After Beloved appears out of the water and is received by Sethe and Denver, the book gives you many context clues as to who she is. They describe her as being in her late teens, or early adulthood, yet her skin is flawless. She doesn't even have any wrinkles on her knuckles. She looks brand new. Additionally, their dog called Here Boy immediately scurries away in fear. This can be explained by the treatment the dog received at the beginning of the book. Sethe recalls when Here Boy is thrown against the wall of their house by Beloved in her ghost form. So it's pretty for the dog to be afraid of Beloved and want to run away. However, there are multiple points about the book and Beloved that honestly confuse me as this book is unraveling.
How does is take Sethe such a long time to realize that this girl is her daughter? And additionally, if she didn't know for that long, why did she take care of a complete stranger like she was her own? Maybe she hoped that this daughter, and unconsciously knew the truth before she actually figured it out. And while there is no way Sethe would be able to recognize the girl, since she lost Beloved at such a young age, there were multiple clues other than the dog and the new skin to realize that this was no average girl.
Is this actually Beloved? Or is this going to be one of those books where you find out at the end that Sethe ending up going insane from her extremely traumatic past, and has been hallucinating her life every since, and that Denver either left her years ago or died, and Beloved is just another hallucination that haunts her from her past? This could be one of those stories where Beloved is basically just a symbol or theme for something bigger then herself, and she was never there in the first place. Just thoughts, you know?
I think that Sethe took Beloved in because of how giving the community is. While the community faltered at times, they still seem to provide help as they did for Denver and Sethe at the end. I like your last paragraph because I, too, think that Beloved represents so many things and there is the possibility that Beloved is a figment of Sethe's imagination.
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