “and broke my
heartstrings too
...
”
 “No more lamp all night long…No low conversations after supper
...
’
 “Name’s Stamp,” he said
...
”
 “If anybody was to ask me I’d say, ‘Don’t love nothing
...
’
 ‘Solitude had made her secretive – self-manipulated
...
’
 ‘she walked in a silence too solid for penetration
...
’
 ‘full of spite’ – supernatural
 ‘until the afternoon of the last day of her life when she got out of bed…and
announced to Sethe and Denver the lesson she learned from her sixty years a
slave and ten years free: that there was no bad luck in the world but white
people
...
’
 ‘It took a man, Paul D, to shout it off, beat it off and take its place for himself
...
A flutter of a kind, in the
chest, then the shoulder blades
...
’
 ‘As though the further south they led him the more his blood, frozen like an
ice pond for twenty years, began thawing, breaking into pieces that, once
melted, had no choice but to swirl and eddy
...
He stood up then, and, shuffling a little, brought the chain tip to the next
prisoner, who did likewise
...
The enslavement of men
...
’
Confined/controlled by white men – ‘whim’

 ‘With a sledge hammer in his hands and Hi Man’s lead , the men got through
...
’
 ‘They sang of…the shamelessness of life
...
’ Human cruelty/violence/
 ‘Singing love songs to Mr
...
’ Violence
 ‘More than the rest, they killed the flirt whom folks called Life for leading them
on
...
’ Personifying life –
 ‘A man could risk his own life, but not his brother’s
...
Magical North
...
’ Freedom of north
to the south – look up contextually – date
 `Spring sauntered north, but he had to run like hell to keep it as his travelling
companion
...
’ Supernatural
 ‘In Ohio seasons are theatrical
...
’ Nature
 “Red heart
...
Red heart
...
” Human
cruelty, rape
 ‘the licking fire that seemed always to burn in her’ Denver
 ‘Darkness is stronger and swallows them like minnows
...
’
Human emotion – so elaborate
 ‘Just as she thought it might happen, it has
...
Death is a skipped meal compared
to this
...
’

Chapter 13
 ‘Allowed’ rights
 ‘He thought what they said had merit, and what they felt was serious
...
’
 ‘Piling itself, burying itself
...
Deeper
...
“I don’t call myself nothing
...
’
Compared to animals again – identity
‘God had given you the responsibility of’ using religion to support actions
‘you just can’t mishandle creatures and expect success’
‘All testimony to the results of a little so-called freedom imposed on
people who needed every care and guidance in the world to keep them
from the cannibal life they preferred
...
’

Chapter 17
 ‘The righteous Look every Negro learned to recognize along with his
ma’am’s tit’ white man look – intrinsic
 “Uh uh
...
” Paul D’s denial – refusing to believe – psychological
effect of slavery and human cruelty, scared of the truth/the horrors
 ‘how she flew, snatching up her children like a hawk on the wing; how her
face beaked, how her hands worked like claws’ animalistic/madness

Chapter 18
 ‘Sethe smiled them, at the memory of it
...
’ Memory
 ‘rememory’

 ‘everything belonged to the man who had the guns’ violence/Paul D on
Georgia
 ‘Men who knew their manhood lay in their guns’ white men – phallic –
masculinity
 ‘A woman, a child, a brother – a big love like that would split you wide open
in Alfred, Georgia
...
’
Identity – psychological effects of slavery/loss/death/
 ‘and right then a forest sprang up between them’ metaphor – identity –
loss

Part 2
Chapter 19
 ‘scorching his soul like a silver dollar in a fool’s pocket, was the memory of
Baby Suggs – the mountain to his sky
...
’
 ‘Spirit willing; flesh weak
...
’
 Fiction of migration texts give history, real true events, horrific and
emotive detail
 Beloved is an uncomfortable read – and so is A Small Place – guilt
 ‘Nobody saw them falling’ repeated – ice skating scene
 ‘ascended the lily-white stairs like a bride’ Sethe
 Baby Sugg’s fixation on the colour of things: ‘she had exhausted blue
and was well on her way to yellow
...
’

