Beloved Key Quotes Ch. 1-7
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"Counting on the stillness of her own soul, she had forgotten the other one: the soul of her baby girl. Who would have thought that a little old baby could harbor so much rage? Rutting among the stones under the eyes of the engraver's son was not enough. Not only did she have to live out her years in a house palsied by the baby's fury at having its throat cut, but those ten minutes she spent pressed up against dawn-colored stone studded with star chips, her knees wide open as the grave, were longer than life, more alive, more pulsating than the baby blood that soaked her fingers like oil" (5-6).
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Context: Sethe talks about the spirit of her dead baby at the graveyard where she is buried. She pays for the words "Beloved" on the tombstone for ten minutes of sex. Significance:
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" 'That's all you let yourself remember,' Sethe had told her, but she was down to one herself--one alive, that is--the boys chased off by the dead one, and her memory of Buglar was fading fast. Howard at least had a head shape nobody could forget. As for the rest, she worked hard to remember as close to nothing as was safe" (6).
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Context: Sethe makes this remark to Baby Suggs about her poor memory. Significance:
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"124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom" (3).
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Context: Description of the house Significance:
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"Her past had been like her present--intolerable--and since she knew death was anything but forgetfulness, she used the little energy left her for pondering color" (4).
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Context: This passage offers insight into Baby Suggs' past and memories and how she copes with her pain. Significance:
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"Peachstone skin; straight-backed. For a man with an immobile face it was amazing how ready it was to smile, or blaze or be sorry with you. As though all you had to do was get his attention and right away he produced the feeling you were feeling. With less than a blink, his face seemed to change--underneath it lay the activity" (8-9).
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Context: Paul D has just arrived at Sethe's house and this excerpt gives a physical description of him. Significance:
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"Walking through it, a wave of grief soaked him so thoroughly he wanted to cry...Paul D looked at the spot where the grief had soaked him. The red was gone but a kind of weeping clung to the air where it had been." (11).
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Context: Paul D, upon walking into the house, walks through a red light in the door of house 124. Significance:
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"Even in that tiny shack, leaning so close to the fire you could smell the heat in her dress, her eyes did not pick up a flicker of light. They were like two wells into which he had trouble gazing. Even punched out they needed to be covered, lidded, marked with some sign to warn folks of what that emptiness held" (10).
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Context: Paul D observes Sethe, the object of his lust for more than 25 years. Significance:
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"The five Sweet Home men looked at the new girl and decided to let her be. They were young and so sick with the absence of women they had taken to calves. Yet they let the iron-eyed girl be, so she could choose in spite of the fact that each one would have beaten the others to mush to have her. It took her a year to choose--a long, tough year of thrashing on pallets eaten up with dreams of her. A year of yearning, when rape seemed the solitary gift of life. The restraint they had exercised possible only because they were Sweet Home men" (12).
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Context: Paul D describes the Sweet Home men: himself, Paul F Garner, Paul A Garner, Halle Suggs, and Sixo and their love and lust for Sethe 18 years ago. Significance:
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"He recovered, mute and off-balance, more because of his untrustworthy eye than his bent legs, and winter, summer, drizzle or dry, nothing could persuade him to enter the house again" (14).
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Context: The narrator describes how the spirit of the baby slammed Here Boy, a dog, into a wall. Significance:
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"Out of the dimness of the room in which they sat, a white staircase climbed toward the blue-and-white wallpaper of the second floor. Paul D could see just the beginning of the paper; discreet flecks of yellow sprinkled among a blizzard of snowdrops all backed by blue. The luminous white of the railing and steps kept him glancing toward it. Every sense he had told him the air above the stairwell was charmed and very thin. But the girl who walked down out of that air was round and brown with the face of an alert doll" (13).
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Context: Paul D and the reader are first introduced to Denver. Significance:
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"Hot, shy, now Denver was lonely. All that leaving: first her brothers, then her grandmother--serious losses since there were no children willing to circle her in a game or hang by their knees from her porch railing. None of that had mattered as long as her mother did not look away as she was doing now, making Denver long, downright long, for a sign of spite from the baby ghost" (14-15).
