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Part 1, Chapter 13
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Beloved, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Slavery
Motherhood
Storytelling, Memory, and the Past
Community
Home
Summary
Analysis
That night, after Paul D and Sethe leave the dinner table and go upstairs, Denver and Beloved talk. Denver says that Sethe likes having Paul D at the house, but Beloved tells Denver to make him leave. Beloved pulls a tooth out of her mouth without any appearance of pain. She is convinced that this means her body will start to fall apart into pieces, and she explains how she finds it hard to feel complete when Sethe is not around. Denver asks why Beloved doesn’t cry from the pain of losing the tooth and Beloved begins to weep. Denver holds her.
Whereas Denver is willing to have a home arrangement with Sethe and Paul D, Beloved is focused upon having Sethe all to herself, furthering her association both with overly extreme, harmful desire as well as with the selfish all-powerful need of a baby. Her strange behavior with her tooth again suggests that she is somehow supernatural or inhuman.
Themes
Literary Devices