 ‘people who chewed up her life and spit it out like a fish bone’ whites
 ‘I want to fix on something harmless in this world
...
Whole towns

wiped clean of Negroes; eighty-seven lynchings in one year alone in
Kentucky; four colored schools burned to the ground; grown men whipped
like children; children whipped like adults; black women raped by the crew;
property taken, necks broken
...
’
Violence/human brutality




















‘The world is in this room’ domestic/microcosm
‘They ate like men, ravenous and intent
...
’ Fixation on not wanting to
remember – memory/past
“You know as well as I do that people who die bad don’t stay in the
ground
...
’ Identity
‘Sixo said it was bugs
...
That’s not the way
...
” Schoolteacher –
dehumanised/identity
‘Running was nowhere on our minds
...
’
‘One had Paul A’s shirt on but not his feet or his head
...
Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming
baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood
...
And it grew
...
In,
through and after life, it spread, until it invaded the whites who had made it
...
’

Chapter 20
 ‘How if I hadn’t killed her she would have died and that is something I
could not bear to happen to her
...
I know what it is to
be without the milk that belongs to you; to have to fight and
holler for it, and to have so little left
...
’
 ‘Now I know why Baby Suggs pondered color her last years
...
’ Her efforts to regain her
identity back? To see things she had never had the freedom to do
before
 ‘Too thick, he said
...
What he know about it?’
mother/daughter relationship
 ‘Because she was my ma’am and nobody’s ma’am would run off and
leave her daughter, would she? Would she, now?’ Sethe seems to
establish identity within mother/daughter relationships – clinging
on to family ties – perhaps because of the complete lack of real
human goodness she’s experienced
 ‘Some of them drank liquor to keep from feeling what they felt
...
’
 ‘my mind was homeless then’ psychological/identity

Chapter 21
 ‘I’m scared of her because of it’ Denver on Sethe
 ‘There is something in her that makes it all right to kill her own
...
’
 ‘Slaves not supposed to have pleasurable feelings on their own’
identity/dehumanised/controlled

 ‘She’s mine, Beloved
...
’ Denver

Chapter 22
 ‘I am beloved and she is mine
...
She is mine
...
Why did you leave me/who am you?’

Chapter 24
 ‘He held his wrist between his knees, not to keep his hands still but because
he had nothing else to hold to
...
’ Human emotion/identity/past/memory
 ‘Everything rested on Garner being alive
...
Now ain’t that slavery or what is it?’ Fragility of a slaves
existence/identity

 ‘Garner called and announced them men – but only on Sweet Home, and by
his leave
...
From room to room
...
’ Paul D
 Repition of ‘but’ in relation to their plan…
 ‘He laughs
...
’ Sixo
 ‘His feet are cooking; the cloth of his trousers smokes
...

Something is funny
...
’ Identity
– dehumanised
 ‘The dollar value of his weight, his strength, his heart, his brain, his penis,
and his future
...
’ – of a white man – sarcasm – irony given Paul D is the
one bound and enslaved
 ‘the breeding one, her foal and the other one’ identity – functionary – ‘the
other’ – other/self – black/white
 ‘if a whiteman finds you it means you are surely lost’ loss of identity/loss
of freedom
 ‘her price was greater than his; property that reproduced itself without cost
...
’ Sense of
belonging – Paid Stamp
 ‘Did you? Snap it?’
‘Uh uh
...
’
 “She reminds me of something
...
”

Part 3
Chapter 26
 ‘Dressed in Sethe’s dresses, she stroked her skin with the palm of her hand
...
Faded newspaper
pictures are nailed to the outhouse and on trees
...
Like a child’s house; the house of a very tall child
...
A bleak and minus nothing
...
She gather me, man
...
It’s good,
you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind
...
Only this woman Sethe could have left
him his manhood like that
...
We need some kind of
tomorrow
...
No rocking can hold it down
...
’
 ‘Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her
name
...
’
 ‘They forgot her like a bad dream
...
’ Past
 ‘It was not a story to pass on

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