Study Questions &
Essay Topics
Study Questions
1. How does Beloved function as an alter
ego for Sethe?
2. One could say that the community
judges Sethe harshly out of a desire to displace its own guilt.
What evidence would support such a conclusion?
3. How can Sethe and Paul D be seen
as perpetual fugitives?
Suggested Essay Topics
1. How does Beloved help Denver
gain an independent identity? How might the dynamic between Beloved
and Denver represent the effect of history on subsequent generations?
2. Both Stamp Paid and Baby Suggs
have given themselves their own names: what is the significance
of this? What does the act of renaming signify? What does it say
about the characters who engage in it?
3. The novel is packed with supernatural
events. For example, Baby Suggs has premonitions, Stamp Paid hears
voices, and Beloved seems to be some sort of ghost. How do supernatural phenomena
refute schoolteacher's “scientific” approach to the world? The text
suggests more than once that Beloved may be an ordinary woman recently
escaped from years of captivity. Why might the book make this move
to “explain” the supernatural? Significantly, Lady Jones, another,
though kindly, “schoolteacher” also refutes supernatural explanations.
She is skeptical of Denver's story about Beloved and considers the
town ignorant for believing it. What effect does this have on the
reader's own interpretation of the seemingly magical events in Beloved?
4. The novel is narrated from
the perspectives of former slaves and their families. At different
points we get Sethe's, Paul D's, Stamp Paid's, Baby Suggs's, Beloved's,
Lady Jones's, and Ella's varying points of view. Yet the climax
of the novel—Sethe's act of infanticide—is depicted according to
schoolteacher's point of view. Why does Morrison choose to disclose
the circumstances of Sethe's tragedy as they appeared to schoolteacher?
How does this influence the reader's reaction to the story?
