The True Identity Of Beloved

The true identity of Beloved throughout the novel is a puzzle that is never solved. However, the choices are simplified to either a separate young woman who suffered during slavery, the ghost of Sethe’s baby that she killed, or a collective ancestral memory that is poised to represent the 60 million and more. Beloved becomes Morrison’s ability to represent a wide array of diverse of possible interpretations never giving light to a specific one.

Beloved is a novel that explores the physical, emotional, and mental devastation, caused by slavery and shows the long-lasting destruction of this institution. Sethe is the protagonist of Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved who struggles to address her past which then manifests as a ghost and begins to haunt her and her family.

Sethe spends her life haunted by the brutality and destruction she faced as a slave, and her memories are constantly interfering with her view of the present. Beloved the character is most definitely a driving force, as through her existence she inspires Sethe and the community to re-connect with the memories that they have suppressed. In this way, the novel argues that ignorance should not persist but rather one should instead deal with the troubles of their past order for them to be living part of their present. Beloved is a ghost story, that also simultaneously exists as a novel about reconnecting with our own fragmented past, which teaches readers about what it means to be human, and what we can do to be free in this life.

Beloved’s existence is created because of Sethe’s rememory, she exists as a constant reminder of the past. Beloved’s identity as a character is arguable the most complex and elusive for readers to decipher. However, this identity is crucial to our understanding of the novel. It is unsaid as to who exactly Beloved is supposed to be a manifestation of whether it’s a strange adult woman who has ghost like qualities, Sethe’s child who she murdered, or Sethe’s mother. Beloved’s elusive, complex identity is central to our understanding of the novel. But it is undeniable that on some level she embodies the collective unconscious and experiences of the 60 million and more of those who were oppressed and effected by the institution of slavery. Beloved represents the suppressed voice of the past that has been forgotten, but has reappeared to help provide healing for those haunted or stuck in the past.