Hello and welcome to our video summarizing all you need to know about the novel Beloved by Toni Morrison. My name is Bani and in this video we will look at Beloved, specifically beginning with some context related to the author Toni Morrison as well as ideas at the time this novel was written that you will need to be aware of. We will then look into the novel's plot in detail and examine the necessary information you will need to know about it before looking at each character in the novel in depth, key themes related to the novel as well as important symbols. This video is really useful especially if you are studying Beloved as part of your English coursework or exams as we will go into the details you will need to know to get top marks. So let's get started. Overview Beloved, a novel by Toni Morrison published in 1987 was the winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The work examines the destructive legacy of slavery as it chronicles the life of a black woman named Seth from her pre-civil war days as a slave in Kentucky to her time in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1873. Although Seth lives there as a free woman, she is held prisoner by memories of the trauma of her life as a slave. It was adopted during 1998 into a movie of the same name starring Oprah Winfrey. A New York Times survey of writers and literary critics ranked it the best work of American fiction from 1981 to 2006. The book's education reads 60 million and more, referring to the Africans and their descendants who died as a result of the Atlantic slave trade. Moving on to plot summary. The novel is based on the true story of a black slave woman, Margaret Garner who in 1856 escaped from a Kentucky plantation with her husband, Robert and their children. They sought refuge in Ohio but their owner and law officers soon got up with the family. Before their recapture, Margaret killed her young daughter to prevent her return to slavery. In the novel, Seth is also a passionately devoted mother who flees with their children from an abusive owner known as schoolteacher. They are caught and in an act of supreme love and sacrifice, she do tries to kill her children to keep them from slavery. Only her two-year-old daughter dies and the schoolteacher, believing that Seth is crazy decides not to take her back. Seth later has beloved inscribed on her daughter's tombstone. Although she intended for it to read dearly beloved, she did not have the energy to pay for two words as each word cost her ten minutes of sex with the engraver. These events are revealed in flashbacks as the novel opens in 1873 with Seth and her teenage daughter, Denver living in Ohio where their house at 124 Bluestone Road is haunted by the angry ghost of the child Seth killed. The hauntings are alleviated by the arrival of Paul D, a man so ravaged by his slave past that he keeps his feelings in the tobacco bin of his heart. He worked on the same plantation as Seth and the two begin a relationship. A brief period of relative calm ends with the appearance of a young woman who says that her name is Beloved. She knows things that suggest she is a reincarnation of Seth's lost daughter. Seth is obsessed with assorting her guilt and tries to placate the increasingly demanding and manipulative Beloved. At one point Beloved seduces Paul D. After learning that Seth killed her daughter, he leaves. The situation at 124 Bluestone worsens as Seth loses her job and becomes completely fixated on Beloved who is soon revealed to be pregnant. While the lonely and largely house bond Denver initially befriends Beloved, she begins to grow concerned. She finally dares to venture outside in order to ask the community for help and she is given food and she is given food and a job. As the local women attempt to stage an exorcism, Denver's employer arrives to take her to work and Seth's mistakes him for school teacher and tries to attack him with an ice pick. The other women restrain her and during the commotion Beloved disappears. Paul D later returns to the grieving Seth promising to take care for her and Denver continues to thrive in the outside world. Moving on to a detailed summary of each chapter. Chapter 1 The novel opens in 1873 in Cincinnati, Ohio. For the past 18 years, Seth, an ex-slave and her daughter Denver have been living in a house that is haunted by the ghost of Seth's first-born baby daughter. Until eight years ago, Seth's mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, also lived with them in their house at 124 Bluestone Road. Before she died, Baby Suggs sank into a deep depression, exhausted by a life of slavery and by the loss of all eight of her children. She spent her last days requesting color, bits of brightly colored objects she hoped would alleviate her sadness. The death came only a short while after Seth's sons, Howard and Bugler, each run away from 124 following encounters with their dead sister's ghost. Seth works hard to remember as little as possible about her past, and the memory of her sons is fading quickly. Most of her painful memories involve Sweet Home, a plantation in Kentucky where she lived as a slave until her escape 18 years ago. On this day, however, she returns home and finds an unexpected and surprising guest. Baldi Baldi was one of the five men who were Seth's fellow slaves at Sweet Home. He is an included Paul A, Paul F, Seek So, and Seth's husband, Hale. Although Seth hasn't seen Baldi in 18 years, they slip into easy conversation and Seth invites him inside. Baldi walks into a pool of eerie red light and feels a wave of grief come over him. Seth explains that the present is a sad specter of a dead baby, whose throat was cut before it was two years old. At her daughter's funeral, Seth mistook the preacher's reference to the dearly beloved, Mona's, for a reference to her dead daughter.  Baldi has desired Seth ever since she arrived at Sweet Home, at the age of 13, to replace baby Suggs. Baby Suggs left because her son, Hale, had bought her freedom with five years of weekend labour. Seth was beautiful then, and the five male Sweet Home slaves waited in agonising sexual frustration, having sex with calves and dreaming of rape, while she took a year to make her choice among them. She chose Hale, and together they had two sons and a daughter. Seth was pregnant with a fourth child, Tenwa, when the family made its escape from Sweet Home. Seth and Hale were separated during their escape. However, and neither Baldi nor Seth knows what happened to Hale. Being a mother flirting and talking, but Sweet Home with Baldi makes Tenwa feel very lonely and excluded. She reacts with surly jealousy and dissolves into tears at the dinner table one evening. She cries that she cannot stay in the house because the community knows it to be haunted. Consequently, everyone avoids Tenwa, and she has no friends. When Baldi wonders, aloud why they haven't moved from 124, Seth family asserts that she will never run away from anything again. Later, Seth explains that she was whipped before she ran from Sweet Home to meet baby socks and her children whom she had sent ahead in Cincinnati. The white girl who helped deliver Tenwa said the resulting scars looked like a choked cherry tree. Seth cries and says that the men who beat her stole her baby's milk before she ran. Baldi comes up behind her and pulls down the top of her dress. He cradles her breasts in his hands while he kisses each line of her scars. The house immediately begins to lurch and shake as the ghost wins its rage. Baldi shouts and fights with the ghost, chasing it away. Tenwa resents Baldi's act. The ghost was the only company she had. Chapter 2 After 25 years of fantasizing about Seth, Baldi finds the consummation of his desire to be a disappointment.  His thoughts turn to seek so a fellow slave at Sweet Home who would walk 30 miles to meet his girlfriend while Hal and Paul brothers find a way after Seth. We learn that although baby socks had 8 children by 6 different men, Hal, her youngest, was the only one who wasn't taken away from her. When Hal bought baby socks her freedom, she believed that at her age, she was too old for her freedom to mean anything. Baldi's interested gaze reminds Seth of Hal, whose love was more like that of a brother than that of a man, lying claim. Seth remembers that when she and Hal first decided to get married, she asked Mrs. Garner if they were to have a wedding, but the white woman only laughed. With nothing to make the partnership official in any way, Seth secretly stitched herself a dress to mark the occasion. The lovers consummated their relationship in a cornfield, and the swaying corn stalks alerted the other men of the Seth that Seth had finally made her choice. That night, the other sweet home men ate the fresh corn that came from the stalks broken by Seth and Hal. CHAPTER 3 Denver turns to the outdoors for comfort and contemplation.  