The Beloved Family

When I first started reading the second half of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, I expected Morrison to end her novel by resolving the conflicts she had created between the characters, earlier in the story. In Part Two of Beloved, Morrison had hinted towards peace in the family when Sethe took her children ice skating. With the pleasant image of this shared moment of family bonding, I anticipated a relatively happy ending to a tragic tale. Moreover, it seemed to me until these final chapters, that Beloved’s love was split relatively equally between Sethe and Denver, and that over time the reunited family would repair the damage to their relationships, heal, and face the future as a stronger, united front. However, as I read further into Part Three it became apparent to me that this positive family dynamic was not going to last. …show more content…
Sethe seemed increasingly dependent on Beloved for forgiveness for having murdered her as a toddler. And lastly, Denver was knocked out of the family equation entirely, having become irrelevant to the co-dependent downward spiraling relationship that had formed between Sethe and Beloved. Instead of Beloved and Sethe establishing the strong family bond I expected, the relationship between Beloved and Sethe was a parasitic one, with Beloved as the parasite and Sethe as the host. Sethe became almost like a slave again, but this time Sethe was enslaved to Beloved.{DALIA...WHO SAID THIS...DENVER....Denver said, “It was Beloved who made demands. Anything she wanted she got, and when Sethe ran out of things to give her, Beloved invented desire” (Morrison, 283).