novel beloved summary

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77 pages • 2 hours read

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapters 13-16

Chapters 17-19

Chapters 20-24

Chapters 25-28

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Summary and Study Guide

Toni Morrison’s Beloved was published in 1987. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Inspired by the real-life story of a runaway African American enslaved woman named Margaret Garner, who killed her own daughter to prevent her capture and enslavement, Beloved tells the story of Sethe , a runaway enslaved woman who takes her daughter’s life in the same manner. This study guide, which addresses physical and mental trauma within the text, quotes and obscures the author’s use of the n-word.

Plot Summary

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The novel begins in 1873, eight years after slavery was abolished. Sethe resides at 124 Bluestone Road near Cincinnati, Ohio with her daughter, Denver , and the ghost of her other daughter, whom Sethe murdered when she was a baby so the daughter would not be returned to slavery. Sethe had planned to kill all her children and then herself but was interrupting after only killing her eldest daughter. After the murder, Sethe, unable to pay for an engraving on her daughter’s gravestone, traded sex with the engraver who left the inscription, “Beloved.” Sethe’s mother-in-law, Grandma Baby Suggs, has passed away, and her two sons, Howard and Buglar, left home to escape the ghost, their mother, and their family history more broadly. When Paul D , who was enslaved with Sethe at Sweet Home, meets Sethe again after years apart, the two act on their attraction to each other and pursue a relationship. Paul D scares away the ghost—sometimes referred to as a “haint”—that haunts the house, much to Denver’s grief, as she relied on the spirit of her dead sister for company in her isolated home. One day, Paul D, Sethe, and Denver encounter a finely dressed young Black woman named Beloved waiting for them at 124. They feed her and give her a place to rest until she becomes a permanent resident in the house. They do not realize at first that Beloved is the spirit of Sethe’s dead daughter taking corporeal form.

As the mysterious Beloved extends her stay at 124, Sethe and Paul D are plagued anew by traumatic memories of their enslavement. Paul D is forced to recall the torture he suffered at Sweet Home and at a prison camp in Alfred, Georgia, where he was imprisoned after trying to kill his last master, Brandywine. Sethe confronts her rape and stolen breastmilk at the hands of the nephews of Sweet Home’s brutal new master, the schoolteacher. They determine through their shared stories that Sethe’s husband, Halle, became delirious after witnessing Sethe’s rape and disappeared. Eventually, Paul D suspects that Beloved’s presence may have something to do with the growing unease at 124. As Paul D grows more restless and agitated, Beloved seduces him, and they have sex. Feeling guilty, Paul D tries to tell Sethe about his indiscretion but, out of panic, suggests that they have a baby together instead. The two have a moment of romantic glee despite both doubting that pregnancy is the right path for their relationship.

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One day, Stamp Paid, the man who helped Sethe cross the Ohio River into the free North, shows Paul D a news clipping describing Sethe’s arrest for killing one of her daughters. Years ago, when Sethe first arrived at 124 with her newborn baby Denver, she was finally able to reunite with her two sons and daughter who had escaped before her and were safe in Grandma Baby Suggs’ care. Whether out of carelessness or spite, the townspeople neglected to warn them about the arrival of the slave catchers. Without any time to make an escape, Sethe took her children with her to the shed and tried to kill them all with a handsaw. She succeeded in killing only her oldest daughter before the schoolteacher and the slave catchers found her. Reasoning that she was not sound enough to return to Sweet Home, the schoolteacher and slave catchers left. Sethe was arrested for murder and later released, thanks to the intervention of the Quaker abolitionist Edward Bodwin. The news of Sethe’s actions horrifies Paul D. When Paul D confronts Sethe about it, she defends her actions, which leads to Paul D’s departure from the house.

With Paul D gone, 124 falls into decline. When Beloved reveals herself to be Sethe’s murdered daughter, Sethe is overcome with guilt and neglects her job, giving into Beloved’s every demand. Denver realizes quickly that Sethe’s health is declining due to Beloved’s presence. She reaches out to the townspeople for help, leaving her house on her own for the first time. When news of Beloved’s haunting makes its way across town, the townspeople gather in front of 124 to exorcize it. At the same time, Bodwin, who is also now Denver’s employer, arrives at 124 to pick her up for her night work. When Sethe and Beloved come out of the house to see about the commotion, Sethe mistakes Bodwin for the schoolteacher. She attacks him with an ice pick, only to be wrestled down by Denver and several of the other townspeople. Beloved disappears forever.

Paul D learns of what happened through Stamp Paid and checks on Sethe. When Paul D enters 124, he finds Sethe in Grandma Baby Suggs’s bed, grieving Beloved’s departure. He promises to take care of her along with Denver. While they are both haunted by their pasts, he reminds her that they need to learn to heal to survive.