A power formed by a ring of boxwood bushes that smells of cologne, she once spilled there. One time, as she was returning from the boba, through the window, Denver saw Seth kneeling in prayer in Baby Sugg's room, a ghostly white dress knelt beside Seth with its arm around her waist. Denver interpreted the vision as a sign that the baby ghost had plans. Baldi, she thinks resentfully, has now interrupted those plans. When Denver had asked her mother what she was praying about, Seth told her she was thinking about time, memory and the past. In Seth's philosophy, nothing ever dies. This means the past events continue to occur, not only in one's re-memory, but also somehow in the real world. Seth believes it is possible to pump into past events in places again, and her main priority is shielding Denver from these tangible, painful collisions with the past. Seth ran away from the sweet home when she was pregnant with Denver. Seth's feet had become raw lumps of flesh by the time she collapsed in the woods, where she was found by a white girl, Amy Denver. Amy explained that she had just completed a childhood of indentured servitude and was heading to Boston to get some Carmine velvet. Carmine, Amy explained, is what people who buy velvet in Boston called red. When Amy asked Seth her name, Seth told her a false name, Lou. If Seth were caught, she could be sent back to sweet home. Amy led Seth to an abandoned lean-to and massaged her, tortured feet back to life. Seth later gave birth to her baby with Amy's help, naming the child after the compassionate girl. Because the story is about her birth, Denver loves to hear it being told. After the episode in which Denver believed she saw the baby ghost kneeling next to her praying mother, Seth told Denver about schoolteacher, who was Mrs. Garner's brother-in-law. After Mr. Garner died, schoolteacher came with his two nephews to run the farm. Schoolteacher used to record his observations of the slaves in a notebook. He prodded them with strange questions, and Seth believes that the questions broke Seekso spirit permanently. As Baldi repairs the furniture he damaged, during his confrontation with the ghost, he sings songs he learned while in a chain, gang in Alfred, Georgia. After his dramatizing prison experience, he shut down a large part of his heart and head, operating only what helped him walk, eat, sleep, sing. The experience of seeing Seth again reopens a locked part of his mind, and he decides to stay at 124. Seth tells Baldi that after his scape schoolteacher came to Cincinnati to take her and her children back to sweet home. Seth went to jail instead and took Denver with her. Baldi does not ask her for details because the mention of jail reminds him of his experiences in Alfred. Baldi's decision to stay gives Seth hopes for a future. Chapter 4 Denver hurts Baldi by asking him how long he plans to hang around. Seth is modified by Denver's behavior but refuses to allow Baldi to criticize her daughter. Baldi interprets this as a sign of intense motherly love and thinks it is dangerous for an ex-slave to love anything too much. Baldi has learned to love the individuals in his life only partially so that he has enough love left over for the next person when the first is taken away. Baldi promises Seth that she can safely re-enter her past because he will be there to catch her if she falls. He invites Denver and Seth to a carnival in town that is having a special day for blacks. At the carnival, Denver surprises herself by having a good time. The people they see there greet her casually rather than showing her contempt that she expects. Because he is such an extrovert and so shamelessly thrilled by the carnival, Baldi is a hit with the other carnival goers. He thus helps reintegrate Seth and Denver into the community and makes a few acquaintances. He also inquires about getting a job. Baldi is amused by the spectacle of the supposed wild African savage because he says he knew the man back in Roanoke. On the way, due and from the carnival, the smell of rotting roses is overpowering. Also, both on the way in there and on the way back, Seth notices that the three shadows of Baldi, Denver, and herself overlap so as to be appeared to holding hands. She interprets this as a promising sign that signals future happiness. Chapter 5 A fully dressed woman walks out of a stream and falls asleep beneath a mulberry tree. The woman moves to a tree stump near the steps of 124 where Baldi, Seth, and Denver find her as they return from the carnival. Seth suddenly feels a strange irrepressible need to urinate and is reminded of a water breaking before Denver's death. Denver and Baldi take the woman inside where she drinks cup after cup of water. Her name, it turns out, is beloved. Her skin is as smooth as a baby's and she has no recollection of the past. Denver notes that here, boy, the dog that was disfigured during one of the baby ghosts' rage, has disappeared. Beloved sleeps for four days, waking only to ask for water. While beloved sleeps, Denver cares for her with a possessive devotion. Beloved's presence makes Baldi uneasy. He remarks that although she acts and sounds sick, she does not show visible signs of ill health. The other day he tells Seth he saw her pick a rocking chair with one hand. He claims that Denver was also watching, but when he asks Denver for confirmation, she denies having seen any such thing. Chapter 6 Beloved develops a strange attachment to Seth. Although she usually hates discussing the past, Seth enjoys sparring stories into Beloved's eager years. Beloved asks what has happened to what she calls Seth's diamonds. Seth replies that she once owned some crystal earrings given to her by Mrs. Ghana for her wedding. She then recounts the story of her half-hazard patchwork wedding dress. As she watches Seth arrange Denver's hair, Beloved asks about Seth's mother. Seth explains that she rarely saw her. Seth remembers that her mother once took her aside and showed her a circle and a cross that had been burned into her skin. She said that Seth could use these marks to identify her body if she died. When Seth asked to be marked to, her mother slapped her. Seth tells the girls that she did not understand why her mother had done this, until she had a mark of her own. Seth mentions that her mother was hanged and she is suddenly stunned by the recollection of a disturbing memory that she had forgotten. Seth ran to her dead mother, but Nan, another slave woman, pulled Seth away from her mother's body. When Seth tried to search for the mark. Speaking in her mother's long-forgotten language, Nan told Seth that the two women had come across the sea in the same ship.  Seth was kept because she had a black father for whom she was named. Chapter 7 Beloved's presence, especially what is described as a shining sexuality, disturbs Baldy. He anxiously interrogates her about her past until Seth, sensing Beloved's agitation, interrupts him. Afterward, Seth justizes Baldy for pressing Beloved so cruelly, and during their argument, Hal's name comes up. Baldy then tells Seth the reason Hal didn't meet her during the escape as planned. Hal was in the loft of the barn, when Seth was violated by schoolteacher's nephews. Afterward, he found himself unable to leave. When Seth realizes that Hal saw everything that the schoolteacher and his nephews did to her, she is initially furious that he did not even intervene. But Baldy explains that Hal was shattered by the experience. Afterward, Baldy saw him sitting, blankly, by a butter churn. He had smear butter all over his face. At the time, Baldy was ignorant of the events in the barn and thus wondered what had caused this breakdown in Hal. However, Baldy could not physically form the words to ask him, because he had an iron bit in his mouth. Outside, Seth and Baldy discussed the shame of wearing the bit. Baldy says that the worst part of the punishment was seeing the farm's rooster, named Mr, watch him and walk around more freely than himself. It is thoughts like these that Baldy keeps locked within the rusted tobacco tin of his heart. Chapter 8. While Seth and Baldy sit on the porch, Beloved and Denver dance together inside the house. Denver asks Beloved how she got her name and Beloved replies that it is her name in the dark. Denver asks what it is like in the dark place from which Beloved came. Beloved says that when she was there, she was small and curled up, it was hot and crowded with lots of other people and some of them were dead. She describes a bridge and water when Denver asks why she came back. Beloved mentions Seth, saying she wanted to see her face. Denver feels slighted that she was not the main reason for Beloved's return. Denver asks Beloved not to tell Seth who she really is. Beloved becomes angry and tells Denver never to tell her what to do. She reminds Denver that she doesn't need her. Seth is the only one she needs. The two girls sit in uncomfortable silence until Beloved asks Denver to narrate the story of Denver's birth. As Denver watches the way Beloved eagerly drinks in every detail, she is able to envision the story she narrates. Denver tells Beloved about how Amy Denver found Seth and discerned the image of a chalk cherry tree in Seth's bleeding scars. After Amy cleaned the wounds, the two women spent the night in a lean-to shelter. The next morning, Amy helps Seth limp down to the river where they found a leaky boat with one o. It was upon stepping into the boat that Seth's water broke. It seemed as though the newborn Denver might die, but Amy finally coaxed a whimper out of her. Later that evening, Amy left Seth waiting by the riverbank for a chance to cross the river to Ohio. Chapter 9. Disturbed by Paul D's information about hell and missing the soothing presence that baby Suggs once provided, Seth seeks comfort in a place called the clearing. She takes Denver and Beloved with her. Before baby Suggs fell into a depression for which Seth blames herself, the older woman used to preach to the black community of Cincinnati in the clearing. She would begin by having the people participate in a cathartic mixture of crying, laughter and dance, and she would then preach self-love.  