Beloved

Describe the relationship among Sethe, Denver, and Beloved. How does this relationship develop starting with Beloved’s arrival and ending with her disappearance at the end of the novel?

Discuss Beloved. What has incited her arrival? What does she represent in the larger scope of Sethe, Denver, and Paul D’s lives?

What is significant about Denver’s capacity to survive her own birth and the later turmoil at 124? How have the terms of her survival changed over time?

Paul D’s masculine identity has been challenged by his time as an enslaved person at Sweet Home and by his subsequent imprisonment in Alfred, Georgia. How would you characterize his masculinity when he arrives at 124? How does Beloved’s presence complicate it?

Paul D and Sethe’s respective traumas arise from different violent circumstances. They recover from this violence in their own ways. How do they each cope with their traumas? To what extent are their coping mechanisms working against them?

What role does memory or remembering play for characters like Sethe and Paul D? How does it affect the way they contend with their pasts and imagine their futures?

It is said that the Garners practice a “special kind of slavery” (165) that differs from the explicit violence the schoolteacher and his nephews exercise. How else would you characterize the various master-slave relationship models in the novel? Is there a fine line between benevolent forms of enslavement and its more coercive violence?

Discuss the relationship between the women of 124 and the surrounding Black community. What has contributed to the tension between these two parties? Has this tension been resolved in the end?