Baby Suggs' preaching and Sethe's strangling --> the cause of Beloved's return
After Halle traded his freedom for his mother’s, Baby Suggs fled to 124 where she cared for other former slave women and children. She began preaching to calm and appease the African Americans for the whiter pigmented races discrimination and prejudice. Because of the miseries and hardships of slavery, she expressed “to let the children come” and for the children to “let your mothers hear you laugh”(103). She urged the children to dance with their mothers so they can let their mothers cry “without covering their eyes”, and “the women let loose” to her song of loving(103). To remind the darker pigmented people that lighter pigmented people “do not love your flesh” and away from you family or roots, during this time period, was dangerous and troublesome(103). Compassion and empathy was shared by staying close to your family . When Sethe left Beloved “behind” with “nothing to breathe” and “no room to move in” (88,89), Beloved became attached to the idea of adjoining near Sethe and obtain attention from her. Baby Sugg’s “long notes” of unity through family sunk into Beloved devotion to Sethe’s “flesh” and getting to know her past(104). Through the lower classes dependency upon the spiritual world, their lost sense of individuality and disillusionment depended upon the wisdom and comfort of their deceased loved ones. Sethe chooses to visit “Baby Sugg’s rock” to appreciate “freeing” herself and what she had to do in order to comprehend “claiming ownership of that freed self” (112). As she had in the past, Sethe asked Baby Suggs to “let me just feel your fingers”, an interaction with each other “flesh” (112). Although Sethe called out for Baby Suggs, the “unmistakably caressing” fingers were “childlike” and “light” and Sethe described the interaction as “equal to any skin-close love she had known”(112). When Denver and Beloved rushed to Sethe’s aid, Morrison depicts Beloved as “hovering above” to illustrate the already suspicious tangibility of Beloved. After Denver challenges Beloved for seeing her “face” (119) in the Clearing, there was a clear connection between Beloved’s underworld emergence and “leaning in” on their lives (114). With Sethe's broken "heartstrings", Beloved thirsted for Sethe's contentment(105). Searching for her mother’s happiness caused Beloved to stroke Sethe’s neck but it is alarmingly suspicious at her attempt to strangle her mother. Like a child seeking attention, Beloved’s fascination was carried away into a dark desire to inveigle and keep her mother with her in any way possible, conceivably killing Sethe to bring her into the underworld, the ultimate elucidation of a child’s yearning to be with their mother eternally.
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