Seth recalls the day she arrived at 124 and met baby Suggs for the first time. After Denver's birth and Amy Denver's departure, she came across a black man fishing with two boys. The man, stamp paid, wrapped Denver in a jacket and pulled Seth across the Ohio. On show, he left a signal for Ella, another organizer of the Underground Railroad, which alerted her to the presence of a passenger who needed help. When Ella arrived, Seth explained that she was heading to baby Suggs' house on Bluestone Road. Ella noting Seth's attachment to Denver was her opinion that one shouldn't love anything too much. When Seth got to 124, baby Suggs welcomed and paid her before allowing her to see her two boys and her crawling already girl. To amuse her daughter, Seth jingled the earrings that Miss Ghana had given her. During the 28 days she spent in Cincinnati before her daughter's death, Seth enjoyed being a part of the community. In the clearing, she had felt for the first time as though she owned herself. As she sits on baby Suggs' old rock in the clearing, Seth called silently for the calming fingers of a deceased mother-in-law. She begins to feel baby Suggs massaging her neck, but the touch turns suddenly violent and Seth realizes she is being strangled. Denver reacts with alarm and beloved caresses and kisses the bruises on Seth's neck. Beloved's breath smells like milk to Seth and a touch feels like that of the baby's coast. Alarmed, Seth pushes beloved away, saying, you too old for that. Later, Denver accuses beloved of strangling Seth. Beloved runs away in anger insisting that Seth was being joked by this circle of iron, not by her. We learn that as a seven-year-old, Denver attended school lessons with the other black children at the home of a woman. They called Lady Jones. Denver had been studying there for a year when her classmate Nelson Lord upset her by asking, didn't your mother get locked away for murder? Denver repeated the question to her mother, but she went deaf before she could hear an answer. This deafness was cured by the sound of the baby ghost climbing the stairs. It was the first time the ghost had appeared, but after this first innocuous manifestation, the ghost proceeded to become spiteful, angry and deliberately abusive. Thinking back to these acts of rage, Denver wonders what havoc beloved might now wreck on Seth. Yet she believes that she has no power to stop her, especially since she so often feels captivated by the girl. When she goes to beloved to seek forgiveness for fighting with her, she sees beloved watching two turtles mate. Chapter 10. Paul D. was sent to prison in Alfred, Georgia because he tried to kill Brandywine, the man to whom school teacher sold him. The prison had 46 inmates, all of them black. They were locked in small boxes in the ground at night and were subject to sexual abuse and chain gang work during the day. During this time, Paul D. began to tremble chronically and his trembling only subsided when he was actively working and singing in the chain gang. Once, during a long rainstorm, the ground turned to mud which allowed the prisoners to work together and escape. Linked together with one chain, they walked to a camp of ailing Cherokees who broke their chain. They directed Paul D. Northward by telling him that he should follow the blooms of the flowers as the warm spring temperatures spread from south to north. In Delaware, he met a weaver woman with whom he proceeded to live for 18 months. As time went on, he locked all his painful memories of the prison and sweet home into his tobacco tin lodged in his chest. Chapter 11 At 124 Bluestone Road, Paul D. feels unexpectedly restless and uncomfortable in every room. Eventually, he's only able to sleep outside the house. He realizes that Beloved is moving him around the house like a rag doll. One night, Beloved comes to Paul D. in the cold house where he now sleeps and says, I want you to touch me on the inside part and you have to call me my name. Paul D. tries to resist her strange power but he has sex with her and the tin tobacco box breaks open. He repeats the phrase red heart over and over. Chapter 12 Tenver's Attachment to Beloved Intensifies Beloved's gaze sustains and completes Tenver and then we fear that she has no self apart from Beloved. Meanwhile, Seth, ignoring her earlier sense that Beloved is her daughter's reincarnation, decides that Beloved must have recently escaped from years of captivity. She knows Ella to have endured such an experience.  Tenver often feels lonely and rejected by Beloved when she is indirectly stimulated. Beloved lapses into a dreamy silence and she never interacts as much with Tenver as she does with Seth. Tenver, interested only in the present, does not care for the stories about the past that Seth narrates in response to Beloved's questions. Tenver also knows about Beloved's attentions to Paul D. because she noted her night time trips to the cold house where he sleeps. One day, Tenver and Beloved go into the cold house to get cider. Suddenly, Beloved disappears into the darkness. Tenver is certain that Beloved has gone forever and begins to cry, only to find Beloved in front of her, smiling. Beloved reassures Tenver by telling her, This is the place I am. Beloved then drops to the ground where she curls up and moans softly. Her eyes focus on a spot in the darkness where she claims to see her face. When Tenver asks her to clarify, she says mysteriously, It's me. Chapter 13 Thinking about schoolteacher's arrival at sweet home makes Paul D. again question the legitimacy of his manhood in the way that schoolteacher used to force him to do. He likens Beloved's current manipulation of him to schoolteacher's abuse and decides that the only way he can hope to stop Beloved is to tell Seth what's been happening. He meets her outside the restaurant where she works but he cannot muster up enough courage to confess that he is not a man. He surprises himself and Seth who thinks he is about to tell her he is leaving by asking her to have a baby with him. It begins to snow and they laugh and flirt on the walk home. Beloved who has been waiting for Seth meets him outside and absorbs Seth's attention, leaving Paul D. feeling cold and resentful. Seth however breaks Beloved's spell by insisting that Paul D. resumes sleeping with her at night. Seth decides she cannot have a baby with Paul D. because unless carefree mother love was a killer. She begins to question Paul D's intentions. Perhaps she thinks he is jealous of Denver and Beloved and wants his own family. Ultimately Seth recognizes that she is just trying to justify her decision to not have any more children. Chapter 14 After Seth takes Paul D upstairs Beloved begs Denver to drive Paul D away but Denver replies that Seth will be angry at Beloved if Paul D leaves. One of Beloved's teeth falls out and she wonders fearfully if her entire body will begin to fall apart. She finds it difficult to feel complete and unified when Seth is away. Beloved begins to cry and Denver takes her in her arms while the snow gathered outside 124 miles higher and higher. Chapter 15 After Seth first arrived at 124 Stampede brought over two pails of rare deliciously sweet blackberries. Baby Suggs decided to bake some pies and before long the celebration had transformed into a feast for 90 people. The community celebrated long into the night but grew jealous and angry as the feast wore on. To them the excess of the feast was a measure of Baby Suggs' unwarranted pride. Baby Suggs sensed a dark and coming thing in the distance but the atmosphere of jealousy created by the townspeople clouded her perception. From Seth's arrival at 124 the narration goes even further back in time to Sweet Home. Although it meant leaving behind the only child she had been able to see grow into adulthood Baby Suggs allowed Hal to buy her freedom because it mattered so much to him. Once she left Sweet Home Baby Suggs realized how sweet freedom could be. While Mr Garner drove her to Cincinnati she asked him why he and Mrs Garner called a Jenny. He told her that Jenny Whitlow was the name on her bill of sale. She explains the origin of a real name. Suggs was her husband's name and he called it Baby. Mr Garner tells her that Baby Suggs is no name for a freed negro. He takes Baby Suggs to Ohio to meet the Portwins, two white abolitionist siblings who allow Baby Suggs to live at 124 Bluestone Road in exchange for domestic work. Baby Suggs is unable to learn anything about the whereabouts of a lost children. Chapter 16 One day about a month after Seth arrived at 124 school teacher showed up at the house with one of his nephews the sheriff and a slave catcher. In the woodshed they found Seth's sons Howard and Bugler lying in the sawdust bleeding. Seth was holding her bleeding crawling old ready daughter whose throat she'd cut with a saw stampede rushed in and grabbed Denver before Seth could dash her brains out against the wall because none of the children could ever be of any use as a slave school teacher concluded that there was nothing worth claiming at 124 and left in disgust. Seth's older daughter was dead but Baby Suggs bound the boys' wounds and struggled with Seth over Denver.  