Doc Yoder's Notes
Page numbers are keyed to the Vintage International Edition, 2004. Lettered sections refer to the unnumbered breaks in Parts I, II and III.
Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)
Part I
A: Paul D arrives, banishes the ghost of the baby
B: Lying next to each other, Sethe and Paul D remember sex at Sweet Home; Halle with Sethe, & Sixo with 30-mile woman
C: Denver's "secrets" and the tale of her birth, helped by Amy (the white girl); Denver's vision of the white dress praying beside Sethe at Baby Suggs's bedside; Paul D appears here to stay
D: Paul D takes Sethe and Denver to the "colored Thursday" at the carnival
E: Beloved arrives (waiting when they return from the carnival); Denver becomes very attached to her
F: Beloved is obsessed with Sethe and her stories; Beloved seems to know things (the earrings, for ex.); the story of Sethe's mother
G: 5 weeks since Beloved arrived (I.E), and Beloved is "shining" (giving off a sort of sexual energy); it unnerves Paul D who presses with questions; Sethe and Paul D talk about Halle, her rape and the iron bit in Paul's mouth
H: Denver and Beloved dance; then Denver tells the story of her birth -- leading into a full flashback of the scene
I: Sethe?: Important Chapter: "time to lay it all down"; lots of history, lots of emotion; Sethe, Denver and Beloved go to Baby Suggs's holy clearing; the ghost, the spectre of death, and the (lesbian?) love between Denver and Beloved that Denver does not understand; Sethe's memory of crossing the Ohio River with Stamp Paid; code for conveying runaways; Beloved's touch is associated with the dead baby (116)
J: Paul D: Paul D's memory of the chain gang and the escape (suppressed into the tobacco tin in his heart)
K: Paul D: Paul D moves out into the cold shed; Beloved comes to seduce him; he imagines himself as Lot's wife (almost like a dream)
L: Denver: Denver's intense attachment to Beloved; her pleasure in Beloved's gaze; in the cold shed, Beloved disappears, leaving Denver desolate, then reappears; conflicting theories of Beloved's origin
M: Paul D: difference between Mr. Garner and Schoolteacher; memory of Sweet Home, and being a "man"; now Paul wants to break free of Beloved's hold, so he goes to tell Sethe about, but instead says that he wants to get her pregnant; they act like young lovers; that night Sethe brings Paul back upstairs to her room, but she doesn't want another baby
N: Denver and Beloved discuss Paul D and how Sethe likes having him there. Beloved wants him to leave, but Denver knows Sethe might get mad; Beloved pulls out a tooth, is afraid she'll come apart, and cries in Denver's arms
O: Baby Suggs: Flashback, start with celebration at Sethe's arrival at 124, then the smell of disapproval at her bounty (envy?) and something else (death?) behind it; Baby's memory of how she got to Ohio and to 124 -- Mr. Garner and the Bodwins
P: Immediately after I.O; the four horsemen arrive (Schoolteacher, a nephew, sheriff and slave catcher); they find Sethe in the shed; she has killed the baby, tried to kill her sons, and is trying to kill infant Denver. The three Southerners leave, the sheriff arrests Sethe.
Q: Paul D: at the slaughterhouse; Stamp Paid is showing a newspaper clipping about Sethe, telling him the story from the previous 2 sections, but Paul says he doesn't believe it.
R: Paul D has asked Sethe about what happened. She claims that she put her children in safety (192-3). He insists she must have had another choice, that she has "two feet, not four" (194); and that is that. A forest springs up between them, and Paul leaves. cf. Denver's deafness -- they just can't accept the story
Part II
A: 8 subsectionsB: Sethe: meditation on Beloved, more details about Sweet Home
- Stamp Paid: going to call on Sethe after Paul D has left (124 is haunted again), canšt bring himself either to knock or go in w/o knocking; he remembers Baby Suggs's funeral (she died in 1865 [p. 201])
- Sethe: Sethe and the girls go ice-skating to "lay it all down"; back at home, Beloved hums a tune that only Sethe and her children know -- "click" (206-7)
- Stamp Paid: his second attempt to visit Sethe; he remembers an encounter with Baby Suggs, when he tried to get her to return to the Clearing, not understanding that how tired she was; now he understands -- lynchings are rampant in Kentucky, and he has just found a ribbon still attached to a young girl's hair
- Sethe: next morning (after II.A.2) Sethe has decided that Beloved is her daughter returned from the "timeless place"; Sethe goes for firewood and does not notice the man's frozen footprints
- Sethe/Stamp Paid: Sethe goes to work, thinking of things she can now forget; Stamp finally goes to 124, misses Sethe who is going to work; looks in the window, does not recognize Beloved and goes to Ella to ask about her; the depth of Ella's judgment on Sethe extends to Paul D who is now sleeping in the church basement
- Sethe: at work, taking home dinner; her pride; thinking of things she can forget, imagining telling her story to Beloved
- Sethe reaches home, convinced that Beloved never died, and locks the door behind her
- After the pain of not having his knock answered, Stamp leaves Sethe and the girls to themselves.
C: Denver: Her drive to protect Sethe and Beloved; she's waiting for her daddy to come for her; Denver's devotion to Beloved
D: "I am Beloved": a difficult section. It seems to be a disembodied Beloved, perhaps, apparently in the "timeless place" after death, but before re-incarnation as the woman who came to 124
E: The psyches of the three women sort of swirl together; it begins to seem that after II.A, the women are left to themselves behind the locked door, and we are now in some kind of mingled consciousness
F: Paul D: drinking and brooding at the church; his tobacco tin is open -- he remembers the botched plans to escape, Sixo burned alive, the children escaping, Halle in the butter, Sethe leaving no matter what -- the last night at Sweet Home
G: Stamp and Paul D: Stamp tells the story of his wife and the white man, and how he let the man's wife know what was going on; he tells Paul that he was there when Sethe killed Beloved; he and Paul seem to be the only ones outside of 124 who have seen Beloved -- the first real doubt about Beloved's existence
Part III
A: 2 subsectionsB: Paul D: Stamp Paid fills in the blanks: Sethe tried to stab Bodwin, Denver stops her, Ella punches Sethe in the mouth, Beloved disappears and nobody is even sure she was there; Paul sees Denver who is nice to him; Denver is growing up well, falling in love; Paul returns to 124 to take care of Sethe; he tells her that she is her own "best thing"
- Denver's view of the deteriorating situation at 124 with the just the women; at first it's all play; Sethe loses her job; then Sethe and Beloved focus on each other; Beloved gets more demanding, Sethe apparently tires of apologizing; they start fighting; as they run low on food, Sethe gets thin while Beloved gets fat; Denver decides she needs to leave the yard and seek help
- Denver goes to Lady Jones for help; she begins her life as a woman in the world, getting help from the community, learning to read from Lady; as Denver exterior life improves, her home life gets worse; she finally asks for work at the Bodwins, and is hired for the night shift; meanwhile, news gets around and a group of women, led by Ella, decide to intervene for Sethe against Beloved; everything converges: Mr. Bodwin coming to fetch Denver, Denver waiting, the crowd of women, Sethe with an ice pick and Beloved, naked and pregnant
C: Finally even the memory of Beloved disappears
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