Beloved is a fictional book written by American writer, Toni Morrison in 1987. This book has 423 pages well-written in English Language. It was set after the American Civil War (1861-1865) and was inspired by the story of African-American slave, Sethe, who escaped slavery in Kentucky late January 1856 by fleeing to Ohio.
The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1988 and was a finalist for the 1987 National Book Award. It was adopted during 1998 into a movie of the same name starring Oprah Winfrey. It was ranked as the best work of American fiction from 1981 to 2006 by a New York Times survey of writers and literary critics. This book’s epigraph is Romans 9: 25.
MAJOR CHARACTERS
The major characters in this novel includes Sethe (protagonist), Beloved (Sethe’s little girl), Paul D (a slave), Denver (Sethe’s surviving daughter), Halle (Sethe’s husband), Baby Suggs (Halle’s elderly mother), and Schoolteacher (discipliner of the slaves) and so on.
SUMMARY
The book is the story of Sethe and her youngest daughter Denver after their escape from slavery. Their home in Cincinnati is haunted by a revenant, whom they believe to be the ghost of Sethe’s eldest daughter. Denver is shy, friendless and homebound. She was brought out of the house by their mother new friend, Paul D, a slave from Sweet Home plantation where the Sethe’s family and other slaves worked. Paul D and Sethe met Beloved, a young lady whom Paul D was suspicious and also warned Beloved about. Sethe has built a relationship with Paul D had sex with him which made the later had horrific memories about his past. He couldn’t tell Sethe but only informed her he wants to get her pregnant.
After some occurrence, Sethe later believed that Beloved is her two-year-old daughter she murdered sometimes ago and whose tombstone only reads ‘’Beloved’’. Sethe tried to care for her thereafter out of guilt. Beloved’s presence eventually consumes Sethe’s life to the point where she becomes depleted. She sacrifices her own need for eating, while Believed grows bigger and bigger and causing problems in the home.
In the novel’s climax, Denver reaches out and searches for help from the black community and some of the village women who arrive at the exorcise Beloved. Beloved disappears after Sethe has an attack on a white man who had helped Baby Suggs, his mother-in-law. The novel resolves with Denver becoming a working member of the community and Paul D who had fled returning to Sethe and also pledging his love.
