Human Emotion Displayed in Toni Morrison's "Beloved"

Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved, reveals the effects of human emotion and its power to cast an individual into a struggle against him or herself. In the beginning of the novel, Sethe is seen as a woman who is resigned to her desolate life and isolates herself from all those around her. Yet, she was once a woman full of feeling: she had loved her husband Halle, loved her four young children, and loved the days …

…children, the attempts are mistaken as her boys, Buglar and Howard even left home always in fear of what Sethe may try to do to them, "[they] would not let me near them, not even to touch their hair," (p.183). All of this she had to face each day, always blaming herself and therefore in a constant battle with herself in a fear of deeper love and emotion, but more so of betrayal and hurt.