Love and Hate in Beloved

Toni Morrison’s Beloved was written in 1987 – a time much more peaceful than the novel’s setting. Though centered on a culture that’s destructive, as well as polarized both racially and by gender, there are strong themes of both love and hate that run thick and through Beloved. Morrison alludes to these forces constantly throughout the novel, and uses the strong emotions to highlight different characters, plot lines, and themes.

Although love shines through many of the roles, the most evident discussion of it lies within Sethe, who has actually almost become numb to emotion and yearning. Sethe, a warrior in slavery and through the times themselves, is in a place where she nearly cannot love freely. She has lost three of her four children, and keeps the last one left, Denver, close to her heart and in her sight almost constantly. “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,” Paul D. believed (54). Until she encountered the darling ghost of Beloved, Sethe could not even love her other children because the memories of them stung too much.

While Denver is with her mother night and day, she has begun to resent her life at the cold 124 on Bluestone Road. She breaks and becomes vulnerable when Sethe tries to introduce her and get her to warm up to Paul D. “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 use. Nobody comes by,” Denver vents. The community has become scared of house 124 and of the people who live inside. Resentment, over time, can lead to hate – the opposite of love.

Hatred is also shown through the novel through the theme of slavery. Sethe, Denver, Paul D., and the other men from Sweet Home are used by Toni Morrison to portray the thousands who were enslaved during the nineteenth century. The hatred poured upon them by most white people was enough to scar, and to create a barrier between freedom and love. Freedom, to Sethe and to Denver, is being able to live with the choices that they have made and to live as safely as possible. Love, however, is something that only comes along with immense trust.

The aura and history of House 124 put a dark shadow on its residents, and encouraged the folks of Cincinnati to feel the same. The darkness has not only begun to control society’s perception and hate towards Sethe and her daughter, but it has also created a void in the house. “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom,” (3) Morrison opens Beloved. Until the ghost of Sethe’s murdered daughter returns in the novel, the spirits within the family haunt, and further the distance between them and love.

Beloved’s characters run for what felt like an eternity, and along the way, learned to forget love in hopes of forgetting hate. Sethe, Denver, and Paul D. make an intriguing little family that shows the elements of love during a time overrun by hate.