Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
The Supernatural
Morrison enhances the world of Beloved by
investing it with a supernatural dimension. While it is possible
to interpret the book’s paranormal phenomena within a realist framework,
many events in the novel—most notably, the presence of a ghost—push
the limits of ordinary understanding. Moreover, the characters in Beloved do not
hesitate to believe in the supernatural status of these events.
For them, poltergeists, premonitions, and hallucinations are ways
of understanding the significance of the world around them. Such occurrences
stand in marked contrast to schoolteacher’s perverse hyper-“scientific”
and empirical studies.
Allusions to Christianity
Beloved’s epigraph, taken from Romans 9:25,
bespeaks the presence that Christian ideas will have in the novel.
The “four horsemen” who come for Sethe reference the description
of the Apocalypse found in the Book of Revelations. Beloved is reborn
into Sethe’s world drenched in a sort of baptismal water. As an
infant, Denver drinks her sister’s blood along with her mother’s
breast milk, which can be interpreted as an act of Communion that
links Denver and Beloved and that highlights the sacrificial aspect
of the baby’s death. Sethe’s act so horrifies schoolteacher that
he leaves without taking her other children, allowing them to live
in freedom. The baby’s sacrificial death, like that of Christ, brings
salvation. The book’s larger discussions of sin, sacrifice, redemption,
forgiveness, love, and resurrection similarly resound with biblical
references.