The sheriff took Seth with Denver in her arms to jail. Chapter 17 Stampede shows Paul Dee a newspaper clipping with the drawing of Seth but Paul Dee refusing to believe that the woman depicted is Seth insists that ain't her mouth Paul Dee can't read so Stampede tells him the story of Seth's tragedy. Stampede leaves some parts of the story out though he doesn't tell how Seth grabbed her children and flew with them to the woodshed like a hawk on the wing nor has he mentioned that out of jealous bite the community neglected to warn Seth about school teacher's approach. Chapter 18 When Paul Dee confronts Seth with the newspaper clipping she begins to circle frantically around the room in a manner that parallels the circular manner in which she unravels her story for him. She tells Paul Dee how at 124 she began to love her children with renewed force because she knew finally that they were fully hers to love. When she recognized school teachers hat outside the house one day she felt hummingbird wings beating around her head and could think only no no no no no no killing her children was a way of protecting them from the horrors of slavery she herself had endured a way to secure their safety. Paul Dee tells her that her love is too thick he feels distant from Seth and condemns her act saying you got two feet Seth not four by which she suggests that she acted like a beast in attempting to murder murder her own children. His anxiety increases when he sees beloved standing on the staircase he leaves 124 and Seth simply says so long although he does not say so Seth knows that Paul Dee isn't coming back. Moving on to part two chapter 19 when stamp paid he hears that Paul Dee has left 124 he feels guilty for having told Paul Dee about Seth's crime without considering her family's welfare stamp paid reminds himself that he has a duty to Seth and Denver by virtue of their connection to baby Suggs of whom he was very fond he thinks about her late life depression which deeply saddened him he tried to convince her to continue preaching God's word but she claimed that she had lost all motivation after the white men's intrusion into a household. For the first time since baby Suggs death stamp returns to 124 when he approaches the house he hears a clamour of disturbing disembodied conversation he can discern only the word mine although he has a habit of walking into houses without knocking it is the one privilege he claims in exchange for the good he does for the Cincinnati community stamp paid feels uncomfortable entering 124 unannounced he stands awkwardly at the door and thinks about what he ought to do Seth takes beloved in Denver ice skating partly to show that she has not been devastated by Paul Dee's departure later Seth hears beloved humming a song Seth made up to sing to her children phased with such evidence Seth finally recognizes beloved as a resurrected daughter now that a dead child has rejoined her she decides to discard the past and the future for the timeless present of 124 after returning to 124 several more times and finding himself unable to knock on each occasion stamp paid finally works up the courage to knock on Seth's door no one answers when he peeks in the window he sees Denver sleeping in front of the fire but he does not recognize beloved and her presence disturbs him when he asks around about the stranger in Seth's home his friend Ella tells him that Paul Dee is sleeping at the church stamp justizes Ella for not offering Paul a place to stay and he's angered by the community's general neglect of Paul Dee and of the women stamp wonders whether perhaps he has made a mistake in staying away from 124 for so long whether he might not owe something to baby Sugg's kin earlier in his life he decided that he no longer owed anyone anything while a slave stamp was forced to give his wife to his master's son to sleep with and he concluded that his wife was a gift so terrible that it freed him forever after all of obligation for this reason he changed his name from Joshua to stamp paid Seth cooks all morning at a restaurant and then takes her lunch home occasionally she steals food and supplies because she's too proud to endure the local grossest racism she feels ashamed of a petty thievery and remembers an occasion when Sixo stole a small pink from Sweet Home when school teacher confronted him Sixo cleverly talked his way out of blame by insisting that he was actually improving school teacher's property by feeding himself so that he could better work the land school teacher whipped him to teach him the definitions belonged to the definers not to the defined Seth's memory of Sixo launches a series of other memories about Sweet Home and slavery one is so painful that Seth has told it to no one but beloved school teacher treated the slaves like farm stock measuring their body parts and studying them but like biological specimens once Seth overheard him saying overheard him giving a lesson to his nephews about her in which he instructed them to categorize each of her characteristics as either human or animal school teacher again manifested his cruelty when after baby sucks departure he stopped Hale from doing any more work outside Sweet Home thus depriving him of the chance to pay for the rest of his family's release from slavery this incident sparked the family to plot a secret escape but their plan met with a tragic conclusion Hale went insane Paul A was hanged Sixo was burned and Paul D ended up with a bit in his mouth Seth recalls one night when she and Hale discussed the days of Mr. Garner's rule of Sweet Home the days before school teacher and his sadistic nephews arrived Hale had surprised Seth by saying that he saw no real difference between Garner's kind of slavery and school teachers when stamp runs away from 124 without knocking he believes that the undecipherable voices he hears from the border of the house belonged to the black and angry dead the chapter ends with stamps thoughts about how slavery dehumanizes everyone involved including the whites by defining the blacks as jungle-like the whites plant resentment among the blacks that push ones into a real jungle anger the whites in turn become so frightened of their own creation that they too begin to behave brutally like animals the jungle stamp things touches everyone but it is normally hidden only from time to time does it manifest itself in rumblings such as the ones he hears from 124 chapter 20 with chapter 20 a series of stream of consciousness monologues begins Seth speaks in this chapter followed by denver in chapter 21 and beloved in chapter 22 chapter 23 comprises a chorus of three voices in chapter 20 Seth begins beloved she my daughter she mine Seth wants to explain everything to beloved so that her daughter will understand why her own mother killed her Seth cannot understand why despite all the clues she initially failed to recognize that beloved was her daughter incarnate she decides Paul D must have distracted her throughout the chapter Seth ponders the power of a mother's love she remembers that her own mother was hanged but she does not know the circumstances that prompted the lynching perhaps her mother attempted to run away but without Seth Seth wants to believe her mother would never have abandoned her but she was as devoted a mother as Seth herself after killing beloved Seth wanted to lie down in the grave with a dead daughter yet she knew she couldn't give up she had to keep going for the sake of her three living children chapter 21 denver's voice emerges in this chapter which begins beloved is my sister denver knows that she has swallowed her sister's blood along with her mother's milk she confesses that she has loved Seth out of fear and that howard and bugler ran away because they like denver feared that whatever it was that motivated Seth to kill her children might resurface one day denver believes that beloved returned to help her wait for her father to come home denver is also convinced that she must protect beloved from Seth she remembers everything baby socks told her about hell which was that she was an angel who loved things too much the power of his love used to scare baby socks because she knew that the large size of his heart made it an easy target denver's youth has been comprised of a fear of her mother and a hope for her father's arrival chapter 22 beloved's fragmented and complex monologue constitutes the third of the first person's dream of consciousness monologues she begins i am beloved and she is mine her patchy memories are of a time when she crouched among dead bodies she speaks of thirst and hunger of death and sickness and of men without skin she says all the people are trying to leave their bodies behind beloved then focuses on a woman who's faced she wants because it is hers the rest of the monologue consists of beloved's description of her attempt to join with the woman she wishes she could bite the iron circle from around the woman's neck mentions the woman's sharp earrings and round basket several times at the end of the chapter beloved is in the water and neither she nor the woman has an iron circle around her neck any longer she's swallowed by the woman and suddenly she is the woman she sees herself swim and and says i'm alone she then describes emerging from the water and needing to find a place to be when she opens her eyes she sees the face she lost she says that sets is a face that left her beloved ends the monologue by saying now we can join a hot thing chapter 23 beloved's words give way to a passage of poetic prose in which the three women's voices come together in mingle although not in a typical dialogic style beloved says that she and set lost and found one another he tells set that she came back from the other side for her and that she remembers her and that she's scared the man without skin will come back set assures her that they will not then were once beloved not to love set too much beloved says she already loves set too much and then were promises to protect her beloved begs set never to leave her again and set implies beloved laments set left and hurt her chapter 24 paul d who's been sleeping in the basement of the local church is filled with despair he reflects on his past and notes that his two half brothers paul a and paul f are the only family he's ever known he does not remember his mother and never saw his father throughout his life whenever he met large black families living together he loved to hear them describe to him how they were related paul d's thoughts turned to mr carner