Denver remains convinced that Beloved is the ghost that once haunted 124, and she conceals from Sethe the fact that Beloved is now Paul D’s lover. Denver’s daily discourse with Beloved is limited to discussions of their chores, neighbors, and family. By winter, Denver is consumed with the task of […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 12Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 11
Analysis In this brief but crucial interlude, Morrison reveals the ghost’s strength by proving her ability to overpower a reluctant adult male. The biblical allusion to Lot’s wife, who instantly stiffens into a column of salt for her sin of disobedience, indicates that Paul D realizes the immorality that he […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 11Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 10
Eighty-six days into his sentence, Paul D and the other prisoners, chained together and threatened with suffocation under a mudslide, dived beneath their cells’ restraining bars and escaped. The prisoners fled to a Cherokee camp, where Native Americans fed them mush and released them from their leg irons. The scent […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 10Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 9
Sethe’s mental journey returns her to the Kentucky riverside where Denver was born and where Stamp Paid fed Sethe fried eel and river water from a jar. Because fever gripped her body and dampened the baby, Stamp Paid ordered his nephew to take off his jacket; in it he swaddled […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 9Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 8
Sethe, instinctively wary of telling too much to a white woman who could easily turn in a runaway slave for a reward, had identified herself to Amy as Lu. Unburdened by race prejudice, Amy set about easing Sethe’s pain. She hummed as she performed primitive first aid to Sethe’s swollen […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 8Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 7
Paul D, uneasy about the glow that illuminates Beloved, concludes that there is some significance to the girl’s arrival on the very day that Sethe and he had “patched up their quarrel, gone out in public and had a right good time — like a family.” Just as he determines […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 7Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 6
More questions about Sethe’s mother elicit meager facts — that she worked in indigo fields from dawn to nightfall and then slept through Sundays. The demands of her toil gave her only a few weeks in which to bond with her infant daughter, who was then passed on to a […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 6Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 5
Analysis Morrison liberally salts this chapter with details that indicate that the visitor is the embodiment of Sethe’s daughter Beloved, who would be about 20 years old if she had lived. Tendrils of superstition cling to the scene, such as the following: Beloved emerges from the water, like a child […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 5Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 4
Analysis Morrison uses this small chapter to develop both plot and mood. Paul D, who has no understanding of Sethe’s sufferings during their 18 years apart or her intense relationship with her one remaining child, probes for the unspoken admission of her affection for him. At the same time, he […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 4Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 3
Chiming in is a third voice, Paul D. Paul D is singing prison songs and thinking over his journey from Sweet Home to Alfred, Georgia and on to Delaware. Hinting that he may settle in Cincinnati, Paul D asks Sethe about job opportunities and questions whether Denver will mind his […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 3