In today’s society, violence abounds wherever one turns, assaulted with shocking headlines slashed across newspapers and television screens. As the media glorifies violence as a whole, one grows numb to such reprehensible actions as rape, murder, or assault. Unlike these senseless crimes, however, scenes of violence in literary works do not exist merely for the purpose of excitement; rather, they are central in enhancing the message of the work at hand. In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, the protagonist’s violent murder of her own child illuminates the self-destructive, inhumane nature of slavery and the power of rebirth through suffering.
An already haunting scene becomes even more chilling when viewed initially through the eyes of a slave master. Schoolteacher, whose appearance prompted Sethe’s instinctual response, locates his former slave standing a wood shed amidst the blood- soaked sawdust. To the four flabbergasted men, the crazed woman is no better than the psychopathic serial killers of today; her murderous touch dishearteningly reveals that “the three pickaninnies they had hoped were alive and well enough to take back to Kentucky, take back and raise properly to do the work Sweet Home desperately needed, were not” (Morrison 176-177).
Yet, while her violent actions cannot be condoned, Sethe’s motives can be understood. The mother vigorously believes that she did what she had to do in order to protect her children from the evils of slavery and inhumane labor, crying, “She had to be safe and I put her where she would be…I’ll explain to her… Why I did it. How if I hadn’t killed her she would have died and that is something I couldn’t bear to happen to her” (Morrison 236).
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Despite Sethe’s clingy, desperate claims of love, her actions are begot more out of fear than true love; she cannot bear the thought of being isolated from her own children after she has endured so much to reach them after her belated escape from Sweet Home. The trauma of never being allowed to be near her own birth mother contributes to Sethe’s separation anxiety, but neither fear nor love can compensate for her great sin. Her motives are purely selfish, for she does not consider the feelings of her own children or learn to be content with the knowledge that her babies still possess the gift of life that she once gave them and now intends to take away from them.
Nonetheless, Sethe’s violent tendencies can be attributed to the own suffering she endured at the hands of slavery, a vicious beast that gnawed away at her until she “used [herself] up” (Morrison 234), burying all of her gentle, loving instincts. In enslaving her, the white men plant a wild jungle of savagery and violence within her heart, making her “bloody, silly, worse than even [she] wanted to be” (233). As the property of another human being, Sethe’s natural qualities are suppressed, giving rise to an animalistic nature that drives her to commit the deplorable crime of infanticide. Deprived of her wits, the woman violently murders her child to escape the horrors of her own past, a self-destructive past that consumes her and permanently injures her emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
Nevertheless, one must ultimately endure great suffering in order to be fully healed. In Sethe’s eyes, the murder of Beloved brings about salvation, for it prevents Schoolteacher from snatching away the remainder of her children. While Beloved is truly resurrected in the form of a nineteen year old girl, Sethe also experiences rebirth as a result of the suffering wrought by her fateful act of bloodshed. Killing her own child, in spite of her defensive claims of doing so out of love, affects her so strongly that it sucks the very soul out of her; even Schoolteacher notices the hollow, lifeless quality of her eyes: “Since the whites in them had disappeared and since they were as black as her skin, she looked blind” (Morrison 177).
In the ensuing nineteen years, Sethe suffers the loss of her two sons, who escaped 124 out of fear and disgust over their murderous mother, as well as the death of Baby Suggs, who was reduced to a shell of her former vibrant self after witnessing Sethe’s crime. The horrifying violence causes suffering to befall all parties involved, particularly Sethe, the mother and murderer of the victim; however, this suffering is not meaningless, for it ultimately offers the promise of the beginnings of salvation, which Sethe finally reaches at the culmination of the novel.