who always said that he treated his slaves as real men in his mind paul d his contrasted school teachers emasculating and dehumanizing treatment of him and his fellow slaves with the more humane treatment of mr carner now paul d begins to follow hell and questioning whether there was any difference in the slaves conditions under the two men paul d partially blames his despair on his previous belief that he could build a life with seth he believes that he set his goals too high and is consequently suffered a great fall yet he locates the beginning of his downfall far in the past in the tragic outcome of the slaves escape plan halyn paul a failed to appear at the appointed meeting time and in their places stood school teacher his diffuse and other white men waiting for paul d and sixo sixo's lover the 30 mile woman had escaped and after he was captured sixo behaved so frantically that school teacher became convinced he would never again be a suitable slave while school teacher tried to burn him alive sixa only laughed the first time paul d ever heard him do so he shouted seven oh over and over referring to the baby 30 mile woman escaped with inside her school teacher and the other men dragged paul d back home where he encountered seth despite the recent disaster she tell she still intended to run that was the last time the two saw each other and paul d concludes that seth's rape and the theft of her milk must have taken place directly afterward it was in the aftermath of the failed escape that paul d first learned the price he fetched nine hundred dollars the knowledge forever affected his understanding of himself he wonders what paul f's price was and what sets would be he questions whether his life since his aborted escape has been worth it whether he should have thrown himself into the fire with sixo chapter 25 stamp paid visits paul d in the church and finds that paul d has been drinking his troubles away a white man stops by to ask if the men know judy of blank road the stamp knows her he feigns ignorance the white man reprimands paul d for drinking on church grounds and then rides away stamp paid tells paul d that during the year that his young master slept with washti stamp's wife stamp paid did not touch her when washti came to him one night to tell him that she'd returned for good he felt the terrible urge to break her neck instead he changed his name the conversation turns to 124 and stamp paid tells paul d that he was present when seth tried to kill her children he defends seth's actions saying she only wanted to out hurt the hunter paul d replies as seth scares him but that beloved scares him more stamp paid asks if paul d left 124 because of beloved but paul d does not answer moving on to part three chapter 26 like a parasite beloved begins to drain seth's life force seth arrives at work late every morning until she loses her job the food in the house begins to run low and seth sacrifices a portion for beloved who grows fat while seth wastes away beloved wears sets clothing and copies and mannerisms until denver has trouble telling them apart their roles merge and invert as seth comes to act like a child while beloved looms over her like a mother when seth tries to assert herself beloved reacts violently and breaks things and the two fight constantly seth points out how much she has suffered for her children but beloved accuses her of leaving her behind denver begins to fear that beloved will kill her mother denver decides to leave 124 to find help before she can do so she needs and gets some encouragement from the spirit of baby sogs because denver hasn't left the house by herself in 12 years and fears the outside world not knowing where else to turn denver goes to the house of a former teacher lady jones although part of the black community lady jones has yellow hair and gray eyes ironically lady jones was chosen to attend a school in pennsylvania for colored girls because of her light skin afterward she devoted herself to teaching those were not picked to attend school because she loads her yellow hair she married the darkest man she could find she's convinced that everyone including her own children despise her and her hair omitting mention of beloved denver explains that her mother is sick and asks lady jones if there's any work she can do in exchange for food lady jones knows of no work but she tells everyone a church about sets troubles denver begins finding plates and baskets of food on the tree stump in front of 124 many include a slip of paper with the donators name and as denver went just out to return the containers to their owners she becomes acquainted with the community lady jones also offers her weekly reading lessons as the trouble at 124 continues denver visits the pot wins for help their black maid janey answers the door and recognizes denver as a relative of baby sucks denver tells her about beloved and janey circulates the story around town denver secures a job with the pot wins but as she leaves their house she's disturbed by the sight of a figurine on display the statute is a slave who holds coins in its mouth at its base is a tag that reads at your service elah hears denver's story although she sees beloved tormenting presence as a fair punishment for sets act of infanticide she does not believe that the punishment is right because she believes that past sins should stay in the past she empathizes with sets because she also once refused to care for her child the child was born of abuse after elah had been locked up for a year and repeatedly late raped by a father and son elah decides to rally a group of roughly 30 black women to exercise beloved from 124 they march to sets house where denver is waiting for mr potwin to pick her up for work when set then beloved hear the women begin to sing they go outside to the porch the women see sets small and shunken standing next to a beautiful naked pregnant woman sets spots mr potwin coming up the road and mistakes him for school danger she rushes she rushes from the porch waving an ice pick leaving beloved alone beloved watches as denver also leaves aside to chase after set all the women rushed to revenge sets from killing mr potwin at the beginning of the next chapter we will learn what happened next to the narration of stampede apparently elah punched sets before she could attack mr potwin and women held her down then after subduing sets the women looked up to find that beloved has disappeared chapter 27 stampede tells paul d about recent events at 124 the old man says he no longer hears the voices around the house that he used to and that beloved disappeared in the chaos that followed sets attempts to attack mr potwin a small boy said he saw a naked woman running through the woods with fish for hair but no one has seen her since wall d asks denver if she believes beloved was really her baby sister would come back from the other side denver replied that she believes beloved to have been her sister but at times she thinks beloved was more denver continues to work for mr potwin who is giving her informal academic training in the hopes of sending denver to obelin college denver wants paul d to speak kindly to set who is not yet recovered entirely paul d walks to 124 and thinks about the series of escapes he is undertaken in his life he ran from sweet home he ran from alfred georgia and during the war he worked for both sides and ran from both after the war he thought he was free to walk the roads but he saw dead blacks strewn everywhere including women and children he still had to keep running paul d wonders why he ran from seth when paul d reaches 124 he senses that beloved has left forever he finds seth lying in baby suggs bed with vacant eyes he fears it like baby suggs before her seth wants simply to lie down and wait for death he tells her that he wants to help denver take care of her she replies miserably that her best thing has left her again and paul d wonders at the range of emotions that seth inspires in him sixo once told him that his 30 mile woman inspired his love because she gathered up the jumbled pieces of him and gave them back to him in order paul thinks that seth does the same for him she helps him to stop being ashamed of his past and he notes that when he is with her the memories of being collared and muzzled like a beast no longer have the power to steal his manhood from him he tells her that they have more of yesterday than they need and they need more tomorrow to make the yesterday bearable taking her hand he tells seth that she shouldn't consider beloved's departure to be the departure of a best thing seth and not her children is her own best thing chapter 28 as though beloved were a bad dream everyone tries to forget her the community sees her as a representative of an implacable loneliness that cannot be soothed or rocked away never satisfied it roams and devours seth tenba and paul d take longer to forget beloved than the times people do nevertheless after a while they realize they cannot remember or repeat a single thing she said in fact they cannot say with certainty that she was ever really there moving on to character analysis seth an iron-willed iron-eyed woman seth is haunted not only by the ghost of a dead daughter but also by the memories of her life as a slave while she's been scared by the physical brutality of school teacher's nephews she seems even more deeply disturbed by her discovery that most white people view her as nothing more than an animal she asserts her humanity through her determination to reach freedom and to give her children a free life her escape from sweet home demonstrates the force of her will to overcome impossible circumstances and foreshadows the desperate