final Beloved entries

18. "124 was loud." (pg. 199) Each part begins with an observation about 124. This backs up the three part structure, and each observation gives us an idea about the mood of the part.

19. "Nobody saw them falling." (pg. 205) This enforces the idea that the three of them are alone in the community. They are a family, but they're isolated from everyone else.

20. "...ascended the lily-white stairs like a bride." (pg. 208) This suggests that Sethe is making a new beginning. The color white represents freshness, and comparing her to a bride shows that she is experiencing a new start. This occurs around the time Sethe accepts that Beloved is her daughter and decides to tell her all about Sweet Home, the escape, and the murder. This imagery represents the change in her state of mind.

21. "The world is in this room. This here's all there is and all there needs to be." (pg. 215) This suggests that Sethe is content to be isolated from the community and stuck where she is in the world. She can't handle her new freedom. To be truly free, you have to be able to form ties to a place and the people that live there. Since Sethe doesn't want to, and probably can't anyway, this shows that she struggles with the idea of freedom and has not made her full transformation from Slave to Free Person.

22. "We pulled weeds and hoed a little to give everything a good start." (pg. 226) This shows how Sethe feels about the past, that people need to get rid of the bad memories of the past (weeds) before they can grow and flourish like flowers as free people. She understands this, but she still can't do it herself at this point. She is in the middle of her transition at this point, and is in the stage of a Freed Slave.

23. "She opened the door, walked in and locked it behind her." (pg. 234) Sethe feels that if she shuts out the community and is content to be with just Beloved and Denver, she can shut out the memories of the past. She understands that she needs to get over them to move on, she just can't understand how to do it yet. Rather than confronting her demons, she tries to push them away and lock them out. The door is of her house being locked against outsiders is a physical representation of how she feels.

24. "She never had time to see, let alone enjoy it before." (pg. 237) Baby Suggs didn't have the time or the freedom to enjoy colors when she was a slave. This enforces the idea that, as a slave, nothing is your own. The reason Baby Suggs got so obsessed with colors in the last years of her life is she couldn't see them before. Everything she saw was so tainted by her experience as a slave that she couldn't see the beauty all around her.

25. "Who in the world is he willing to die for?" (pg. 239) This shows that Paul D. has never really been a whole person. Even when he was at Sweet Home he didn't form attachments so strong that he would die for anyone. His justification for this is that if you love somebody too much it will hurt even more when they get taken away. This is the mentality of a slave, so it shows that Paul D. is not now, and probably won't ever be, a free person.

26. "...nobody's ma'am would run off and leave her daughter, would she?" (pg. 240) This is ironic, because Sethe is speaking about how mothers love their children so much that it would be impossible to run away and leave your child, yet she killed Beloved. If slave mothers leave their children, it was probably an act of protection, just like Sethe was protecting Beloved the only way she knew how.

27. "She's mine, Beloved. She's mine." (pg. 247) Denver is talking about how much she loves Beloved, how she's been her only companion through years of loneliness, and how she can never let her go. The way that Sethe and Denver are so possessive of Beloved suggests that there may be an argument in the future over her.

28. "First his shotgun, then his thoughts..." (pg. 259) It would have been enough to take the shotgun away, as it is a symbol of manhood. When Mr. Garner was alive, he always said that on Sweet Home all the slaves were men, and as such he allowed them to have guns which was very rare in those times. When the school teacher takes away the slaves' guns it's like taking away their manhood, saying that he doesn't trust them any more than he would trust a child. Not only that, but he takes away their thoughts as well, removing anything that would make them individuals, anything that would make them human.

29. "...and his look of deeply felt hurt was enough to make Paul D. blink." (pg. 259) This shows the desensitization people face when they go into slavery. The only reaction Paul D. has to seeing such hurt is to blink, whereas most people would feel some sort of pain themselves. Slavery teaches you to turn off your emotions, because in that situation feelings can come across as weakness.

30. "His little love was a tree..." (pg. 260) Trees symbolize life and rebirth in this story. Paul D. comparing his 'little love' to a small tree is showing that he is just now learning to love again. As a slave, his ability to love was impaired, if not lost entirely. Now that he is at least a freed slave, he can begin to learn how to love people and let himself be loved by them, thereby making himself a free person.

31. "Smoky, stubborn fire. They shoot him to shut him up. Have to." (pg. 267) The fact that they 'have to' shoot Sixo implies that they didn't want to because they wanted to watch him burn, that they were instead forced to shoot him. This suggests that Sixo knew what he was doing by acting crazy. It was his final act of defiance, his final act of Independence. Sixo may be the one Sweet Home slave who never entirely lost his identity at any point.

