Structure Used By Toni Morrison In Her Novel Beloved Essay Example

who has ‘rememory’ of the past, which has painful associations of rape and murder. Sethe tries to beat her past by trying to deny its impact. The advent of ‘Beloved’ is also the symbolism of a dreadful past catching up with Sethe sooner or later. The past comes back n the form of her dead child; the child whom she had murdered in her past, and it makes its demands on her present.

The unreasonable behaviour of ‘Beloved’ is also used by Morrison as a structure, to base her story on retribution and trauma of the protagonist, who is perpetually running away from her past and denying its appalling force on her conscience all the time. Very assiduously Morrison uses another structure to show retribution and poetic justice for the crime done by Sethe, by introducing the young woman Beloved as the lost and murdered daughter of Sethe. Beloved is almost cruel in her demands and in creating havoc in Sethe’s life.

She seduces and sleeps with Paul D, who is Sethe’s boyfriend, and demands all the time for her desires to be fulfilled. “Beloved ate up Sethe’s life, took it, swelled up with it, and grew taller on it. And the older woman yielded it up without a murmur. ” This is quoted to prove Beloved as the symbolic devourer, ( as it says , “Swelled up with it” ) who had no scruples in keeping Sethe on her toes and destroying her gradually. “Without a murmur” is symbolic of a repenting mother who stops at nothing to make up for the past crime.

Sethe was trying to make up for

the handsaw; Beloved was making her pay for it. ” Here the handsaw is used literally as Sethe had used a handsaw to kill Beloved, when she was a little girl. Her return is the allegorical guilt taking hold of a guilty heart. Reminds one of Lady Macbeth and her symbolic hand washing, to rid herself of the metaphorical blood on her hands! Morrison uses the word ‘rememory’ in the novel, to tell us that memories don’t go away, past is ever much a part of our present and we have to sooner or later deal with it.