measures that she'll take to keep her children from becoming slaves much of seth's internal struggle also derives from her ambiguous relationship with her mother because of the long hours her mother worked seth barely knew her however through nan she knows that she was the product of a loving union of all her mother's children seth was the only one given a name and allowed to live the comfort she may derive from this knowledge is tempered though but the suspicion that her mother was trying to run away when she was caught and hanged if her mother was indeed trying to escape she was abandoning seth in the process this abandonment was twofold because a mother not only left seth without her only living relative but she also forced seth to face the horrors of slavery on her own her mother's abandonment affected seth deeply and helps explain the choices she herself makes as a mother notice seth's resolve not to do the same thing to her children she refuses to leave them without a mother when they've gone ahead to Ohio and she risks her own life to reach them when faced with reality that her children may be sent back into slavery seth chooses to free them through death rather than allow them to encounter even a portion of her past experiences in seth's mind killing her children to save them from slavery is the ultimate expression for mother's love beloved beloved's elusive complex identity is central to our understanding of the novel she may as seth originally believes be an ordinary woman who is locked up by a white man and never let out of doors her limited linguistic ability neediness baby soft skin and emotional instability could all be explained by a lifetime spent in captivity but these traits could also support the theory that is held by most of the characters in the novel as well as most readers beloved is the embodiment spirit of seth's dead daughter beloved is the age the baby would have been had it lived and she bears the name printed on the baby's tombstone she first appears to seth soaking wet as though newly born and seth has a sensation of a water breaking when she sees her additionally beloved knows about a pair of earrings seth possessed long ago she hums a song seth made up for her children she has a long scar under her chin where her death wound would have been dealt and her breath smells like milk because seth's mother came from Africa the experience that beloved remembers is also seth's mother's experience in a sense beloved is not only seth's daughter but her mother as well because beloved is supernatural and represents the spirit of multiple people morrison doesn't develop her character as an individual beloved acts as a force rather than as a person compelling seth tenver and paul d to behave in certain ways beloved defines herself through seth's experiences and actions and in the beginning she acts as a somewhat positive force helping seth face the past by repeatedly asking her to tell the stories about her life in the end however beloved's need becomes overwhelming and her attachment to seth becomes destructive notice that morrison dictates the book to 60 million and more an estimated number of people who died in slavery beloved represents seth's unnamed child but also the unnamed masses that died and were forgotten with this book morrison states that they are beloved as well although beloved vanishes at the end of the book she is never really gone her dress and her story forgotten by the town but preserved by the novel remain beloved represents a destructive and painful past but she also signals the possibility of a brighter future she gives the people of 124 and eventually the entire community a chance to engage with the memories they've suppressed through confrontation the community can reclaim and learn from it's forgotten and ignored memories tenver seth's daughter tenver is the most dynamic character in the novel she is shy intelligent introspective sensitive and inclined to spend hours alone in her emerald closet a silver space formed by boxwood bushes her mother considers denver a charmed child who is miraculously survived and throughout the book denver is in close contact with the supernatural despite denver's abilities to cope she has been stunted emotionally by years of relative isolation though 18 years old she acts much younger maintaining an intense fear of the world outside 124 and a perillously fragile sense of self indeed her self-conception remains so tentative that she feels slighted by the idea of a world that does not include her even the world of slavery at sweet home denver defines her identity in relation to seth she also defines herself in relation to her sister first in the form of the baby ghost then in the form of beloved when she feels that she is being excluded from her family's attentions for example when a mother devotes her energies to paul d denver feels threatened and angry correspondingly she treats paul d coldly much of the time in the face of beloved's escalating malvolence and her mother's submissiveness denver is supposed to step outside the world of 124 filled with a sense of duty purpose and courage she enlists the help of the community and cares for an increasingly self-invoked mother and sister she enters a series of lessons with miss portwin and considers attending obelend college someday her last conversation with paul d underscores her newfound maturity she presents herself with more civility and sincerity than in the past and asserts that she has her own opinions now baby sox acts as a mother figure and stabilizing force for seth and denver a self-proclaimed preacher baby sox draws upon the beauty of nature to make the community of ex slaves recognize the beauty in themselves she provides a nurturing and healing presence for those scarred by slavery including seth when the black community betrays her and doesn't warn her or seth about the school teacher's approach baby sox loses her faith in people she withdraws from the community into an internal world of colors and introspection her withdrawal allows seth to withdraw as well needing to a long estrangement with the dance people baby sox's influence is vital enough however that her presence is felt after her death not in a haunting way like beloved spirit but in a strengthening way in which her words and attitudes linger in the minds of those who loved her her presence helps comfort seth even years after she dies and it encourages denver to leave the house and seek help paul d a kind and meditative man paul d's memories rival setsh in their shocking nature however whereas seth's past continues to dominate her paul d has begun to move beyond his past and to envision a future of hope his entrance into seth's life represents the potential for a happier future for her and denver because he came from her past and shares some of the experiences that haunt her seth can open herself up to paul d and finds some relief in sharing the burden of her memories seth is drawn to the promise of happiness that she finds with paul d but beloved's arrival stops her movement toward what he represents intelligent and perceptive paul d recognizes the danger in beloved's presence but is unable to do anything about it all he can do is challenge seth's vision of herself and her children in the end after beloved leaves he sensed that paul d will provide a healing force for seth again offering her the possibility of a brighter future and helping her learn to love herself moving on to theme analysis slavery beloved explores the physical emotional and spiritual devastation wrought by slavery a devastation that continues to haunt those characters for former slaves even in freedom the most dangerous of slavery's effects is its negative impact on the former slave's sense of self and the novel contains multiple examples of self-alienation paul d for instance is so alienated from himself that at one point he cannot tell whether the screaming he hears is his own or someone else's slaves were told they were subhuman and were traded as commodities whose worth could be expressed in dollars consequently paul d is very insecure about whether or not he could possibly be a real man and he frequently wonders about his value as a person seth also was treated as a subhuman she once walked in on a school teacher giving his people the lesson on her animal characteristics she too seems to be alienated from herself and filled with self-loathing thus she sees the best part of herself as a child yet her children also have volatile unstable identities denver conflates her identity with beloveds and beloved feels herself actually beginning to physically disintegrate slavery has also limited baby sox self-conception by shattering her family and denying her the opportunity to be a true wife sister daughter or loving mother as a result of their inability to believe in their own existences both baby sox and paul d become depressed and died while baby sox fatigue is spiritual paul d's is emotional while a slave paul d developed self-defeating coping strategies to protect him from the emotional pain he was forced to endure any feelings he had were locked away in the rusted tobacco tin of his heart and he concluded that one should love nothing too intensely other slaves went insane and thus suffered a complete loss of self sathya that she too will end her days in madness indeed she does prove to be mad when she kills her own daughter yet sats act of infanticide illuminates the perverse forces of the institution of slavery under slavery a mother best expresses her love for children by murdering them and thus protecting them from the more gradual destruction brought by slavery stamp paid muses that slavery's negative consequences