Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Beloved, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Slavery
Motherhood
Storytelling, Memory, and the Past
Community
Home
Summary
Analysis
Beloved’s stream of consciousness continues. She speaks of a woman she was separated from in Africa and a face she saw before emerging from the river. She believes that Sethe is both this face and this woman from whom she has been separated.
Through Beloved’s thoughts, her separation from her mother Sethe comes to stand in for the countless separations from mothers caused by slavery, and even for the ultimate separation of Africans from their motherland.
Themes
Beloved’s thoughts are followed by a dialogue of thoughts between Beloved, Sethe, and Denver. Beloved says she comes from “the other side” and remembers Sethe. Sethe says Beloved is safe now. Denver says that Beloved came when she needed her and that she loves Beloved. Denver says “daddy is coming for us.” A series of unattributed thoughts follow, addressing Beloved and repeating “you are mine.”
Sethe’s thoughts show her devotion to her daughter, who she now believes has returned. The obsessive dialogue of thoughts shows the degradation of life at 124: Sethe increasingly withdraws into her home, her past, and her own thoughts.
Themes
