Other essays and articles in the Literature Archives related to this topic include :Character Analysis of Beloved in the Novel by Toni Morrison  • Jazz by Toni Morrison : The Symbolic Significance of the Title  •  Slavery in America’s South : Implications and Effects

There are large differences, both in terms of the products of a character analysis of Denver and Beloved in the novel by Toni Morrison as well as in terms of the plots of the sisters. Unlike with Denver who did not make her mother discuss her memories since she “hated the stories her mother told that did not concern herself, which is why Amy is all she ever asked about. The rest was a gleaming, powerful world made more so by Denver’s absence from it” (74) Beloved seems hell-bent on bringing forth her mother’s most intense and often excruciating reminiscences, often by implicating symbols from her past life such as the “diamond” earrings, which Sethe later wonders how she knew anything about, even though at such a point in the novel, it is clear she is not yet willing enough to allow herself to remember and connect her past to her present. To draw forth her mother’s pain, Beloved incites her to tell stories, which Sethe oddly is more than happy to do. Storytelling itself is a symbol as well as a motif in “Beloved” by Toni Morrison as the act of storytelling in the novel, as the narrator of Beloved states, “became a way to feed her” (69) which surprised Sethe because “every mention of her past life hurt. Everything in it was painful or lost.

Interestingly, as expressed in this important passage in “Beloved” by Toni Morrison, she and Baby Suggs had agreed without saying so that it would be unspeakable; to Denver’s inquiries Sethe gave short replies” (69) and with Paul D. it was the same as with Baby Suggs. The past was simply too toxic to remember but without it, the connections for the reader between the interconnected and all-consuming damages of slavery and the dreadful impact of slavery it has on multiple generations would not be so glaring. By the end of this novel and strange resolution in terms of the expunging of years and even generations of guilt and horror, the power of verbally exorcising these atrocities on both a personal and historical level becomes clear.

In terms of this purging of pain through storytelling, there are a number of instances where the past is directly confronted through words and the process of healing begins. Also of importance, through this process of storytelling the reader becomes aware of how history repeats itself and how the wounds of slavery go back and continue to repeat again and again. In one instance that offers one of the most potent examples of this, through the gentle interrogation by the character of Beloved, Sethe recalls her mother. More specifically, what she remembers about her mother and the other women who nursed her and took care of her since her mother was either always working or sleeping. What she does remember is so jarring that she gets very uncomfortable and has to do something to keep her hands occupied because she as remembering something she had forgotten she knew.

 Something privately shameful that had seeped into a slit in her mind right behind the slap on her face and the circled cross” (73). It is one of the only interchanges Sethe communicates about her own family and involves her mother telling her of a cross mark on her skin and saying in one of the important quotes from “Beloved” by Toni Morrison, “I am the only one who got this mark now. The rest dead. If something happens to me and you can’t tell me by my face, you can know me by this mark” (72). In an attempt to offer a profound reply, Sethe says she wants a mark as well and her mother slaps her. This exchange holds a great deal of symbolic importance to the novel itself and stands as a perfect example of the perpetuating course of generations of slavery. By not completely understanding the horrible significance of the mark and even more importantly, by asking for one of her own, the young and ignorant Sethe was, in effect, asking her mother for a repetition of the same history—asking to have a cruelly-won identifying mark in the event that she might someday be so mangled by abuse that she could not be recognized otherwise.