Beloved Big Question Blog

I asked myself after reading Beloved, "How does Beloved represent past traumas?" To put it in a simple way, she represents trauma because she is the human embodiment of everything that Sethe is running away from. But it goes deeper than that. Beloved represents past traumas by parasitic force. Foster described this phenomenon as 'vampirism', however, Beloved reminds me more of a parasite. She takes from Sethe and makes her feed her constantly, energize her and give her 100% of her attention. As this went on, Sethe looked more and more dead inside every day, an obvious sign that her trauma is taking hold of her. Towards the end of the book, Sethe is possessed by Beloved and begins to act out violently towards others. Sethe is running away from her past and is repressing what she did to Beloved in order to forget her days as a slave girl. But eventually, her trauma has to catch up with her. Not to mention as soon as Beloved left her, she began to slowly heal, with the help of Paul D and Denver. They started to grow profusely when they weren't succumbing to the hands of Beloved and their trauma. Beloved represents this because she is the last untouched product of her time, Sethe chose not to remember what she did, and instead of dealing with her pain, Beloved came and showed her how she made it worse, which is why she represents the past traumas.