The movie Beloved takes place just after the civil war, during slavery. The
story takes place in a rough-hewn house outside of Cincinnati. The house belongs
to an ex-slave named Sethe. She has gone from plantation life to owning this
house. The house contains a lot of memories. Sethe has went through so much
torment. She was raped by some men on her plantation and her husband saw.
Sethe’s husband paid for the freedom of her and her children. Sethe gave birth
to a child and was helped by a white woman while on her way to the North. She
promised to name her child after her. That is how Denver got her name. She was
jailed for killing one of her children because she did not want the slave man to
retrieve them. She was stopped before she could kill the rest of her children.
Leading to the climax of the movie is the arrival of a breath taking apparition.
A beautiful young women dressed in mourning is washed up on a river bank. This
happens to be Beloved. Throughout the movie, Beloved slowly reveals her
earthbound side. Before she was at the crossroads of the supernatural and the
natural world. Beloved cunningly suspends Sethe between past horrors and the
potential of renewing those past horrors. Oprah Winfrey, who plays Sethe,
supplies a sense of the deep, stubborn essential to Sethe’s survival.
Sethe’s friend Paul D, an ex-slave, who has wondered alone for nearly two
decades wanders to Sethe’s door looking for some place to alight. Sethe lets
him stay because she too has been alone for some years now. She enjoys his
company. He did not get off at a good hand with Denver because she was not use
to sharing her mother. Denver did not have to share her mother since she can
remember because her brothers had left when she was still an infant. Paul D and
her teen-age daughter Denver are both devastated by this dangerous person who
calls herself Beloved. Denver and Paul D had just reached a truce before Beloved
had came. Things got back to being hectic. But Denver Befriends Beloved and
treats her as her sister. Beloved brought tension to the house. She wanted to be
spoiled by sethe. Denver started to feel rejected. Paul D is so uncomfortable
with Beloved’s presence that he stops sleeping in the bed and starts sleeping
in on a chair. Beloved has this force that she uses. Anything that she wants she
will do something in order to get it. Beloved is the spirit of Sethe’s child
that she killed. Beloved did not think that was fair. Beloved has come to get
revenge, and she haunts and torments Sethe until she is satisfied.