are not limited to the slaves he notes that slavery causes whites to become changed and ordered made bloody silly worse than they ever wanted to be the insidious effects of the institution affect not only the identities of its black victims but those of the whites who perpetrated and the collective identity of americans where slavery exists everyone suffers a loss of humanity and compassion for this reason morrison suggests that our nation's identity like the novel's characters must be healed america's future depends on its understanding of the past just as sats must come to terms with her past before she can secure a future with tenwa and paul d before we can address slavery's legacy and the contemporary problems of racial discrimination and discord we must confront the dark and hidden corners of our history crucially in beloved we learn about the history and legacy of slavery not from school teachers or even from the potwins point of view but rather from sets paul days stampades and baby success morrison writes history with the voices of a people historically denied the power of language and beloved recuperates a history that had been lost either due to wild forgetfulness or due to forced silence the theme of solidarity beloved demonstrates the extent to which individuals need the support of their communities in order to survive set first begins to develop her sense of self during her 28 days of freedom when she becomes a part of the Cincinnati community similarly tenwa discovers herself and grows up when she leaves 124 and becomes a part of society paul d and his fellow prison in mason georgia prove able to escape only by working together they're literally chained to one another and paul d recalls that if one lost all lost lastly it is the community that saves sets from mistakenly killing mr podwin and casting the shadow of another sin across her and her family's life Cincinnati's black community plays a pivotal role in the events of 124 the community's failure to alert sets to school teachers approach implicates it in the death of sets daughter baby sox feels a slight as a grave betrayal from which she never fully recovers at the end of the novel the black community makes up for its past misbehavior by gathering at 124 to collectively exercise beloved by driving beloved away the community secures sets and its own release from the past about the author tony morrison tony morrison original name chloe anthony wofford born february 18 1931 ohaya united states died august 5th 2019 new york was an american writer noted for her examination of black experience particularly black female experience within the black community she received the Nobel prize for literature in 1993 morrison grew up in the american midwest in a family that possessed an intense love of an appreciation for black culture storytelling songs and folk tales were a deeply formative part of her childhood she attended howard university for her bachelors in 1953 and connell university for her masters in 1955 after teaching at texas southern university for two years she taught at howard from 1957 to 64 in 1965 morrison became a fiction editor at random house where she worked for a number of years in 1984 she began teaching writing at the state university of new york at albany which she left in 1989 to join the faculty of princeton university she retired in 2006 morrison's first book the bluest i published 1970 is a novel of initiation concerning a victimized adolescent black girl who is obsessed by white standards of beauty and longs to have blue eyes in 1973 a second novel sulla was published it examines among other issues the dynamics of friendship and the expectations for conformity within the community songs of solemn published 1977 is told by a male narrator in search of his identity its publication brought morrison to national attention tar baby published 1981 set on a caribbean island explores conflicts of race class and sex the critically acclaimed beloved published in 1987 which won a Pulitzer prize for fiction is based on the true story of a runaway slave who at the point of recapture kills her infant daughter in order to spare her a life of slavery a film adaptation of the novel was released in 1998 and starred opra winfrey in addition morrison wrote the libretto for margaret garner in 2005 an opera about the same story that inspired beloved in 1992 morrison released jazz a story of violence and passion set in new york city's Harlem during the 1920s subsequent novels were paradise published in 1998 a richly detailed portrait of a black utopian community in Oklahoma and love published in 2003 an intricate family story that reveals the myriad facets of love and its ostensible opposite a mercy in 2008 deals with slavery in 17th century america in the redemptive home published in 2012 a traumatized korean war veteran encounters racism after returning home and later overcomes apathy to rescue his sister in god help the child published in 2015 morrison chronicled the ramifications of child abuse and neglect through the tale of bride a black girl with dark skin was born to light-skinned parents a work of criticism playing in the dark whiteness and literary imagination was published in 1992 many of morrison's essays and speeches were collected in what moves at the margin selected non-fiction published in 2008 and the source of self-regard selected essays speeches and meditations published in 2019 she and her son slade morrison co-wrote a number of children's books including the who's got game series the book about mean people published 2002 and please louise published 2014 she also penned remember in 2004 which chronicles the hardships of black students during the integration of the american public school system aimed at children it uses archival photographs juxtaposed with captions speculating on the thoughts of their subjects for that work morrison won the corretta scott king award in 2005 the central theme of morrison's novels is the black american experience in an unjust society her characters struggle to find themselves and their cultural identity her use of fantasy her sinuous poetic style and a rich interweaving of the mythic gave her stories great strength and texture in 2010 morrison was made an officer of the french legion of honor two years later she was awarded the u.s residential medal of freedom donnie morrison the pieces i am 2019 is a documentary about her life and career so that's all for now if you found this video useful we would really love it if you could give it a thumbs up also do subscribe to our channel where we offer lots of free material that you can use as part of your studies to get a better understanding of specific areas that you might find challenging also if you need more information either on this novel or more generally for other areas in your course make sure to visit our website which is www.firstrate tutors.com there you will find useful revision guides model answers and tools that you can use to get top marks in your coursework or exams thank you for listening


Alhamdulillah, Allah SWT has created inside of the human being the capacity to always become better and that a capacity to change. This is something that is very, very essential to the Islamic tradition. The idea that somebody can grow, the idea that someone can become different than they were yesterday or different than the way that they used to be five years ago or ten years ago. Allah SWT gives us signs all throughout the earth and all throughout the universe of this idea of change. He mentions in the Qur'an that the winds will help change direction or the winds will change direction. As a metaphor to understand that sometimes Allah will pull you in this direction, sometimes He will pull you in a different direction. He gives similar metaphors with the way the vegetation grows on the earth. And throughout the Islamic tradition, when you look at the Qur'an and you look at the statements of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, you see in them that Allah is rooting for the human being to win this game of life. You see that Allah actually wants to see you and me do well in life. But many times we kind of view things in the opposite perspective. We think that you know what, if somebody acts in a certain way, they're fixed.  If somebody messes up, maybe our children, maybe a family member, maybe somebody in our community, we assume, you know what, this person, they're just bad. And I'm not going to give them any more due credit. I'm not going to look at the potential that they have inside. And maybe we ourselves write ourselves off. We might be struggling with a certain sin. We might be messing up in life. We might be caught up in something and we deep down inside know, hey, this probably isn't something I should be doing. It might have been two, three, four, five, 10 years and we're still doing the same thing. And so we just write ourselves off. You know, I'm never going to become pious or religious or be able to change. I'll just continue to live my life in this way. We have to remember that Allah's door is always open. His door is always open for the believers. His door is always open for someone who doesn't believe to enter into this religion and to begin believing. But our question that we have to ask ourselves is, are we people who also operate with the understanding that Allah wants us to have and the understanding that Allah himself has, which is that Allah sees the full potential in everybody? Or are we people who limit people? Are we people who limit others and limit their potential and limit the ability for them to become better? We have to be very, very careful to not limit the vastness and the mercy of Allah's religion. Or if Allah wanted to punish somebody, the minute that they acted in a certain way, Allah would not begin and regularly be encouraging us to read Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem. In the name of Allah, the most merciful, the most compassionate. He would have chosen a different name. He has many names. He would have chosen the name, perhaps, the just and the avenger. If he wanted us to say, okay, as soon as somebody makes a mistake, just get them. Don't look at the potential that they have. No. Allah is al-halim. One of his names is al-halim. He's an overbearing one. He gives you time. He says, no, this person, they might be messing up right now. Let me give them time. Let me give them time to become better. Let me give them time to change. Let me give them time to work on themselves. But is that how we approach our children or our family members or our loved ones? Or as soon as they make a mistake, do we go down hard and say, don't you know that this is completely unacceptable and you're just a sinner and you're never going to get better?  