Beloved: Part 1, Chapter 16 Summary & Analysis

The appearance of the four horsemen, reminiscent of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, is one literal way in which Sethe’s past of slavery comes back to haunt her and her family. It is also an example of how permanent and pervasive the effects of slavery were. Even after slaves escaped to freedom, they were not really free, since they could potentially be recaptured by their former owners. There is also the sense that if the community had not been offended by the celebration they might have warned Baby Suggs and Sethe of what was approaching. But they did not.

Sethe’s killing her own child is the strongest statement against slavery. Her act essentially claims that death is preferable to a life of slavery. Moreover, she implicitly asserts that it is better to be the mother of a dead child than the mother of an enslaved child. This is the central event to the novel’s exploration of motherhood and slavery. Schoolteacher cannot understand such thoughts (he can't even understand that slaves are anything more than animals) and so he thinks she has gone wild. He can't see the rationality and love in her actions. At the same time, Sethe has murdered a baby, her baby, even if to protect it. She has saved and murdered the baby, and the irreconcilable fact of doing both of those things in the same action shows just how pernicious and awful slavery was.

Despite her attempt to kill her children, Sethe maintains a fierce sense of motherly duty, as she is reluctant to let her baby go and breastfeeds Denver immediately. Her actions show that her attempt to kill her own children was out of a kind of love, however perverse it may appear.