Beloved: The Human Condition :: essays research papers

     Toni Morrisons novel, Be applaud, reveals the effects of humankind emotion and its post to devolve an individual into a struggle against him or herself. In the beginning of the novel, the commentator sees the main character, Sethe, as a woman who is resigned to her desolate life and isolates herself from altogether those around her. Yet, she was once a woman full of feeling she had loved her husband Halle, loved her four young children, and loved the sidereal days of the Clearing. And thus, Sethe was wearied when she began her life at 124 Bluest mavin Road-- she had loved too much. After failing to save her children from the schoolteacher, Sethe suffered forevermore with guilt and sorrow. Guilt for having killed her "crawling already?" baby daughter, and then regret for not having succeeded in her task. It later becomes apparent that Sethes tragic past, her chokecherry tree, was the contend why she lived a life of isolation. Beloved, who sha res with Seths that one fatal moment, reacts to it in a completely different way because of her obsessive and vengeful love, she haunts Sethes house and fights the forces of death, merely to come back in an attempt to take her mothers life. Through her practice session of symbolism, Morrison exposes the internal conflicts that encumber her characters. By contrasting those individuals, she shows tragedy in the human condition. Both Sethe and Beloved suffer the devastating emotional effects of that one fateful event while the guilty mother who lived refuses to passionately love again, the daughter who was betrayed fights heaven and hell- in the name of love- just to live again.     Sethe was a woman who knew how to love, and ultimately fell to ruin because of her "too-thick love" (164). Within Sethe was the power of unconditional love for her children-- she had " take out enough for all" (201). Morrison uses breast milk to symbolize how strong Set hes maternal desires were. She could never forget the terror of the schoolteacher robbing her of her nurturing juices, she crawled on bleeding limbs to fill her babys mouth with her milk, and finally, she immortalized that grim summer day when she fed Denver her breast milk-- mingled with personal line of credit. The bestial image of milk and blood further fortifies the eminence of maternal instinct by portraying the take to be of a mothers milk as equal to that of her blood. And the