Throughout the novel, the characters have been emotionally crippled by their pasts. Sethe and Denver especially are disabled by their histories. The mental and spiritual wounds caused by slavery are still fresh and have not been allowed to heal. Sethe cannot overcome her outrage and sense of violation from her Sweet Home experiences, nor can she work through the guilt she feels about her daughter's death. Meanwhile, although Denver has never lived as a slave, she suffers from the ramifications of her mother's experiences. Her development was arrested upon her discovery of Sethe's murder of Beloved and Sethe's attempt to murder Denver. The magnitude of this discovery caused Denver to withdraw from the community and to retreat into the sheltered but unhealthy world of 124.
With Beloved's arrival at 124, Sethe and Denver have been faced with the physical manifestation of the very thing that haunts them and keeps them from moving on with their lives. Beloved embodies not just the spirit of the child Sethe killed but also all of the past pain and suffering from which Sethe and Denver have never been able to escape. Initially they are fascinated by Beloved and what she represents, but in this chapter Morrison demonstrates how destructive centering one's life around the past can be. As Beloved feeds upon their fascination, Sethe and Denver's lives devolve into chaos and then into near-starvation.