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Context: Denver first meets Paul D and observes how her mother Sethe acts around him. Significance:
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"Denver sat down on the bottom step. There was nowhere else gracefully to go. They were a twosome, saying 'Your daddy' and 'Sweet Home' in a way that made it clear both belonged to them and not to her. That her own father's absence was not hers...Only those who knew him ('knew him well') could claim his absence for themselves. Just as only those who lived in Sweet Home could remember it, whisper it and glance sideways at one another while they did" (15).
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Context: Denver feels out of place after noticing the closeness of Paul D and Sethe. Significance:
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"'But it's where we were,' said Sethe. 'All together. Comes back whether we want it to or not.' She shivered a little. A light ripple of skin of her arm, which she caressed back into sleep" (16).
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Context: Sethe reminisces about Sweet Home. Significance:
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"'I can't live here. I don't know where to go or what to do, but I can't live here. Nobody speaks to us. Nobody comes by. Boys don't like me. Girls don't either...It's not! It's not the house. It's us! And it's you!'" (17).
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Context: Denver acts up and begins to cry in front of Paul D and Sethe. Significance:
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'"I got a tree on my back and a haint in my house, and nothing in between but the daughter I am holding in my arms. No more running--from nothing. I will never run from another thing on this earth. I took one journey and I paid for the ticket, but let me tell you something, Paul D Garner: it cost too much! Do you hear me? It cost too much'" (18).
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Context: Paul D makes a remark about Denver's behavior and Sethe becomes defensive. Significance:
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"'Whitegirl. That's what she called it. I've never seen it and never will. But that's what she said it looked like. A chokecherry tree. Trunk, branches, and even leaves. Tiny little chokecherry leaves. But that was eighteen years ago. Could have cherries too now for all I know'" (18).
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Context: Paul D asks about the tree on her back, and she offers a clearer description. Significance:
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"'They used cowhide on you?' 'And they took my milk.' 'They beat you and you was pregnant?' 'And they took my milk!'" (20).
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Context: Sethe tells Paul D about her past and how she was raped by the two nephews of the schoolteacher. They found out that she told Mrs. Garner and the schoolteacher beat her for that. Significance:
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"Not even trying, he had become the kind of man who could walk into a house and make the women cry. Because with him, in his presence, they could. There was something blessed in his manner" (20).
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Context: After Sethe tells Paul D about her traumatizing past, she begins to cry. Significance:
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"Behind her, bending down, his body an arc of kindness, he held her breasts in the palms of his hands. He rubbed his cheek on her back and learned that way her sorrow, the roots of it; its wide trunk and intricate branches...and he would tolerate no peace until he had touched every ridge and leaf of it with his mouth...What she knew was that the responsibility for her breasts, at last, was in somebody else's hands" (20-21).
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Context: After Sethe begins to cry, he comforts her and relieves her of her sorrow and burden. Significance:
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"Not a tree, as she said. Maybe shaped like one, but nothing like any tree he knew because trees were inviting; things you could trust and be near; talk to if you wanted to..." (25).
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Context: After Paul D and Sethe have an unsatisfying sexual encounter, he finds the tree on Sethe's back a "revolting clump of scars." Significance:
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"He never got it right, but they ate those undercooked, overcooked, dried-out or raw potatoes anyway, laughing, spitting and giving him advice"
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Context: Paul D remembers Sixo and Sweet Home after he and Sethe have sex. Significance:
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"Sprawled near Brother, his flame-red tongue hidden from them, his indigo face closed, Sixo slept through dinner like a corpse. Now there was a man, and that was a tree. Himself lying in the bed and the "tree" lying next to him didn't compare" (26).
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Context: After walking a 30-mile trip to see a woman, Sixo is fatigued. The Sweet Home men hide this from Mr. Garner. Significance:
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"But maybe a man was nothing but a man...They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely that was, they studied your scars and tribulations, after which they did what he had done: ran her children out and tore up the house" (26).
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Context: Sethe is unsatisfied with her sexual encounter and feels frustrated. Significance:
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"...men and women were moved around like checkers...What [Baby Suggs] called the nastiness of life was the shock she received upon learning that nobody stopped playing checkers just because the pieces included her children" (27-28).
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Context: Sethe offers a glance into the lives of slaves as a whole in that time period. Significance:
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"Sixo went among trees at night. For dancing, he said, to keep his bloodlines open, he said. Privately, alone, he did it" (30).
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Context: Sixo enjoys dancing naked among the trees. Significance:
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"The jump, thought Paul D, from a calf to a girl wasn't all that mighty. Not the leap Halle believed it would be" (32).