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by Toni Morrison

• Beloved Summary

In 1873, Sethe and her daughter Denver live in 124, a house in a rural area close to Cincinatti. They are ostracized from the community for Sethe's past and her pride. Eighteen years have passed since she escaped from slavery at a farm called Sweet Home. Sweet Home was run by a cruel man known as schoolteacher, who allowed his nephews to brutalize Sethe while he took notes for his scientific studies of blacks. Sethe fled, although she was pregnant, delivering the child along the way with help from a white woman named Amy. Sethe's husband, who was supposed to accompany her, disappeared. After her escape to Cincinatti with her four children, Sethe enjoyed only twenty-eight days of freedom before she was tracked down by her old master. Rather than allow her children to be returned to slavery, she attempted to kill all of them, succeeding only in killing the baby girl. Rejected then by her master, who saw she was no longer fit to serve, Sethe was also saved from hanging and was released to raise her remaining three children at 124. The ghost of the dead baby began to haunt the house. The two sons, Howard and Buglar , left after having particularly frightening encounters with the ghost. The grandmother, Baby Suggs , died a broken woman. Baby Suggs had been a great positive force in Cincinatti's black community, regarded by many as an inspiring holy woman. After what happened to Sethe, she gave up her preaching and retired to bed, asking only for scraps of color. Years after her death, Denver and Sethe continue to live in the house alone. Sethe works as a cook, and Denver spends her days alone. Denver is terribly lonely but is also afraid to leave the yard‹even though she is eighteen years old.

In 1873, two visitors come to 124. The first is Paul D , a man who was a slave with Sethe back at Sweet Home. Paul D, like Sethe, is haunted by the pain of the past. He witnessed and suffered unspeakable atrocities before the end of the Civil War brought him his freedom, and he has survived by not allowing himself to have strong feelings for anything or anyone. He has particularly dark memories of time spent in a prison for blacks, where he worked in a chain gang by day and was kept in a box in the ground at night.

The second visitor is a girl named Beloved . It gradually becomes clear that she is the ghost of the dead baby come back to life, at the age that the baby would have been had it lived. Awkward, unable to speak like an adult, and dressed in strange clothes, Beloved seems vulnerable at first but proves to be powerful and malicious. Her purposes initially seem benign and are never fully understood, but by the end of the novel her presence is deeply destructive for the living people of 124.

Paul D becomes Sethe's lover, staying for a time despite friction between him and the two young girls. Beloved despises him, and she tries to divide Sethe from Paul D. Paul D eventually leaves when he learns that Sethe murdered her own child. Sethe, on discovering Beloved's identity, believes she has been given a second chance. She tries to make amends for the past, but the girl's needs are devouring. The ghost does not forgive Sethe for her actions. Beloved settles into the house like a parasite, growing ever stronger as Sethe grows weaker. Sethe's sanity begins to unravel, and Beloved only grows more demanding. Denver is forced to go to the community for help.

A group of women, led by Ella , a former agent of the Underground Railroad, go to 124 to exorcise Beloved's ghost. The ghost is forced to leave, but Sethe's spirit has been nearly broken. Paul D returns to her, vowing to help Sethe heal herself. Denver, Paul D, and Sethe will build a new life, one in which they learn to deal with their painful past while focusing on the future.

Beloved is a haunting and dark novel, full of gothic elements and acts of terrible violence. The ghost represents the power of the legacy of slavery, which continues to trouble Sethe eighteen years after she won her freedom. Beloved is the spirit of the dead baby returned but she is also an embodiment of all suffering under slavery; her memory extends back to the slave ships that first carried blacks to the Americas. The question of the rightness of Sethe's terrible act is a difficult one‹moreover, it is a question that the novel does not attempt to answer in a definitive way. Morrison is more concerned that we understand why Sethe did what she did, as well as the ways that her decision has haunted her ever since. The novel effectively conveys the brutality and dehumanization that occurred under slavery, putting Sethe's act in context without necessarily condemning it or excusing it.

The structure is fragmentary, closely tied to the consciousness of each character and weaving suddenly between past and future. More time is spent describing past events than the action of the current moment, reinforcing the idea of the past lingering and shaping life in the present. The novel is often repetitive, telling the same stories of the past again and again, giving more information with each repetition. All of the characters of the novel, former slaves and the children of former slaves, suffer a troubled relationship to their own past. Their relationships to their past often make it impossible for them to live for the present or plan for the future, and slavery has often damaged the ways that they experience love and think about their own worth as human beings.

Beloved Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Beloved is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

In Beloved, why did Paul D get sent to prison?

After Paul D attempted to escape from Sweet Home, he was sold to a man he soon attempted to kill. As a result, Paul D was sent to a prison in Georgia.

Why is Denver so jealous of Sethe?

Denver is jealous because she considers Beloved her possession. She is jealous because Beloved gives more attention to Sethe than she does to her (Denver).

