Susan Huynh

AP Literature
January 4, 2016
Period 3
Beloved Reading Notes
1.

Background Information:
a. Title Beloved
b. Author Toni Morrison
c. Date 1987
d. Period/era post-American Civil War
e. Genre historical fiction

2.

Setting(s):
a. post-American Civil War (1873)
b. 124 Bluestone Road
i. Used to be a way station
ii. Currently gray and white house
iii. Located outside of Cincinnati
c. Sweet Home
i. Kentucky slave plantation
d. Prison in Alfred, Georgia

3.

Plot:
a.

Major events, scenes, speeches/conversations:

i. Halle buys his mothers freedom
ii. Sethe and Halle marry
iii. Schoolteacher runs Sweet Home after Mrs. Garners husband passes away
iv. Buglar, Howard, and Beloved are sent to live with Baby Suggs
v. Sethe attempts to kill children to prevent them from being put into slavery, but is only
able to kill Beloved
vi.
vii.
viii.
ix.

Sethe is sentenced for Beloveds murder

Beloveds ghost arrives at house
Buglar and Howard leave home before Baby Suggs death
Paul D leaves Sethe after learning she killed Beloved

x. Sethe fights Edwin Bodwin when he tries to take Denver away (mistaken Edwin for the
Schoolteacher)
b. Special plot features
i. Symbolism
1. Beloved ordeals that African Americans endured
2. Denver gratitude for Amy Denvers kindness
3. Paul A Garners corpse reminder to slaves of consequences
4. tree-like scars on Sethes back Sethes broken family tree
5. chokecherry tree pain and oppression
6. Denver start of new life for Sethe
ii. Biblical allusion

1.

c.

Beloveds death Christs death saved human race

iii. Irony
1. Sweet Home (brutality of owners towards slaves clash with name)
iv. Extended metaphor
1. Paul Ds tobacco tin heart memories too painful to show anyone else
(compares tobacco and heart to products of slavery)
v. Flashbacks
1. Sweet Home
2. prison
Significance of the title & opening and closing scenes of the book (play):
i. Significance of the title
1. The title is a direct reference to the New Testament and also ties in with the
dedication Morrison has written, which refers to the estimated number of
African Americans who died in the slave trade.
ii. Opening scene
1. The opening scene shows the amount of pain that the characters have already
gone through and introduces a solution for Sethe to accept her history.
iii. Closing scene
1. The closing scene implies that Beloved is not the full story and that no one will
ever know what it is. This also ties in with the fact that many of these stories
about the lives of people in the slave trade were lost because it is a difficult topic
to discuss and as with painful topics like that, people tend to force themselves to
forget them.

4.

Characters:
a. Beloved ghost and reincarnation of Sethes oldest daughter
b.

Sethe Suggs black woman & former slave; attempted to murder all four of her children to save
them from slavery (only succeeded in killing Beloved)

c.

Halle Suggs Sethes husband; buys Babys freedom; whereabouts unknown after he escapes
from Sweet Home

d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
i.
j.
k.

Baby Suggs (Grandma Baby) Halles mother and Sethes mother-in-law; ran way station
Denver Suggs - Sethes daughter; named after Amy Denver
Paul D Garner last surviving male slave from Sweet Home; eventually becomes Sethes lover
Paul F Garner slave from Sweet Home; was sold to help owners wife pay farm debts
Paul A Garner Paul Ds brother; lynched by the Schoolteacher
Schoolteacher severely mistreats Sweet Home slaves (i.e. burning Sixo to his death)
Amy Denver white indentured servant girl; helps Sethe give birth to Denver
Stamp Paid devoted life to helping runaway slaves

l.

Sixo (wild man) tried to escape via Underground Railroad with his lover (Thirty-Mile Woman)
but was caught by the Schoolteacher and burned to death

m. Thirty-Mile Woman (Patsy) Sixos lover; name derived from distance she had to travel to be
with Sixo
5.

Point of View: third person omniscient & third person limited omniscient
Morrison switches between the two points of view to present a fuller picture of the brutality that slavery
brings on humanity in general.

6.

Tone & Style:

Diction simple, informal
Imagery natural, rejuvenating
Detail please refer to section 3a
Language black vernacular language and Southern slang
Syntax simple, but ambiguous sentences
The style of the novel is non-linear. The events are not necessarily told in chronological order, instead
jumping from one point in time to another. This is confusing at first, but as the novel progresses, the pieces
start fitting together. What also adds to the confusion is the ambiguity of some of the sentences. Morrison
intended for this effect to give the reader some room for his or her own interpretation.
Throughout the entire novel, there are a few motifs, some of which including water, milk, and colors. Water
serves as a stark contrast to the bleakness of life. In a time where all kinds of atrocities are being
committed, the presence of water and the imagery that it provides symbolize strength. Secondly, milk is a
recurring motif in the beginning portion of the novel, representing the slaves deprivation of basic needs.
Sethe needed her milk for her children, but her mother burns the bottom of her breast. Lastly, colors
represented the last moments of hope that Baby Suggss held in the days leading up to her death. She had
cravings for color because she wanted to be reminded of the beauties of life, not only the brutalities that she
had faced.

7.

Theme(s) & Authors Purpose:

Themes in Beloved
History can never be truly forgotten.
o Every character in the novel fights to forget their pasts, but no matter how hard they try,
it will always be a part of them.
Focusing on the past can be destructive.
o One big example of this is Sethe and Paul D. They both struggle to put their past behind
them, choosing to continue living in the horrors that they have left behind in Sweet
Home. By doing so, Sethe lost the trust of her children and Baby Suggs; Paul D remains
haunted by everything that he had endured.
Slavery is just another means of dehumanizing people.
o It strips people of their own humanity. For example, there were several instances in the
novel where Morrison wrote that women were basically forced to not show any kind of
emotional attachments to anything or anyone because it could be easily taken away from
them.
The authors purpose for writing Beloved is to provide another way a much more personal way - for her
readers to perceive the horrors of the slave trade and the extreme racism of this time period.

8.

Major short, significant quotations:

a. 124 was spiteful. Full of a babys venom (3).
b.

If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to
tie them up (10).

c.

Nobody stopped playing checkers just because the pieces included her children (23).

d.

To Sethe, the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay. The better life she believed she and
Denver were living was simply not that other one (42).

e.

Those white things have taken all I had or dreamed, she said, and broke my heartstrings too.
There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks (89).

f.

Schoolteacher beat [Sixo] anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers not the
defined (190).
The future was sunset; the past something to leave behind. And if it didnt stay behind, well, you
might have to stomp it out. Slave life; freed life every day was a test and a trial. Nothing could
be counted on in a world where even you were a solution you were a problem (256).

g.

h.

9.

Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. Disremembered and
unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how
can they call her if they dont know her name? Although she has claim, she is not claimed (274).

Vocabulary:
a. Undulate: move in a wavy pattern or with a rising and falling motion
b. Roil: be agitated
c. Bereaved: sorrowful through loss or deprivation
d. Exhume: dig up for burial or for medical investigation
e. Spry: moving quickly and lightly
f. Soughing: to make a soft murmuring or rustling sound
g. Waspish: easily irritated or annoyed
h. Paterollers: white men hired to patrol areas around slaveholdings in the pre-Civil War South
i. Riven: to drive apart
j. Upbraid: to reprove sharply; reproach