The bittersweet love between Sethe and her lost little girl forms the crux, the burden that overloads the scarred back, already laden with its metaphoric chokecherry tree. Sethe, the equivalent of Homer's amazon, remains in control in most situations — enough to stun Here Boy, set his broken legs, and force his eye back into the socket. The likelihood that any female could survive sexual abuse, lashing, thirst, hunger, and childbirth, yet continue to form milk in her breasts, defies scientific evidence. The fact that Sethe accomplishes all this and more is Morrison's tribute to her determination. Obsessed by the chokecherry tree, Sethe refuses to vacate the house that enslaves her to the nightmare of her dead infant. She wrestles the embodiment of her guilt to a truce so strong, so enduring that a second buggy in the yard resurrects the image of deadly spite that thwarted schoolteacher 18 years earlier.
It is fitting that a woman strong enough to crawl through woods so that she could give birth in a canoe would spawn a girl as resolute and resourceful as Denver. Although Denver is more inward and more manipulative than her confrontational mother, she recognizes the moment when Sethe is no longer mistress of the house, when the next generation must venture down the plank road to pursue food, solace, and steady work. Even more determined than Denver is Beloved, the whirlwind force that belabors a household for 18 years, exiles two strong brothers, and edges her forthright mother to the brink of madness. Such a threesome does honor to Baby Suggs, the matriarch, whose love sheltered an entire black neighborhood and whose memory comforts and sustains them all.