Why is Sethe angry about her memories of Sweet Home?

Sethe's memories of Sweet Home include all of the men she has loved, but more importantly, her years as a slave.

Study Guide for Beloved

Beloved study guide contains a biography of Toni Morrison, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Beloved
• Character List

Essays for Beloved

Beloved literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Beloved.

• Sethe, a Slave to Her Past
• Inscribing Beloved: The Importance of Writing in Morrison's Novel
• The Objects Connoting Beloved's Initial Appearance
• Beloved the Enigma
• Interpretive Possibilities in Beloved

Lesson Plan for Beloved

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Beloved
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Beloved Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Beloved

• Introduction
• Plot summary
• Major themes
• Major characters

Introduction

Chloe Anthony Wofford, aka Toni Morrison (1931-2019), was an African American writer and a Nobel laureate. Her first novel was The Bluest Eye, which was published in 1970. She worked as a teacher as well as a fiction editor at a famous publishing house. Before writing this novel, she left her job there and sensed a feeling of freedom, which she wanted to express in her novel, and thus it came in the form of Beloved .

If American history is studied, the secret behind its prosperity is innocent people’s blood, whether it is that of native Americans or black slaves. And still, it continues, though tools and forms of exploitation have changed.

Beloved Summary

She comes to wash her feet at a pump in a chamomile field. This evokes in her mind memories of her days in slavery and fellow slaves. Paul D, a fellow slave at ‘Sweet Home,’ a plantation, arrives there and meets her after 18 years. She tells Paul of the cruelties of their supervisor then, and he embraces her at the retelling of the horrible past.

Sethe wants to make a decision about Beloved, Paul D, and Denver. She misses her mother-in-law, who was so helpful in such situations and gave valuable advice. She takes Beloved and Denver with her and goes to the rock near the river where Baby Suggs used to sit. She remembers her soothing hands and how she welcomed everybody to her home. She remembers her own arrival there. She decides to keep Beloved there and spend her life there, but she feels that somebody is strangling her. Denver tells her that it can’t be Baby Suggs’ because her hands were soothing.

Denver feels dissatisfied with the attention she receives from Beloved. When she pays attention to her, she feels it as a lovely experience. Sethe asks Beloved questions regarding her past, which she is unable to answer. She assumes that she was a white man’s slave who exploited her, and now she has erased her bad memories. Denver believes that she is the ghost of her sister, who died long ago.

He then asks her to have his child; she responds that the two girls at home are enough. She thinks that she has got her dead daughter back in the form of a beloved.

She was a slave and freed after paying when she broke her leg. Her slave name was Jenny Whitlow, she changed it after her husband’s name, which was Suggs, and he used to call her baby, so she chose the name ‘Baby Suggs.’ Her son Halle made efforts to free her and to pay for this, he worked hard and ultimately was able to do so. She, after her liberty, tried to find her children but lost this cause.

Now, when she has started believing that Beloved has come back to her. She thinks about how to tell her about the reason behind her killing. She thinks of life at Sweet Home, where she was abused, and she told Mrs. Garner. This led to the schoolteacher’s outrage, and she fled with her children. She looked for Halle, but he was nowhere, and she couldn’t see him ever after that.

XVI, XVII, XVIII

Beloved by toni morrison characters analysis.

She has been told that her mother has killed her elder child and spends life in fear that she may be killed too. She wants her father back in her life and doesn’t like Paul D’s coming into their life. She is a teenager who is in search of her identity. She craves attention because,  in contrast to normal children, there is a lot that is missing in her life. She evolves throughout the novel and becomes independent. She is the one who comes out of home and asks the community for help to drive out Beloved.

He tried to escape from his master like Sethe and others but failed and was captured. He was sold to a new owner, and he tried to kill the master. He was kept in chains, but he tried to escape and was fortunate in this attempt. He then wandered at different places and didn’t try to settle at any place. He was in love and wanted to marry her and ended up in 124. He came to her house, and they came to a relationship, but he was disliked by Beloved and Denver. He left Sethe’s house.

He came to know how Sethe had killed her daughter and started to hate her for it. He then reconciled himself with this incident and came back to her intending to spend life with her.

Baby Suggs was Halle’s mother and a former slave. She has died before the start of the novel. She spent her life with different husbands, and each child had a different father. Her last child was Halle, and he was the only child she was able to raise. She had become crippled when he was growing up. He bought her freedom, and she set up a matriarchy.  She was a generous person.  She had a prominent role in her society and helped those in need. She was the one who gave Sethe and Denver shelter and tried to be their support.

Schoolteacher

He takes charge of the plantation after the death of Mr. Garner and is a cruel man. Like the rest of slave owners, he doesn’t consider slaves as human beings. He brings rigid rules and punishments at the plantation for the slaves. Shortly, he is an evil incarnate.

