Stream of Consciousness Kristina Daily

In Morrison’s Beloved, Sethe, Denver, and Beloved’s internal thoughts and ramblings
are revealed throughout chapters twenty through twenty-four, and reflect the trauma that their
past experiences have caused. Her central idea is of how the past can create destructive
behaviors and instability, as shown by Sethe’s stream of consciousness throughout her chapter.
When recalling the cause of her mother’s death, she wonders if she was caught “Running, you
think?” before quickly denying that she could not have “Because she was my ma’am and
nobody’s ma’am would run off and leave her daughter, would she? Would she, now?” (203).
Sethe’s continuous surge of questions and denial over her mother’s abandonment of her shows
that she is acutely aware of her mother’s lack of love towards her own daughter. With Beloved
and Denver, Sethe attempts to smother them in the only love that she knows how to give to
compensate for the lack of love she was given as a child: obsessive, damaging love.
Denver’s passage is filled with her desire to protect Beloved, as that is all that she has
left in her life. Following the opening line of “Beloved is my sister”, Denver states that she
“swallowed her blood right along with my mother’s milk” (21). The swallowing of Beloved’s blood
not only symbolizes the deep attachment between Beloved and Denver that is unique to them,
but also serves as an allusion to religion. Similarly to Jesus, Beloved served as a scapegoat for
her family, as without her death everyone would have been sent into slavery. This obsession
with Beloved stems from Denver’s awareness of her past. Denver’s awareness of her grim yet
irreplaceable connection to Beloved is what creates Denver’s obsessive and unhealthy
dependence on her.
The most grammatically strange passage is from Beloved’s mind, where she recalls
images of slavery and death from her time after Sethe killed her. As she’s struggling to climb out
of her cold grave, she opens her eyes to see “the face I lost Sethe’s is the face that left me
Sethe sees me see her and I see the smile” (213). Beloved’s description through her stream of
consciousness shows her obsession with Sethe’s existence in her life, and ultimately reveals
that Beloved is still a child yearning for her mother. Her past of being murdered by her own
mother as a young, ignorant child causes her to resurrect and only seek her mother regardless
of her mother’s actions towards her.
Finally, the last chapter of this sequence covers the minds of all three of the women.
Through the convoluted and confusing dialogue, there is unity between their ways of thinking.
The last three lines repeat “You are mine. You are mine. You are mine” (217). Repetition of this
line blurs the perspective to the reader, making it so that the reader is unable to determine who
the speaker is. Sethe, Denver, and Beloved’s collective obsession with one another reflects the
effects of the misery and suffering that their past has caused, as they are left hopelessly clinging
onto each other, as they are too afraid to either accept their past or move on from it.
Conclusively, Morrison’s use of their stream of consciousness detail their severe trauma
and inability to live their lives without the reliance on others to make themselves happy due to
their past, and regardless of each of their circumstances being different from one another, they
are all connected in some way, whether that be through milk, blood, or the looming decades of
slavery following behind them wherever they go.