Summary: Chapter 20
With Chapter 20, a series of stream-of-consciousness
monologues begins. Sethe speaks in this chapter, followed by Denver
in Chapter 21 and Beloved in Chapter 22.
Chapter 23 comprises a chorus of the three
voices. In Chapter 20, Sethe begins, “Beloved,
she my daughter. She mine.” Sethe wants to explain everything to
Beloved so that her daughter will understand why her own mother
killed her. Sethe cannot understand why, despite all the clues,
she initially failed to recognize that Beloved was her daughter
incarnate. She decides Paul D must have distracted her.
Throughout the chapter, Sethe ponders the power of a mother’s love.
She remembers that her own mother was hanged, but she does not know
the circumstances that prompted the lynching. Perhaps her mother
attempted to run away, but without Sethe. Sethe wants to believe
her mother would never have abandoned her, that she was as devoted
a mother as Sethe herself is. After killing Beloved, Sethe wanted
to lie down in the grave with her dead daughter. Yet she knew she
couldn’t give up; she had to keep going for the sake of her three
living children.
Summary: Chapter 21
Denver’s voice emerges in this chapter, which begins,
“Beloved is my sister.” Denver knows that she swallowed her sister’s
blood along with her mother’s milk. She confesses that she has loved
Sethe out of fear, and that Howard and Buglar ran away because they,
like Denver, feared that whatever it was that motivated Sethe to
kill her children might resurface one day. Denver believes that
Beloved returned to help her wait for her father to come home. Denver
is also convinced that she must protect Beloved from Sethe. She
remembers everything Baby Suggs told her about Halle, which was
that he was an angel who loved things too much. The power of his
love used to scare Baby Suggs because she knew that the large size
of his heart made it an easy target. Denver’s youth has been comprised
of her fear of her mother and her hope for her father’s arrival.
Summary: Chapter 22
Beloved’s fragmented and complex monologue constitutes
the third of the first-person stream-of-consciousness monologues.
She begins, “I am Beloved and she is mine.” Her patchy memories
are of a time when she crouched among dead bodies. She speaks of
thirst and hunger, of death and sickness, and of “men without skin.”
She says all the people are trying to leave their bodies behind.
Beloved then focuses on a woman whose face she “wants” because
it is hers. The rest of the monologue consists of Beloved’s description
of her attempt to “join” with the woman. She wishes she could bite
the “iron circle” from around the woman’s neck and mentions the
woman’s “sharp earrings” and “round basket” several times. At the
end of the chapter, Beloved is “in the water,” and neither she nor
the woman has an iron circle around her neck any longer. She is
swallowed by the woman and, suddenly, she is the woman.
She sees herself swim away and says, “I am alone.” She then describes
emerging from the water and needing to find a place to be. When
she opens her eyes, she sees the “face [she] lost.” She says that
“Sethe’s is the face that left [her].” Beloved ends her monologue
by saying, “now we can join a hot thing.”
Summary: Chapter 23
Beloved’s words give way to a passage of poetic prose
in which the three women’s voices come together and mingle, although
not in a typical dialogic style. Beloved says that she and Sethe
lost and found one another. She tells Sethe that she came back from
the other side for her, that she remembers her, and that she is
scared the men without skin will come back. Sethe assures her that
they will not. Denver warns Beloved not to love Sethe too much.
Beloved says she already loves Sethe too much, and Denver promises
to protect her. Beloved begs Sethe never to leave her again and
Sethe complies. Beloved laments that Sethe left and hurt her.
