Sethe And Identity In Toni Morrison's Beloved

acts as Sethe’s self that Sethe desperately tries to forget and to “throw away.” When Sethe finally learns to cope with her past memories, she comes to understand fully and objectively her past and herself.

In general, Beloved’s role in formulation of Sethe’s identity is absolutely crucial in the novel. Beloved is not only the ghost of Sethe’s killed daughter, but also a powerful symbol of the link between the present and the past Sethe attempts to keep the past away, however, Beloved’s comeback demonstrates the impossibility and the difficulty of suppressing her past. In other words, with Beloved’s arrival, revealing memories helps Sethe understand her and past and thus herself. Beloved can be seen as Sethe’s personal past and at the

Critic Marc Conner concludes by citing Toni Morrison’s own words:

Indeed, the community is part of the very cause for Pecola’s pathetic desire for blue eyes…Morrison has stated that the reason for Pecola’s desire must be at least partially traced to the failure’s of Pecola’s own community: ‘…she wanted to have blue eyes and she wanted to be Shirley Temple…because of the society in which she lived and, very importantly, because of the black people who helped her want to be that. ( 56)

Claudia serves as Morrison’s ideal of what a typical African American should exemplify. Claudia cultivates her loathing of what everyone around her seems to strive for, and therefore cannot understand the beauty people see in the blond haired, blue-eyed doll she is presented with for Christmas. Claudia says:

I had only one desire: to dismember it. To see of what it was made…to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me. Adults,older girls…all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured