Beloved: AO1 (more specific quotes)

Sethe’s scar

"I've never seen it and I never will." "A chokecherry tree. " “Could have cherries too now for all I know." p20

"Schoolteacher made one [of the boys] open up my back, and when it closed it made a tree." p21

black

the eyes were big and black. P72

Her eyes stretched to the limit, black as the all-night sky. P97

they (her eyes) were as black as her skin, she looked blind. P194

prejudice against enslaved African Americans

in territory infected by the Klan… the dragon swam the Ohio at will. (supernatural power of racism) p85

There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks. P114

One step off that ground and they were trespassers among the human race. P161

ten breeding years left p192

"No, no. That's not the way. I told you to put her human characteristics on the left; her animal ones on the right." p247

 

Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. P254 (lots of racism stuff on p254)

It was the jungle whitefolks planted in them. … until it invaded the whites who had made it. P254

Beloved (human)

A fully dressed woman walked out of the water. P65

leaned against a mulberry tree. P65 (symbolic of growth/resilience and death w a connection to life and the afterlife)

the eyes were big and black. P72

resting her head … as thought it was too heavy for a neck alone. P72

Sethe was licked, tasted, eaten by Beloved's eyes. P74

Sethe was flattered by Beloved's open, quiet devotion. … the way a zealot pleases his teacher. P74

The longing she saw there was bottomless. P75

Just outside music it lay, with a cadence not like theirs. P78 (spectral, link to LH)

Her eyes stretched to the limit, black as the all-night sky. P97

Beloved (baby/ghost)

Its 'persecution', 'the ghost' p4

"You forgetting how little it is," said her mother. "She wasn't even two years old when she died." (shift in pronouns) p5

'a haint in my house' p19

 

The potent pride of the mistreated. P122

Stamp Paid

He knew the secrets of the Ohio River and its banks; p216

And right there was the thorn. P217 (Jesus like/biblical allusion, messianic undertone - who's the saviour?)

Born Joshua, he renamed himself when he handed over his wife to his master's son. P236 (biblical - Joshua: God is Deliverance - led the Hebrews to the Promised Land)

Halle

"He couldn't get out the loft." p87

"that day broke him like a twig." p88

"He had butter all over his face." p89

Baby Suggs

Suspended between the nastiness of life and the meanness of the dead, she couldn't get interested in leaving life or living it. P4

Her past had been like her present - intolerable - and since she knew death was anything but forgetfulness, P4

Where does she get it all, Baby Suggs, holy? P175

Loaves and fishes were His powers-they did not belong to an ex-slave … p176

The whitefolks had tired her out at last. (BS) p229

the infanticide

how she flew, snatching up her children like a hawk on the wing; how her face beaked, how her hands worked like claws, p203

 

a pretty little slavegirl had recognized a hat, and split to the woodshed to kill her children. P203

 

This here Sethe talked about safety with a handsaw. P211

"Your love is too thick," p211

"You got two feet, Sethe, not four," p212

 

the Misery (which is what he [Stamp Paid] called Sethe's rough response to the Fugitive Bill) p217

 

the bloodspill in her backyard p225

memory

Unfortunately her brain was devious. (disconnection, can't trust) p7

 

She could not forgive her memory for that. P7

Beloved’s succubus

"As Beloved grew bigger, Sethe grew smaller"

The devil-child was clever, they thought. And beautiful. It had taken the shape of a pregnant woman p333