Summary:Paul D. and Beloved stayed with Denver and Sethe at the house. Beloved would spend her days with Denver while Sethe was at work, playing games and being taken cared of by Denver. During dinner Beloved would ask questions about Sethe's past and about what happened to her family. One day when it was snowing out side and the river was just ice they decided to go skating on it each using on skate, or just sliding with their shoes. The entire time they could barely get anywhere without falling down, and when they tried to help each other up they would just fall down again and start bursting out laughing. They did this for a couple of hours until they decided to go back home and cover themselves with a blanket while drinking something hot, surrounding the fire. They sat on the kitchen floor just staring at the fire, quietly each deep in their own thoughts. Until Sethe noticed that there was someone that was humming. But what really caught her attention was that she was humming a song that she had made up, and only her and her children knew about the song. This is when Sethe eyes opened and noticed that the Beloved that was living at her house for weeks was not just a stranger that had the same name as her baby that she had killed long time about, but it was her baby that had came back to her in flesh as the age that she would be if she had never died. This changed the atmosphere in the house, Sethe became obsessed with Beloved, taking care of her feeding her treats and just loving her more than she could have. But all this love toward Beloved, meant that Denver was not being noticed that much anymore. Before all of this Denver was happy that her baby sister had came back to her however now she see that Beloved was not just loving her mother but slowly draining the life out of Sethe. Days passed and Sethe stopped going to work, and instead stayed home trying to please Beloved and keep her happy. While Beloved would just walk around the house and sleep anywhere she wanted to. Denver decides to get a job because they would starve to death if she did not. Other women from the community would also help by leaving a basket of eggs or food on the stump in front of the house. When the rest of the women in the community was informed by the ghost baby that was slowly killing Sethe they decided to try to get ride of her by going to the house with crosses and singing. When they did this Sethe and Beloved went outside and everyone say the naked beloved who had a stomach that was huge like she was pregnant. After Sethe fell into a hallucination and ran into the crowd of women with a ice pike in the air, with Denver running behind her trying to stop her mother from harming anyone. Beloved was left on the porch, and that was the first time she felt lonely and she started to scream to the point that she disappeared in thin air. After this happened Sethe could not leave her bed and Paul. D came back to visit her and told her that he still loved her. The novel ends with their life going back to how it use to be without Beloved and now with Denver having her own job and people communicating with their family again. However the incident with Beloved was never spoken of again as if it was just all just a bad dream.
Quote: "When the click came Sethe didn't know what it was. Afterward it was clear as daylight that the click came at the very beginning- a beat, almost, before it started; before she heard three notes; before the melody was even clear". (Morrison 202).
Reaction:
When i read this quote, i kind of yelled in my head thank you because i believed that it took Sethe a really long time to notice that Beloved was her dead baby that came back to life. And it was one of the things that really aggravated me during the story because how could you not noticed that she had the same name as her dead baby. I think that this was a great way that Toni Morrison made Sethe see the truth about who Beloved really was because when she started to talk about the clicking noise i thought about the click of a light switch. But after reading that passage over a couple more times, i thought the clicking noise could also resemble the crackling of the fire that they were sitting infront of. So the noise can be viewed more than one way. Even though i thought that it would have been better if Sethe seen who Beloved really was earlier in the story, it might have caused the book to be shorter and less interesting. Because by waiting till near the end for Sethe to find out about Beloved, it makes the reader want to read the book and find out what Sethe reaction is.
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