32. "Shackled, walking through the perfumed thigns honeybees love..." (pg. 267) The reluctance to say the word 'flowers' which generally represent beauty, shows how Paul D. feels about the situation he is in. Either that the circumstances are too ugly, or he himself is too ugly, to be worthy of the beauty of flowers. He feels this way so much that he can't even bring himself to say the word.

33. "124 was quiet." (pg. 281) Each part begins with an observation about the mood at 124, hinting at what tone this part of the story will bring us. This suggests that we are about to hit some major action, like the calm before the storm.

34. "...Beloved, who never got enough of anything...she got both." (pg. 282) This further enforces the fact that Beloved is a child, because children can't get enough of new experiences. This is also the beginning of when Beloved starts to become the overtly dominant person in the house, because she's taking more than her share of everything.

35. "Denver began to drift from the play, but she watched it, alert for any sign that Beloved was in danger." (pg. 283) This is ironic because Denver was the one who first thought that Beloved was strangling Sethe in the clearing. This shows Denver's confusion and struggle over who to be more loyal to: her mother or Beloved.

36. "Sethe never came to her, never said a word to her, never smiled and worst of all never waved goodbye or even looked her way before running away from her." (pg. 284) This is the pivotal moment in the power dynamic of the relationship. Sethe has always felt guilty about what she did to Beloved, and because of that she'd do anything to keep the child happy. Beloved is using that guilt to exert her power over Sethe and she's becoming the dominant one.

37. "Ax the trunk, the limb will die." (pg. 285) This is a metaphor for the falling apart of the family. Sethe is the trunk of the tree, and since she is wasting away, the whole family is dying out. Beloved doesn't realize that hurting Sethe this badly will really be her own downfall.

38. "Out there where there were places in which things so bad had happened that when you went near them it would happen again." (pg. 287) Denver is terrified of the world outside 124. Though she's never been a slave, she is not free either, trapped by her mother's warnings about people. This fear paralyzes her and prevents her for years from doing anything about her situation. Sethe has done the same thing to Denver that she did to Beloved: by trying to protect her, she's actually hurt her.

39. "Denver stood on the porch in the sun and couldn't leave it." (pg. 287) This really emphasizes the idea that 124 is a different world. Denver can't bear to leave it, Stamp Paid can't come in, and it's forcing everybody to face their demons.

40. "Denver looked up at her. She did not know it then, but it was the word 'baby', said softly and with such kindness, that inaugurated her life in the world as a woman." (pg. 292) This is the turning point in Denver's life, the moment when she finally becomes free. Also, the fact that it was the word 'baby' that did it suggests that all she needed was a real mother figure to become a real woman.

41. "She sat in the chair...and the older woman yielded it up without a murmur." (pg. 295) This shows exactly how far a mother will go for her child, dying so that the baby can live. It also shows a bit of Sethe's feelings about her relationship with Beloved. She is so overcome with guilt by what she's done that this previously strong female character is willing to give up her own life in the place of her child's, which may be just a different kind of strength.

42. "What's fair ain't necessarily right." (pg. 301) This shows a sense of forgiveness. It suggests that the author understands that though whitepeople did all these horrible things to slaves, revenge wouldn't be the right way to go. It shows that even though slaves probably have the right to get back at the whitepeople, they shouldn't and they should forgive them instead.

43. "Slave life; freed life-every day was a test and a trial." (pg. 302) This draws on the similarities between being a slave and being a freed slave, and shows that you only really start being okay with your life when you become an entirely free person. It suggests that slavery can teach you to look on the even the positive things with a negative attitude, because surely something bad is coming up.

44. "He is looking at her." (309) For Sethe, having a white man look at her when she is this out of her mind is just as much a violation as having one touch her. The final sentences of this chapter, centering around the white man approaching and showing Sethe's agitation at this are a foreshadow that some confrontation is about to happen between them.

45. "Like a child's house; the house of a very tall child." (pg. 318) This shows that even after Beloved is gone, Sethe still remains childlike. Judging from her state now, Sethe will never become a fully free person.

46. "That's where she is-and she is. Lying under a quilt of merry colors." (pg. 319) This prepares the reader for what they are about to encounter-a whole different Sethe from the strong woman we are used to. The fact that she is lying under a colorful quilt shows that she has deteriorated to the condition that Baby Suggs was in right before she died. This suggests that Sethe has given up on life, she feels she has nothing left to live for.

47. "'You are your best thing, Sethe. You are.'" (pg. 322) This shows that Paul D. has reached the point where he is content with his life. He realizes his self worth and the worth of other people. This is a suggestion that Paul D. is now a free person. The fact that he is telling this to Sethe also leads us to believe that she might recover a bit from the condition she is in now.