Ghost in Toni Morrison's Beloved Essay Example

In the novel, Beloved, by Toni Morison, the haunting of 124 is crucial to Sethe’s coping and recovery from the horrors of slavery. Sethe is visited by her reincarnated daughter who was killed to avoid the terror and brutality Sethe had endured. Beloved starts the novel as a ghost in the house until Paul D. sent her out, she later appears, reincarnated, coming out of a river. As the family consoles her, Beloved knows information about the family and the past only her daughter could, like the lullaby, and the diamond earrings.  The family soon realizes that Beloved could only be the reincarnation of “Already Crawling”. When they realize this it is decided that Beloved was here to help Sethe mourn but ultimately heal.

The beginning of the novel begins to construe a haunting in the house, everyone in the house has experienced some sort of eerie, supernatural event. In the book Beloved by Toni Morrison, “Still feeling the presence of the ghost, Paul D exclaims, “Good God… What kind of evil you got in here?” Sethe replies: It’s not evil, just sad. Come in. Just step through”  The presence felt throughout the house is not just in Sethe’s mind. Other people who visit such as Paul D. feel the apparition, but most people tend to avoid 124. “124 was spiteful. Full of baby’s venom.”(Beloved 1)  The baby is angry and refuses to leave the house. She wants to be with her mother, she wants to know that she is not forgetton. “Not only did she have to live out her years in a house palsied by the baby's fury at having its throat cut, but those ten minutes she spent pressed up against dawn-colored stone studded with star chips, her knees wide open as the grave, were longer than life, more alive, more pulsating than the baby blood that soaked her fingers like oil.” (Beloved 3) The culpability and penitence felt by Sethe affects her daily life and how she is living, “Crawling Already” knows that and acknowledges it. “I saw a white dress holding on to you,” Denver said. (Beloved 42)  “Crawling already” or Beloved wants to be there for her mother no matter how angry or vengeful she is. 

Later in the novel, when Beloved does appear there are many factors that attribute to her being a ghost or a reincarnation. Her breathe smells like milk and her skin is smooth and fresh. She has a scar on her throat, indistinguishable from the one Sethe inflicted on her baby. Along with the fact that she is infatuated with Sethe acknowledges the overall baby like disposition. When Sethe first sees Beloved she has the feeling of her water breaking, like a rebirth.  When Beloved arrives, Sethe notices that her dog, Here Boy, has disappeared. According to Britanna “In some traditions, especially in Africa, dogs are known to sense ghosts and evil spirits more quickly than humans.” One can, therefore, conclude that the arrival of Beloved causes the disappearance of Here Boy. The presence of Beloved is a strange and complex story, the further along in the story we go the more we learn about her true purpose. 

As the end of the novel approaches, many intricate details unearth themselves. Denver works up the courage to ask Beloved if she is her long lost sister. In the novel Beloved, “Tell me the truth. Didn’t you come back from the other side.” This is when we have verbal conformation from Beloved that she is a supernatural being, and she was reincarnated.  A supernatural being by definition is, an incorporeal being believed to have powers to affect the course of human events. Beloved does exactly that, she has affected every single person in the novel. She gave Denver a friend, Sethe her daughter back, if only for a short while, and Paul D. had his tin tobacco container broke open. The finale of the novel concludes with an exorcism, Beloved has completed her purpose and her time is up.