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Context: Sethe reminisces about her marriage with Halle, and the POV switches to Paul D's. Significance:
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"What he did remember was parting the hair to get to the tip, the edge of his fingernail just under, so as not to graze a single kernel. The pulling down of the tight sheath, the ripping sound always convinced her it hurt. As soon as one strip of husk was down, the rest obeyed and the ear yielded up to him its shy rows, exposed at last. How loose the silk. How quick the jailed-up flavor ran free. No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simple joy could shake you" (32-33).
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Context: Sethe reminisces about her marriage with Halle, and the POV switches to Paul D's. Significance:
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"Bent low, Denver could crawl into this room...she could stand all the way in emerald light...In that bower, closed off from the hurt of the hurt world, Denver's imagination produced its own hunger and its own food, which she badly needed because loneliness wore her out. Wore her out. Veiled and protected by the live green walls, she felt ripe and clear, and salvation was as easy as a wish" (34-35).
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Context: Denver finds solace in what she calls her "emerald closet," a place that smells of the cologne that she once spilled there. Significance:
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"When Denver looked in, she saw her mother on her knees in prayer, which was not unusual. What was unusual was that a white dress knelt down next to her mother and had its sleeve around her mother's waist. And it was the tender embrace of the dress sleeve that made Denver remember the details of her birth--that and the thin, whipping snow she was standing in, like the fruit of common flowers. The dress and her mother together looked like two friendly grown-up women--one (the dress) helping out the other. And the magic of her birth, its miracle in fact, testified to that friendliness as did her own name" (35-36).
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Context: One day, when Denver approaches the house, she sees her mother praying inside Baby Suggs' room. She notices a white dress wrapped around Sethe's waist. Significance:
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"But she could not, would not, stop, for when she did the little antelope rammed her with horns and pawed the ground of her womb with impatient hooves. While she was walking, it seemed to graze, quietly..." (36).
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Context: Sethe is recalling her memory of when she was pregnant with Denver. Significance:
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"'Well, Lu, velvet is like the world was just born. Clean and new and so smooth. The velvet I seen was brown, but in Boston they got all colors. Carmine. That means red but when you talk about velvet you got to say 'carmine''" (41).
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Context: Sethe is found by Amy Denver, a former white indentured servant who is going to Boston. Significance:
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"'It's gonna hurt, now,' said Amy. 'Anything dead coming back to life hurts' A truth for all times, thought Denver. Maybe the white dress holding its arm around her mother's waist was in pain. If so, it could mean the baby ghost had plans" (42).
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Context: Amy is massaging Sethe's swollen feet. The narrative then switches to Denver's POV. Significance:
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"I was talking about time. It's so hard for me to believe in it. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place--the picture of it--stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. what I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened" (43).
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Context: Sethe tells Denver that she was praying about time. This passage offers insight into the way Sethe views the world. Significance:
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"...if you go there and stand in the place where it was it will happen again; it will be there for you, waiting for you. So Denver, you can't never go there. Never. Because even though it's all over--over and done with--it's going to always be there waiting for you" (44).
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Context: Sethe tries to protect Denver from the past. Significance:
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"But it was gone now. Whooshed away in the blast of a hazelnut man's shout, leaving Denver's world flat, mostly, with the exception of an emerald closet standing seven feet high in the woods. Her mother had secrets--things she wouldn't tell; things she halfway told. Well, Denver had them too. And hers were sweet--sweet as lily-of-the-valley cologne" (45).
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Context: After Sethe begins telling Denver about the schoolteacher of Sweet Home, she stops halfway and refuses to tell anymore. Denver is saddened by the disappearance of the spirit of the dead baby. Significance:
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"Kneeling in the keeping room where she usually went to talk-think it was clear why Baby Suggs was so starved for color. there wasn't any except for two orange squares in a quilt that made the absence shout...In that sober field, two patches of orange looked wild--like life in the raw" (46).
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Context: After Sethe wakes up next to Paul D, she reflects on "the temptation to trust and remember" and her desire to "count on something." Significance:
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"124 was so full of strong feeling perhaps she was oblivious to the loss of anything at all" (47).
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Context: This is the second description of "124." Significance:
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"After Alfred he had shut down a generous portion of his head, operating on the part that helped him walk, eat, sleep, sing...The box had done what Sweet Home had not, what working like an ass and living like a dog had not: drove him crazy so he would not lose his mind" (49).
