71 pages • 2-hour read
Beloved
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Symbols & Motifs
The Ghost
The ghost, sometimes referred to as the haint, is the spirit of Sethe’s baby daughter who haunts house 124. A temperamental spirit whose behavior vacillates between calm and turbulent, the ghost reflects the violent conditions under which Sethe’s baby daughter died. In its invisible form, the ghost is also a representation of Sethe’s residual anger and pain over the hardships she experienced during her enslavement. Despite the unstable nature of her pain, Sethe’s repression causes her to ignore the magnitude of her suffering as well as the extent of the ghost’s destruction in the house. Paul D suggests to Sethe that the ghost’s temper may have something to do with an unfulfilled desire: “Must be something you got it wants” (16). As Paul D notices, the ghost is attached to Sethe’s traumas and reacts to the intensity of her internal struggle.
The ghost eventually takes on corporeal form as Beloved when Paul D chases the spirit out of the house. In her the form of a beautiful young woman, the ghost becomes even more frightening and dangerous, as she cannot be physically ignored in the way the spirit, who came and went, could. Beloved quickly becomes a permanent resident of 124, growing in strength when the three women live alone together in the house. When Sethe’s focus is no longer divided between her daughters and Paul D, Beloved’s demands for motherly affection grow in intensity. Sethe indulges Beloved’s demands as though “[she] [doesn’t] really want forgiveness given; she want[s] it refused” (297). At this point, Beloved has become the manifestation of Sethe’s guilt and inability to overcome her traumatic past. Sethe permits Beloved’s needs to overtake her, driving herself toward death until Denver’s intervention.
The Home
The house numbered 124 is a crucial setting for the haunted circumstances of the novel and represents the various means by which its residents try to overcome their traumatic pasts. Owned by the Bodwins and given to Grandma Baby Suggs’ care when they are no longer able to tend to it on their own, the house is an initial step toward freedom from slavery. However, since the traumatic events in the shed, the house has been conflated with the ghost that haunts it. According to Denver, the house is “a person rather than a structure” (35). The first line of the book also attaches human characteristics to the domicile: “124 was spiteful” (3). Denver further personifies this house as a “child approaching a nervous, idle relative (someone dependent but proud)” (35). Through this portrayal, Denver foreshadows the eventual appearance of Beloved, Sethe’s baby daughter returned to the world of the living to haunt the house in corporeal form. Beloved draws her strength from the house and by keeping Sethe bound to it.
House 124 also consists of the shed in the backyard where Sethe goes to kill her children and herself to avoid being caught by slave catchers. The shed continues to be a place of darkness and indiscretion for the house’s residents. Beloved utilizes it to seduce Paul D and draw him away from Sethe. The shed is also where Beloved disappears during a mean-spirited game of hide-and-seek with Denver. During the game, Beloved gestures to the space between light and darkness in the shed and declares, “This is the place I am” (146). In this way, Beloved refers not only to her existence between worlds, between the living and the afterlife, but also to her intimate ties to 124.
Tellingly, House 124 does not have an affectionate nickname like many houses in classic literature do. Its name is bare and descriptive, exuding little warmth and thereby reflecting the character of its inhabitants.
Ribbons
Ribbons appear repeatedly throughout the novel as expressions of femininity and innocence threatened by the horrors of slavery. Stamp Paid tells Paul D about the black ribbon that his slave owner made his wife wear when he coerced her into a sexual relationship with him. As the accessory was more fanciful than the usual slave dress, the ribbon was a taunting gesture of white ownership. Its black color also lends a funereal quality to the sexual relationship, something not unfamiliar to other enslaved women like Sethe, who was raped by the schoolteacher’s kin.
In another instance, a red ribbon appears underneath Stamp Paid’s boat. The ribbon has a piece of a young girl’s scalp and hair attached to it. It is what remains of one of his last trips ferrying runaway slaves to safety before the abolition of slavery. The ribbon reminds him of his obligation to the Black community and his service to Black people. His discovery of the ribbon gives him courage to approach Sethe and help her after years of being complicit in her ostracization. For Stamp Paid, “the skin smell [on the ribbon] nag[s] him, and his weakened marrow [makes] him dwell on Baby Suggs’ wish to consider what in the world was harmless” (213). The ribbon reminds him of Grandma Baby Suggs’s hope for humanity and makes him consider recommitting his life to helping those most vulnerable.
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