Beloved and Ghosts from Outer Space

Morrison’s treatment of supernatural elements, especially the character of Beloved, bears a close resemblance to Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 science fiction novel Solaris. Lem describes a crew of researches from Earth fruitlessly trying to establish communication with a telepathic alien organism - a living ocean covering the surface of planet Solaris. After the scientists turn to more radical methods of stimulating the ocean, the organism responds by materializing replicas of people from the crew members’ individual repressed traumatic memories. In nearly every aspect, Beloved’s nature seems much closer to those replicants than to traditional folklore ghosts. Just like the Solaris replicants, Beloved doesn’t have a past. She has no memory, and hence identity, of her own, separate from Sethe’s. Also, just like the replicants, Beloved can’t physically bear to be separated from her host. Beloved was even spawned from the water, just like the mirages of Solaris.

Writing the character of Beloved, Morrison could have drawn inspiration from Solaris, since the novel’s first translation into English in 1970 received fairly wide recognition. But the similarities might also be incidental, since Morrison and Lem crafted their analogous supernatural creatures as physical metaphors for similar psychological phenomena. They represent, in terms of psychoanalysis, autonomous complexes: systems of memories, emotions, and thoughts repressed from the conscious, but continuing to independently affect a person’s psyche. Beloved, as before her materialization did the ghost of 124, is a tangible force that uncontrollably influences Sethe’s personal identity as well as her interactions with others. The symbol of the ocean, or water, may also be explained in terms of psychoanalysis as the archetype of the unconscious. Yet, it seems that unlike the Solaris replicas, Beloved possesses some sort of agency, altering Sethe’s life not simple by the mere fact of her presence, but sometimes by active effort. She also meaningfully interacts with other characters, like Denver and Paul D. Although the similarities between the supernatural in Beloved and Solaris seem obvious, the few but important differences that there are make me wonder if this comparison limits the range of Beloved’s character to a narrower framework than Morrison intended. Can Beloved be reduced to a mere psychological function of Sethe’s mind, or does she have an even greater significance in the novel?