Halle is Baby Suggs’ son and Sethe’s husband. He is a kind, sincere, and generous person. He understands the reality of slave owners and isn’t in any misconception regarding it. He goes mad at Sethe’s abuse by the schoolteacher’s nephews.

Mr. and Mrs. Garner

They were the owners of Sweet House and the plantations where Sethe and her fellows worked. They are apparently benevolent to their slaves but are after all slave owners. They strategically manipulate the slaves and use them for their purpose, thus keeping them away from thinking about rebellion.

Mr. and Mrs. Bodwin

Paul a, paul f, sixo, beloved by toni morrison themes, loss of identity in slavery.

Slavery brings physical, emotional, and spiritual destruction. The memories of slavery and the miserable days are not forgettable even after their freedom. Slaves lose identity as human beings, and the only thing they know about themselves is being a slave. There are multiple examples in this novel which show the self-alienation of different characters. Paul D hears screams and is not sure whether these exist in real. Slaves were considered animals by their owners and traded as a commodity.

Past Vs. Present

Supernatural, importance of community solidarity.

The importance of the individual in his survival is of prime importance, but society’s role can’t be neglected. Individuals need support from society before taking any step. This is shown in Beloved when Sethe comes to Cincinnati. The fugitive and freed slaves are supported and provided by the community at Cincinnati, and an example of it is the residence provided to Sethe at 124. Another instance of it is Beloved’s arrival at 124; she occupies the house. The residents are not able to live their life normally, and then again, society comes to help Sethe and her daughter to get rid of Beloved.

The Powers and Limits of Language

Beloved by toni morrison literary analysis.

Beloved is a masterpiece of African-American literature, and it encapsulates the experiences of slaves in a relatively short time and space. It expertly tells of what miseries the slaves had to face, and this is shown through artistic use of the imagery. Figurative language is employed successfully to let the reader imagine and place him/herself in place of a slave. 

The tone of the novel is elegiac, mourning the miseries in the lives of African Americans. It can be inferred from Sethe’s talks and thinking as well from the dedication which dedicates it to sixty million and more. It is an obvious reference to those who suffered.

There is also hope in the tone, telling of the good days, as Paul D thinks that he will have happy days with Sethe. There is a lot of love and an indication not to look back, and that makes it optimistic, asking the reader to make life beautiful.

Setting of the Novel

Point of view, significance of the title.

The title plays an important role in creating drama in this novel. The reader is confused about who is beloved and of whom. There are numerous people who can be called beloved in this novel, and it can be inferred that humanity is beloved. This is evident from the dedication which doesn’t dedicate it to specific people. It’s for all, though it figuratively refers to African Americans.

Significance of the Ending

Epigraph and dedication, writing style.

Toni Morrison, like the rest of modernist novelists, writes in a complicated way. She writes with all her senses, and that ofttimes makes the novel hard to understand. Her metaphors are laden with meanings, and an example of it is ‘rusted tin box of tobacco’ for the heart, which conveys the compact message. She is an impressionist writer and employs the same tool here in this novel.

More From Toni Morrison

Short stories.

Toni Morrison

Ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Toni Morrison's Beloved . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Beloved: Introduction

Beloved: plot summary, beloved: detailed summary & analysis, beloved: themes, beloved: quotes, beloved: characters, beloved: symbols, beloved: theme wheel, brief biography of toni morrison.

Historical Context of Beloved

Other books related to beloved.

• Full Title: Beloved
• When Written: Early 1980s
• Where Written: Albany, NY
• When Published: 1987
• Literary Period: Postmodernism
• Genre: Historical novel
• Setting: The outskirts of Cincinnati, Ohio in the years just before (1855) and directly following (1873) the Civil War; flashbacks to the Sweet Home plantation in Kentucky
• Climax: The revelation of Sethe’s attempt to kill her children (and successful murder of her baby) to keep them out of slavery; the women of the neighborhood surrounding 124 and sing outside the house, driving Beloved away.
• Antagonist: There is no clear antagonist, but at various moments the novel’s characters struggle against slavery and racism, Schoolteacher, Beloved, and the past.
• Point of View: Third person omniscient, with first-person passages from various points of view

Extra Credit for Beloved

The Good Book. Beloved is full of allusions to the Bible. From the four horsemen who come to take Sethe back to slavery (reminiscent of the four horsemen of the apocalypse), to Baby Suggs’ miraculous feast (which recalls Jesus’ miracle of feeding thousands with five loaves of bread and two fish), many episodes in the novel gain significance and seriousness through allusions to Biblical stories.

Memorial. Toni Morrison once remarked that there was no memorial, such as simply a bench by a road, to honor the memory of all of those brought to the United States as slaves. For her, Beloved functioned as this kind of commemoration. In response, the Toni Morrison Society has installed benches in sites around the U.S. (and the world) as just such memorials.