Spiteful, Loud, and Quiet: Beloved's Transitional Cues

In beginning each part of Beloved with a similar quote (“124 was ______ ”), Toni Morrison is reflecting upon the reader the way we’re supposed to treat the novel’s protagonist, Beloved, all within the same setting. And while that setting doesn’t change, what are far more fluid are the characters, specifically Beloved. These beginnings sufficiently match Beloved’s placement in the narration— her actions and her behavior, and provides a marked transition of the character from child, to solidified presence, to finally a deadened, silent memory.

In the first section, Morrison begins the novel with “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom” (Morrison 9). The presence of Beloved isn’t in any way solid, however what is made clear is the childlike, rageful behavior of her spirit in the house. The spitefulness, mostly due to the fact that the spirit is only just a spirit, is physical—mostly appearing as images/visions, and what can only be described as “the house itself was pitching” with “the floorboards were [shaking] and the grinding, shoving floor was only part of it” (Morrison 27). This physical violence toward the house and its occupants on the part of Beloved’s spirit is a strong indicator of her childlike or infantile behavior. Children are more likely to hit, smack, hurt and cry than use words, and that’s exactly the vision that we’re given here; Beloved only knows how to cause physical harm. By the second section, however, we learn that Beloved as manifested in human form, has matured and is capable of far worse damage.

The second section begins with “124 was loud”. What’s different here for us is that Beloved is a central character in the text— one that disrupts the setting and the others in a less physical and more emotional way than in the first section. It makes sense, however, because in this section Beloved is not spiteful, and not acting as much in a way that screams malice, but more in an emotionally manipulative and damaging way. She does this by, figuratively this time, turning the house upside-down and, while appearing innocent and valuable in the home, ends up making everyone’s lives more dramatic, troublesome and, in short—loud. An ever-growing anger is the key theme of this section, and Beloved grows angrier and angrier, louder and louder, until chapter nineteen she is described as a general “black and angry dead” (Morrison 229). From our perspective, Beloved’s presence and rage is an increasingly dangerous presence until the next section, where the situation seems to simmer.

The third section starts “124 was quiet”, and signifies the closure felt not only in Sethe’s house, but within the entire community within which they’ve finally gotten involved.  In the very beginning, though, Beloved is still alive and has, in a very parasitic way left both Denver and Sethe starving and weak and was “getting bigger, plumper by the day” (Morrison 275). Her greed had grown to such a large proportion that a group of women decided it was a job for exorcism in order to free Denver and Sethe and provide some quiet in their lives, finally. Once Beloved is removed from the home, it’s as if she has not only been physically removed, but emotionally and mentally as well. Sethe and Denver “forgot her like a bad dream” and the quiet as implied by the beginning of the section is a truly clear mindset for the town and 124’s occupants.

Morrison’s mirroring of Beloved’s status with the adjective used to describe 124 is a subtle way of foreshadowing what’s to come, and provides readers with the sense that for Denver and Sethe, their suffering is not permanent, rather, it’s so fleeting that it’s almost a dream.