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1-Page Summary of Beloved
Overall Summary
Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, was published in 1987. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award. It tells the story of Sethe who is a runaway slave who kills her daughter to prevent her capture and enslavement.
The novel begins after slavery has ended. Sethe lives with her daughter, Denver, and the ghost of her other daughter in Ohio. Her mother-in-law has died and her two sons have left home. She meets Paul D again; he was enslaved at Sweet Home with Sethe years ago but had moved away before they could see each other again. They begin a relationship because of their mutual attraction to each other despite his attempts to stay away from Sethe’s house due to its haunting presence by the spirit of her dead child who died as an infant. One day, Beloved arrives at 124 looking for them; she is the reincarnation of Sethe’s dead baby girl, who wants revenge on Paul D for killing her when she was still alive (as a baby).
Sethe and Paul D both remember their traumatic experiences of slavery. Sethe is reminded of the time she was raped by her master’s nephews, while Paul D recalls his imprisonment after trying to kill his last slave owner. They realize that Halle disappeared after seeing Sethe get raped. Eventually, they figure out that Beloved may have something to do with it all since she arrived at 124 right around the same time as these events started happening again. When Paul confronts Beloved about this, he has sex with her in a moment of weakness but then tries to tell Sethe what happened later on when he feels guilty about it. However, instead of telling her what really happened between him and Beloved, he suggests that they have a baby together because he doesn’t think she’d believe him if he told her the truth anyway.
One day, Stamp Paid shows Paul D a news clipping describing Sethe’s arrest for killing one of her daughters. Years ago, when Sethe first arrived at 124 with her newborn baby, Denver, she was finally able to reunite with her two sons and daughter who had escaped before her and were safe in Grandma Baby Suggs’ care. Jealous that Grandma Baby Suggs’ family was doing well, the townspeople neglected to warn them about the arrival of the slave catchers. Without any time to make an escape, Sethe took her children with her to the shed and tried to kill them all with a handsaw. She succeeded in killing only her oldest daughter before the schoolteacher and the slave catchers found her. Reasoning that she wasn’t sound enough to return home yet because she killed someone else’s child (and not just hers), they left without arresting or prosecuting Sethe for murder; instead they sent word back home so Sweet Home could send another runaway slave woman as compensation for their loss of property. The news of Sethe’s actions horrifies Paul D. When Paul D confronts Sethe about it, she defends herself by saying that those people didn’t deserve what happened to them anyway because they treated slaves like animals. This leads Paul D ‘ s departure from 124, which is where he goes next.
The people of 124 are suffering because Paul D left. Sethe is so consumed with guilt that she neglects her job and lets Beloved take over the house. Denver realizes this and reaches out to the townspeople for help, leaving on her own for the first time. The townspeople come to exorcise Beloved from 124, but they also grab Mr. Bowdin by mistake, thinking he’s Paul D when he comes to pick up Denver for work at his house. Sethe sees him as a threat and attacks him with an ice pick before being wrestled down by Denver and several other people in town who have gathered outside of 124.
