Sethe Accepted by the Community

So I’m thinking that my theory about the community and their denouncement of Sethe was pretty accurate. As soon as Beloved begins to drain the life out of Sethe and Denver ventures out, the community finally rallies together to go to 124. Ella organized a group of thirty or so people to march to 124 to confront Beloved. Based on Morrison’s description, it did not take too much convincing to get them to come together. That means that a good majority of the community truly did not harbor extreme negative opinions about Sethe. When Ella, one of the most skeptical of Sethe and her story, works through Denver’s story, making her own conclusions, she says “nobody got that coming” and “children can’t just come up and kill the mama” (301). Although she did not agree with her actions (or did she?), she did not agree with the punishment that seemed to have been put in place.

I think that part of the abandonment of 124 and Sethe had come from not only Sethe’s actions, but also Baby Suggs and her feasts causing jealousy. After Baby Suggs decided to hold a massive feast for approximately ninety people and they had a huge celebration, a lot of people held negative emotions towards her afterwards. They wondered why she was able to do such things and why they were not allowed to themselves. She had not suffered the way that they had (although in reality, I don’t think you could compare any of their suffering) and therefore did not deserve all the goodness that she had.

Even though they may have harbored some negativity towards Baby Suggs, she was, in a sense, their teacher. She told them to love and take care of themselves or else who would do it for them? So, when she died only a short time after Sethe arrived, the community was able to combine two negative events into one and they blamed and denounced Sethe.

Yet, in the end, they came together and marched to 124 where they ‘saved’ Sethe from the life-absorbing Beloved. I now have very little doubt that their negativity was for her action alone and I believe that they may have done the same if placed in the situation. At the end, they are all (eventually) able to forget about Beloved and move on with their lives. Of course, that brings the question of what/who was Beloved, but I’m going to hold off on that question. I think that the community kind of adopts a forgive and forget attitude at the end, able to leave Beloved behind, move on with their lives, and accept Sethe into the community. Toni Morrison said that Sethe’s actions were truly the highest act of love as she would rather kill them then have them live and die in slavery and I believe that there is much truth behind that.

Finally, I just want to say that I really enjoyed this novel. At the beginning, I was kind of skeptical and I was kind of confused with all the switches in point of view, but Toni Morrison is truly an amazing writer and I loved not only the story itself, but the way that it was crafted together.