Function of Community in Toni Morrison's Beloved

Sethe’s Journey from Slavery to Ostracism

Apr 6, 2009

Toni Morrison explores how a community that functions like a family allows itself to cast out one of its most vulnerable members.

The community in Toni Morrison’s book Beloved is almost like a family -- they rescue runaway slaves and help them become part of their society as well. However, they also -- as a unified group -- experience envy and hate and ostracize one of their members.

When Sethe, a strong mother escaping the bonds of slavery to a world of freedom comes to the community, she is initially welcomed with open arms. She moves into the house that is known simply as 124 with her mother-in-law Baby Suggs. For almost a month, she feels free and happy.

Sethe's Agonizing Choice

But when her former owner, schoolteacher, comes to take her back, Sethe knows deep in her soul that she does not want her four children to experience the horrors of a life of slavery; she chooses death for her children instead, and by the time schoolteacher reaches her, she has already slain her toddler and is preparing to kill the other three. Schoolteacher decides then not to reclaim her; he instead compares her to a feral animal that has “gone wild, due to the mishandling” she faced at the hands of his nephew (176).

When the sheriff takes her away, a crowd “of black faces” witness the aftermath (179). Sethe consequently goes to jail only to be released for the burial of her baby. The community never forgets, though. “Those twenty-eight happy days [when she first arrived] were followed by eighteen years of disapproval and a solitary life” (204).

The Way it Was

Before she kills her daughter, however, Sethe--after finding her way to the Ohio River--is rescued by the community. She had sent her children ahead from Sweet Home, the plantation that “owned” her, and follows as quickly as she can. She gives birth to a new child, Denver, on her way to freedom, and--exhausted and near death--she meets “three colored people fishing” who ask her if she is planning to cross the river (106). The man called Stamp Paid helps her and her newborn across, covering the baby with a coat, and leaving the two in a “brush-covered hutch with a beaten floor” (107).

Later, a woman named Ella brings her food and takes her to Baby Suggs’ home where she will live. They help her adjust to emancipated life as she rests and recovers from her journey. All the people she has met have “taught her how it felt to wake up at dawn and decide what to do with the day” (111). The community, with the help of two affluent white people, helps newly-escaped slaves not only settle in safely but makes sure their needs are met.

But this community has already passed judgment on Sethe and Baby Suggs before Sethe killed her child. After Sethe settles in, Stamp Paid brings blackberries to Baby Suggs’ house. Baby Suggs decides that she will “do something with the fruit worthy of the man’s labor and his love” (160). So a few blackberry pies turns into several, along with turkeys, watermelon, and a bounty of food; “it grew to a feast for ninety people” (161).

Their generosity and happiness, however, fills the people of the community with hatred, angry, fury, and envy. This “reckless generosity” represents to the community “doom and uncalled-for pride” (162). Rather than being grateful that Baby Suggs and Sethe want to share and celebrate, the community feels anger and jealousy at their good fortune and bounty. The community’s reaction (“Too much . . . Where does she get it all, Baby Suggs, holy? Why is she and hers always the center of things?” [161]) suggests that they feel bounty and good fortune are bad things, perhaps because they’ve only associated these things with white people.

Ostracized from the Community

Sethe resigns herself now to being the community’s outcast. After she returns from jail, free again, she resigns herself to the fact that she will never fit in. She realizes that the sense of belonging that she felt when she first arrived is gone for good.

She tells herself to accept it. This feeling, though, causes her some discomfort, although she won’t admit it to herself. It causes her to worry that, when she wears a nice dress to the carnival, the community will believe she is “putting on airs” (56). It makes her feel to proud to do what other black people in the town must do--she refuses to stand in line at the store like the rest of them; her pride stops her from ever asking for a ride.

Caring for Their Own

Yet this community comes to her aid when she least expects it, not--at first--for Sethe but for her daughter. When Denver seeks help because Beloved--the dead child come back to life--punishes Sethe in the here and now and they are all near starvation, the community begins leaving food for them. In their yard, Denver finds gifts of food--beans, rabbit meat, eggs, etc.

Finally, as Denver’s story about her reborn sister circulates throughout the neighborhood, a group of thirty women determine to go to 124 to take care of what they describe as the “invasion” of Sethe’s home (302). Though no one is sure how Beloved “went or even why” (315), she leaves to be “forgot[ten] like a bad dream” (323).

The community helps Sethe when she first arrives, and even though they experience a long time of treating her as an outcast and despising her, they again help her, because in the end, they all have to live together. Finally, the community leaves the past behind. Ironically, though, Sethe’s new life away from Sweet Home is not much different since she is still not free -- the community she has moved to acts very much like a slave owner in its oppressive ways; ultimately, however, the community acts like a family when they come to the rescue of one of their own.

The copyright of the article Function of Community in Toni Morrison's Beloved in African-American Fiction is owned by Cynthia Jones-Shoeman. Permission to republish Function of Community in Toni Morrison's Beloved in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.