Beloved Analysis 4

Drew Dischmann

5^th Period

AP Lang/Comp

KP

                        Beloved Analysis 4           

            In Beloved, Toni Morrison incorporates allusions in addition to concise language filled with imagery to relay the importance of previous events taking place in Sethe’s life. Morrison utilizes flashbacks to tell the saddening story of Sethe, Baby Suggs, and Sethe’s children. In one of these flashbacks Morrison writes about “the four horsemen”, thus alluding to the apocalypse written about in the Bible (174). This allusion sets up and foreshadows a scene in which to Sethe, is the end of her life. Through Sethe’s recognition of the events taking place, she quickly decides to attempt the premeditated murder of her children as she believes saving them from the future through whatever means necessary is in fact protecting them. Upon cutting her youngest daughter’s throat (Beloved), Sethe then attempts to kill Denver by “holding.. an infant by the heels” and then in an effort to end her daughters life, she “simply swung the baby toward the wall, missed and tried to connect a second time”(175). Through these saddening actions, Morrison also alludes to the Greek heroin, Achilles; in the way Sethe hold’s her baby. Achilles, who was held by his Achilles and dipped in the river styx, was saved from pain and death until he was later struck in his Achilles by a stray arrow. Denver, held tightly by her heels, also escapes death and lives on when her siblings seem to either die or run off into the unknown. Denver is spared in a time of peril, much like Achilles was spared throughout the Trojan War. Aside from Morrison’s strict use of allusions to convey her point, she also fills her writing with vivid imagery. Morrison writes “two boys bled in the sawdust and dirt at the feet of a nigger women holding a blood soaked child”(175).  Accompanying connotations and metaphors, phrases such as “blood soaked” relay the significance and amount of suffering taking place within the barn of 124. Morrison uses her detailed writing filled with imagery, to show and elaborate on certain atrocities taking place within the lives of Sethe and her children, commonly in flashbacks.