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Context: Paul D remembers his days in a chain gang. Significance:
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"To Sethe, the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay" (51).
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Context: Paul D eventually moves in with Sethe, and he begins to be a part of their daily routine. Significance:
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"Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit; everything, just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one" (54).
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Context: Denver asks Paul D "how long he was going to hang around." Shocked and hurt, Paul D argues with Sethe about Denver's behavior. Significance:
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"'Jump, if you want to, 'cause I'll catch you, girl. I'll catch you 'fore you fall. Go as far inside as you need to, I'll hold your ankles. Make sure you get back out. I'm not saying this because I need a place to stay...I'm a walking man, but I been heading in this direction for seven years...But when I got here and sat out there on the porch, waiting for you, well, I knew it wasn't the place I was heading toward; it was you. We can make a life, girl. A life'" (55).
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Context: Paul D asks Sethe if there is any room in this household for him to stay. Significance:
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"They were not holding hands, but their shadows were. Sethe looked to her left and all three of them were gliding over the dust holding hands. Maybe he was right. A life" (56).
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Context: Paul D, in order to ease the tension caused by Denver's outbreak, invites them to a carnival. Significance:
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"Up and down the lumberyard fence old roses were dying. The sawyer who had planted them twelve years ago to give his workplace a friendly feel--something to take the sin out of slicing trees for a living--was amazed by their abundance; how rapidly they crawled all over the stake-and-post fence that separated the lumberyard from the open field next to it where homeless men slept, children ran and, once a year, carnival people pitched tents. The closer the roses got to death, the louder their scent, and everybody who attended the carnival associated it with the stench of the rotten roses. It made them a little dizzy and very thirsty but did nothing to extinguish the eagerness of the coloredpeople filing down the road" (57).
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Context: Paul D, Sethe, and Denver are enjoying the carnival. Significance:
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"...doing magic, clowning, without heads or with two heads, twenty feet tall or two feet tall, weighing a ton, completely tattooed, eating glass, swallowing fire, spitting ribbons, twisted into knots, forming pyramids, playing with snakes and beating each other up" (57).
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Context: Sethe, Denver, and Paul D are at the carnival. Significance:
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"In fact there was something about him...that made the stares of other Negroes kind, gentle, something Denver did not remember seeing in their faces" (58).
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Context: Denver notes how differently the other African Americans act around them when they are with Paul D. Significance:
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"Women who drink champagne when there is nothing to celebrate can look like that: their straw hats with broken brims are often askew; they nod in public places; their shoes are undone. But their skin is not like that of the woman breathing near the steps of 124. She had new skin, lineless and smooth, including the knuckles of her hands" (60-61).
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Context: An unknown woman walks out of a stream and sits on a stump near 124. Significance:
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"But there was no stopping water breaking from a breaking womb and there was no stopping now" (61).
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Context: Once Sethe comes close enough to see the unknown woman's face, her bladder filled to capacity. Significance:
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"Instead she gazed at Sethe with sleepy eyes. Poorly fed, thought Sethe, and younger than her clothes suggested--good lace at the throat, and a rich woman's hat. Her skin was flawless except for three vertical scratches on her forehead so fine and thin they seemed at first like hair, baby hair before it bloomed and roped into the masses of black yarn under her hat...her feet were like her hands, soft and new" (62).
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Context: Paul D, Denver, and Sethe invite the woman into their home, and she says that her name is Beloved. Significance:
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"Paul D wondered at the newness of her shoes. Sethe was deeply touched by her sweet name; the remembrance of glittering headstone made her feel especially kindly toward her. Denver, however, was shaking. She looked at this sleepy beauty and wanted more" (63).
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Context: Paul D, Denver, and Sethe are all curious about Beloved and how she came to 124. Significance:
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"Denver tended her, watched her sound sleep, listened to her labored breathing and, out of love and a breakneck possessiveness that charged her, hid like a personal blemish Beloved's incontinence...So intent was her nursing, she forgot to eat or visit the emerald closet" (64).
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Context: Beloved is allowed to stay in their home and she sleeps, wakes up and sits only for water for four days. Significance:
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"It took three days for Beloved to notice the orange patches in the darkness of the quilt...She seemed totally taken with those faded scraps of orange, even made the effort to lean on her elbow and stroke them" (65).
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Context: Beloved begins to notice the orange patches that Baby Suggs sewed into the quilt. Significance:
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"'Wonder where Here Boy got off to?' Sethe thought a change of subject was needed. 'He won't be back,' said Denver. 'How you know?' 'I just know.'" (65).
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Context: After Beloved comes to the house, Here Boy is nowhere to be seen. Significance:
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"From that moment and through everything that followed, sugar could always be counted on to please her. It was as though sweet things were what she was born for...But it was a need that went on and on into glowing health because Beloved didn't go anywhere. There didn't seem anyplace for her to go" (66).
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Context: Although Beloved is healthy once again, she continues to stay with the family. Significance:
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"A young woman, about nineteen or twenty, and slender, she moved like a heavier one or an older one, holding on to furniture, resting her head in the palm of her hand as though it was too heavy for a neck alone" (66-67).
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Context: After Beloved has stayed with them for a while, they begin to notice her peculiarities. Significance:
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"'Acts sick, sounds sick, but she don't look sick. Good skin, bright eyes and strong as a bull...Can't walk, but I seen her pick up the rocker with one hand...'" (67).
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Context: Paul D is suspicious of Beloved. Significance:
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"Rainwater held on to pine needles for dear life and Beloved could not take her eyes off Sethe. Stooping to shake the damper, or snapping sticks for kindlin, Sethe was licked, tasted, eaten by Beloved's eyes. Like a familiar, she hovered, never leaving the room Sethe was in unless required and told to" (68).
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Context: Beloved develops a strange attachment with Sethe. Significance:
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"A touch no heavier than a feather but loaded, nevertheless, with desire. Sethe stirred and looked around. First at Beloved's soft new hand on her shoulder, then into her eyes. The longing she saw there was bottomless. Some plea barely in control. Sethe patted Beloved's fingers and glanced at Denver, whose eyes were fixed on her pea-sorting task" (69).
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Context: Beloved follows Sethe around with focused devotion. Significance:
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"Just as Denver discovered and relied on the delightful effect sweet things had on Beloved, Sethe learned the profound satisfaction Beloved got from storytelling. It amazed Sethe...because every mention of her past life hurt. Everything in it was painful or lost" (69).
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Context: Beloved asks about Sethe's diamonds, which were given to her by Mrs. Garner. Significance:
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"'Right on her rib was a circle and a cross burnt right in the skin. She said, 'This is your ma'am. This,' and she pointed. 'I am the only one 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.' Scared me so. All you could think of was how important this was and how I needed to have something important to say back, but I couldn't think of anything so I just said what I thought...'Mark the mark on me too.'' Sethe chuckled...'She slapped my face'" (72-73).
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Context: Beloved asks Sethe if her mother ever fixed up her hair, and she tells Beloved about a mark on her mother. Significance:
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"Nan was the one she knew best...and who used different words. Words Sethe understood then but could neither recall nor repeat now. She believed that must be why she remembered so little before Sweet Home except singing and dancing and how crowded it was. What Nan told her she had forgotten, along with the language she told it in. The same language her ma'am spoke, and which would never come back. But the message--that was and had been there all along. Holding the damp white sheets against her chest, she was picking meaning out of a code she no longer understood" (73-74).
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Context: After remembering
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"Denver hated the stories her mother told that did not concern herself, which is why Amy was all she ever asked about" (74).
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Context: After Denver hears more of Sethe's childhood stories, she becomes resentful that they do not concern her. Significance:
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"The questions Beloved asked: 'Where your diamonds?' 'Your woman she never fix up your hair?' And most perplexing: Tell me your earrings. How did she know?" (75).
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Context: Denver is resentful because the stories do not concern herself, but then she notices the peculiar questions that Beloved continues to ask. Significance:
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"Inside, two boys bled in the sawdust and dirt at the feet of a n***** woman holding a blood-soaked child to her chest with one hand and an infant by the heels in the other. She did not look at them; she simply swung the baby toward the wall planks, missed and tried to connect a second time, when out of nowhere...the old n***** boy, still mewing, ran through the door behind them and snatched the baby from the arc of its mother's swing" (175).
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Context: When the schoolteacher, one nephew, one slave catcher and a sheriff come to reclaim Sethe, they find in the shed of Baby Sugg's home. Significance:
