Jeremy Keeshin

Beloved: The Path from Arrogance to Destruction

Among the most prominent natural human instincts is the desire for power. Humans are

constantly in a struggle to gain power or liberate themselves from the power of others. Those

who wish to free themselves from the control of others face a daunting challenge. In the novel

Beloved by Toni Morrison, each character has a distinct power struggle. The main character

Sethe is involved in a struggle to free herself from the clutches of Beloved, the ghost of her dead

daughter. Sethe wrestles with the concept of trying to get Beloved to accept her murder and

understand the reasons for Sethe’s actions. Sethe’s struggle to gain Beloved’s approval reveals

that she is arrogant because she wants others to empathize and appreciate her actions without

having to admit wrongdoing.

A major part of Sethe’s arrogance results from her denial of the past. When the reader is

introduced to Sethe in Chapter 1, it becomes evident that she tries to conceal her past by the way

that she only chooses to remember specific parts of Sweet Home. Her memory only allows her to

remember the positive and not the gruesome aspects of life at her former plantation. Sethe tells

how she only recalls certain aspects of her stay as Sweet Home: “It shamed her—remembering

the wonderful soughing trees rather than the boys. Try as she might to make it otherwise, the

sycamores beat out the children every time and she could not forgive here memory for that” (7).

She uses this as a coping mechanism to deal with the horrific scars of her past. Sethe also uses

denial when she tries to explain what happened and why it happened to Beloved. In Sethe’s

mind, the murder was righteous, brave, and an act of love. Clearly, she is somewhat doubtful of

herself, because she still feels the need to explain. When Sethe thinks of how she will explain to

Beloved she says, “This is the first time I’m telling it and I’m telling it to you because it might

help explain something to you although I know you don’t need me to do it” (227). Shortly

afterward Sethe says, “I’ll explain to her, even thought I don’t have to” (236). Sethe’s stipulation
 Jeremy Keeshin
Beloved: The Path from Arrogance to Destruction
in each of these quotes demonstrates the inconsistency of her character. Sethe’s paradox lies in

the fact that she believes that Beloved already fully understands, but she still feels the need to

explain her actions. Sethe subconsciously knows that Beloved does not understand, and that is

why she is trying to explain to her. However, she does not want to admit to herself the possibility

that there was a misunderstanding and that she could have been wrong, so she adds the condition

that Beloved obviously understands.

Another important aspect of Sethe’s arrogance is that it is brutal and unbending, and this

causes her act somewhat irrationally. Throughout the book Morrison builds up the idea of Sethe’s

iron will, but in contrast she also fosters the idea that her “love is too thick” (193). Sethe is the

“one who never looked away” when a man got stomped to death and the dog got slammed by the

baby ghost (14). She has seen the worst and dealt with the worst, and nothing fazes her anymore.

When she sees schoolteacher coming to take her and her children away, she acts swiftly once

again, and is not fazed. She seizes her children, knocks Howard and Buglar unconscious and

saws off the head of her baby Beloved. She does this all without even taking a second thought,

and she does it out of love. Sethe murders Beloved for her own good, but is too arrogant to

realize that she could have been wrong. In her mind she maintains the image that she was right

so she can continue living, but the idea of wrong flutters there as well, but cannot be admitted

publicly. Morrison tells the reader of Sethe’s brutal arrogance when she states, “This here Sethe

talked about safety with a handsaw” (193). This is the most powerful demonstration of her

arrogance. Depending on the way it is perceived, the murder can be viewed as the most selfish or

selfless action. However, her unremitting certainty seals it as selfish. She comes out of the shed

with her “head a bit too high” and her “back a little too straight” as a open display of her

sureness (179). Paul D labels the idea that was so appalling about the incident. Paul D realizes
 Jeremy Keeshin
Beloved: The Path from Arrogance to Destruction
that “more important than what Sethe had done was what she claimed” (193). She claimed that,

no matter what, she thought she was right. Sethe’s arrogance was not in the killing, but in the

reaction to the killing. When Beloved tells Sethe she left her behind, she means that she left

Beloved, as the incarnation of self-doubt, behind. Morrison wants us to see from Sethe’s

arrogance that we must admit wrongdoing in an effort to reconcile our past.

Sethe’s motherly arrogance leads her to only want the best for her children. Because

Sethe had twenty-eight days of freedom and tasted its appeal and beauty in comparison to her

years as a slave, she decides that neither she nor her children can ever go back to slavery. Sethe

tells the extent to which she despises slavery when she says, “Oh, no. I wasn’t going back

there…. Any life but not that one” (50). Sethe is arrogant in the sense that she out of all the

slaves has the capability to love fully, while all of the others love a little, but safely. Sethe says to

Paul D, “Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all” (194). Paul D only loved a little, Baby

Suggs only loved a little, but Sethe loved fully and killed her child. Sethe wanted to make it up to

Beloved because she didn’t think she understood. She tried to “persuade Beloved, the one and

only person she felt she had to convince, that what she had done was right because it came from

true love” (296). She gave herself fully to Beloved to do her every chore. Morrison explains the

nature of the relationship: “A complaint from Beloved, an apology from Sethe” (283). However,

as Beloved asked for more, Sethe gave more, and it became a vicious circle that fully consumed

her life. The outcome of the struggle was that Sethe became weak, sick, and frail, while Beloved

enlarged. This reveals that Sethe was unsuccessful in her quest to become absolved of her sin, or

in her mind, her good deed, because she would not admit that she was wrong. Morrison tells the

reader, “Sethe pleaded for forgiveness,” but she never confessed a possibility of wrongdoing

(284). When Sethe fully devotes herself to Beloved, she leaves Denver behind: “The two of them
 Jeremy Keeshin
Beloved: The Path from Arrogance to Destruction
cut Denver out of the games” (282). This flaw in Sethe’s motherhood was that in giving all of the

attention to Beloved, she could not properly raise Denver. For years, Sethe had already been

unable to raise Denver capably because they had set themselves in isolation.

Sethe’s arrogance magnified the rift between I24 and the community because her

decisions polarized the rest of the town. She had a bigoted moral code that only accepted those

who thought she was right. She did not have friends and was too stubborn to sacrifice a little of

her image to establish relations with the community. She was too worried about concealing and

ignoring her past to try and barely eke out a present, let alone a future. Baby Suggs had given her

the advice: “Think on it then lay it down,” but Sethe chose not to heed it (215). She set herself

apart from the community when she stole instead of waiting in line with the others: “She

despised herself for the pride that made pilfering better than standing in line at the window of the

general store with all the other Negroes” (225). Her murder of Beloved set her apart from the

community because no single person could relate to a woman who had killed her child and then

been proud of it. Ella demonstrates the communities dislike for Sethe when she says, “I ain’t got

no friends take a handsaw to their own children.”

Sethe’s character plays an important role in Morrison’s overall message in Beloved. The

reader learns from Sethe that a person who does not admit the wrongdoings of their past cannot

reconcile the problems of the present. Sethe wanted to be understood, but she created a barrier

between herself and the community by not reaching out to them when she was in need of help.

Morrison tells us to never be too sure of ourselves, even in the most drastic of situations because

overconfidence will lead to destruction. Morrison leaves the reader with the lesson that a person

must not be too arrogant to admit their faults and ask for help, or they will continue to struggle

and surrender to the problems they confront.

 Jeremy Keeshin
Beloved: The Path from Arrogance to Destruction

Works Cited

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Vintage Books, 2004.