Beloved Essay - 984 Words

Beloved Everyday, people are faced with choices. Some of life’s choices are simple, such as deciding what to wear to school or choosing a television station to watch. Other choices, however, are much more serious and have life-altering consequences. Sethe, the protagonist of Beloved, and Sophie, the main focus in Sophie’s Choice, are mothers that are faced with choices that change their entire lives. While the time period and characters involved differ, the choices of Sethe and Sophie can easily be compared. First and foremost, Sethe and Sophie both make choices that lead to the killing of their children. In both pieces, the actions of the mothers cause the audience to think twice about the limits of maternal love. Sethe tries to kill†¦show more content†¦Because she sees that her son is stronger and would be more likely to survive the brutality of war, she sends her young daughter to the oven. The choices of Sethe and Sophie are also similar in the respect that they both involve death, guilt, and pain. Sophie and Sethe both lose children as a result of their decisions and have to live with the consequences of their actions. After the loss of her daughter, Sethe spends each day of her life isolated and filled with guilt in 124. As an attempt to deal with her guilt, she treats her living daughter, Denver, with great care. No matter how hard she tries to console herself, however, she is still haunted by the ghost of her deceased daughter. Sophie also experiences a great deal of guilt as a result of her choice, but she handles her feelings differently than Sethe. Instead of trying to comfort herself like Sethe does, she tries to punish herself by dealing with the mental instability of her lover Nathan. At times, Nathan is horribly cruel to Sophie, only to become sweet and loving just hours later. Even though both women cope with their feelings differently, they both cannot completely abolish their guilt. Although Sethe and Sophie have similar feelings of pain and guilt, they deal with their problems in completely different time periods and places. Sethe makes her choice in 1855 in Ohio, while Sophie has to make her decision during World War II in Europe.Show MoreRelatedToni Morrison s Beloved And Beloved1376 Words   |  6 Pagesanother surprise to the story of Beloved. The addition of character Beloved conceals whole meaning Morrison tries to conduct to the readers. So far, character Beloved is portrayed as an innocent, pure, yet egotistic girl. Beloved also presumably the incarnation of Sethe’s dead baby, whose tomb is engraved Beloved. Morrison offers supernatural element in the story to create mysterious and spooky atmosphere, which raise curiosity and excite readers even more. Beloved is seen as the resemblance of Sethe’sRead More Beloved Essay593 Words   |  3 Pages Beloved, like many of the other books we have read, has to deal with the theme of isolation. There was the separation of Sethe and Denver from the rest of the world. There was also, the loneliness of each main character throughout the book. There were also other areas of the book where the idea of detachment from something was obvious. People’s opinions about the house made them stay away and there was also the inner detachment of Sethe from herself. The theme that Toni Morrison had in mind whenRead More Significance of the Ghost of Beloved in Toni Morrisons Beloved1376 Words   |  6 PagesIn Beloved, Toni Morrison frequently alternates between telling stories from Sethes past, to telling events in the present. 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