Once in a while, someone will be remembered not because of who he was, but because of how the world saw him. In Toni Morrison's Beloved, the ghost of a murdered baby has power over the other characters because the world she died in saw her death as a metaphor for the evils of slavery rather than the death of a child. Killed by her own mother, the ghost - Beloved - is stripped of her value as a child and human being and given a new identity. She becomes a symbol to reveal the injustices of slavery that are so great they can lead a mother to murder her first daughter.
Maybe this is one of the reasons why Beloved haunts her mother, Sethe. Sethe took away Beloved’s significance in society’s memory. Had Sethe decided to accept her actions in front of everyone as her own (rather than infuse the incident within Beloved’s story), then the world could distinguish the difference between Beloved and suffering. I believe that Beloved haunts Sethe partially because Sethe took away the meaning in Beloved’s death and turned her into a kind of martyr for slavery.
This book raises a side question – how can someone prevent another from shadowing his/her death with a fragmented meaning? I’m not entirely sure but I feel like it’s necessary to either persevere with a certain purpose until all know you stand for it completely before death and thus after, or depend on others to promote your message after you’ve passed on.
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