How intensely are we reprimanding versus inspiring? The time that we live in is not a time where fear can be the only tactic. The Muslim, they need fear and hope for sure. But the time that we're living in right now with all of the different tests and tribulations that exist in Western society has to be a time that we focus on inspiring, that we focus on seeing the good inside of people. Because Allah Himself, He mentions in Hadith Khudsi, that O son of Adam, so as long as you call upon me and hope in me, I shall forgive you for what you have done. And I shall not mind. And O son of Adam, where your sins to reach the clouds in the sky and where you to ask me forgiveness, I shall forgive you.   Narrated in the collection of Imam Atiramuddin. So this is how Allah wants us to view things with vastness and with mercy. It doesn't mean we go and say, I'm just going to sin my whole life. And then, you know, one day Allah will forgive me and it'll all be good. We have to be careful, of course. But when people are making mistakes and when we ourselves are making mistakes, we've got to remember how vast this religion is. We have to remember how merciful Allah is. We have to remember that sometimes things will be messed up, rules will be broken. But that Allah can forgive. And if we see the potential in ourselves and see the potential in people, we will try to be empowering others rather than bringing others down. Because when you and I limit the religion of Allah or when we limit it for ourselves, we say, you know, I'm just, I'm beyond change. It's been 50 years. I only got 10, 20 years of my life left. What's the point? Right? I'm, this is, these, I'm just stuck in my ways. Don't limit yourself. Allah says that He created the human being in the best form. You have the ability to go from the highest of the high and to be in the highest station possible. He gave you that ability. He gave us that ability. He also says, And they can also fall to the lowest of the low. But it's your choice how much effort you put in. When somebody goes to Allah a little bit, Allah comes to them a lot.   But it's just that first step we have to get ourselves and each other to take.  Let's say I have interrelationship. These days, significant amount of people have a girlfriend or boyfriend, someone has caught up in drugs, someone is drinking. I mean, that's completely common now amongst our community. It's all over the place. And we would be ignorant to think that it's otherwise. And now you find out, oh, this person is in a relationship.  And you, that first response is to go down hard and to go strict and to start secretly monitoring everything and to just get really, really fierce and intense and angry and not dig a little deeper into like, okay, well, we're in Western society where this is just what's happening and to now try to inspire them out of it. And then as a result of the harshness and you bring religion into it and now you push them away from the religion. It might not be that minute they get pushed away. They stopped the deed that they were doing in that minute but five, 10 years, they're gradually shifting away from the religion because somebody, nobody showed them the vastness and the mercy of Allah versus saying, you know what? This is wrong, what you're doing but Allah can forgive you for this wrong. Let's talk a little bit about why this is happening. Let's talk a little bit about why this is wrong. Why Allah has wanted us to be chast people and to not get caught up in this type of sin and uncovering that slowly and then working on it. Or if you yourself are the one who's doing that, right? Don't, it's important to take yourself to account but don't ever think that you can't be forgiven or that you can't change. That there are people, drug dealers, people who have been in multiple, multiple types of haram that I have seen that have become and doing their best to live upright lives. And we have examples of those people in history but this becomes extremely, extremely dangerous if we get caught up in this type of approach. If we get caught up in this restrictive mentality for other people around us and for ourselves. And this can generally happen as someone starts to take a little bit of steps into the religion, you'll start to see them becoming all of a sudden they don't understand the vastness of the religion. You see this often in the community. Someone learns a little bit and now they go and police everybody else. You're doing this wrong, you're doing this wrong, you're doing this wrong, you're praying wrong, you're doing this wrong, even though the religion has many, many, many ways of doing things, right? And so that knowledge actually isn't used. It's not meant to be used to police other people until you become somebody who has a depth of knowledge and a vast amount of knowledge. Knowledge and wisdom both have to be there before someone is going and telling others not to do things. Otherwise focus on ourselves. Allah says in the Quran, start with yourself. Focus on yourself then work on your family. Not everybody's job to go and police everybody else. And so that's very, very, very important that especially if we get on the path or we will come from a family or we're in a position where maybe religion is very, very important. But then people in our family start to slip or we ourselves start to slip that we have to see there is room to grow. There is room to grow and there is room to change. And Allah rewards the people who change. It's amazing how this, that how much Allah rewards those who actually change their lives.  We're talking about the some of the more serious sins even if they God forbid had murdered somebody. But he says those who repent, they believe and they do righteous actions. For them, Allah will replace their evil deeds with good deeds. It's absolutely amazing that Allah will not only erase the wrong that someone has done but he will replace that wrong with good because they have gotten to the point in their life where they have become different. Where Allah has inspired a toba inside of them and inside of us that we have actually sincerely said yalla I wanna give up the wrong that I'm doing. I don't wanna be that person anymore. I wanna become better. And Allah says he sees that in that person and now he actually erases and he gives them good credit instead. It's absolutely phenomenal. Only a merciful Lord, only an amazing Lord, only a generous Lord would do that. How else would it make sense that somebody could have spent so much time transgressing? And so there is that moment though that comes in everybody's life where the thoughts start to come when am I gonna change? And I can guarantee you, I can tell you that the majority of people who are really caught up in doing bad like serious, serious, serious things they know deep down inside that it's wrong. You do not have to be the person to tell them, you know, don't you know what you're doing is completely haram and you're gonna, they might need to hear that but they know deep down inside it's wrong. What they need is someone to help pull them out of it. What they need is the gentleness to find the mercy. As one of the scholars, they said that we are all like, we're like cups, cup, like a cup of tea and the sugar is sitting at the bottom of the tea. And until you mix the sugar, it's not gonna be sweet. Everybody has that sugar sitting inside of the bottom. You need to be the person who goes inside of someone's life and you mix it. You mix it such that now you start to see the beautiful part come out inside of them. Don't go to them seeing the person they are today. Go to them seeing the people that they could be. That was the way of the Messenger, sallallahu alayhi sallam that he saw the people that the jahili Arabs could be.  They became through the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam the face of the earth. Look at the story of Sayyidina Umar Ibn al-Khatab, radiallahu an. He literally mentioned that it was a point when they got an idol, a God out of their date, out of a hajjur, out of a date. They had a little drawing on it and so on and so forth. And then they take it with them on their journey and they'd worship it.  So they would eat the idol of God that they had made. And they reflected on this when they'd become into Islam and like, what were we even doing? But this was the type of stuff that these people were doing. I mean, just absolutely, particularly the point where Sayyidina Umar, he literally, and of course completely regretted this later in his life, but he literally buried his own daughter alive. This was the custom of Arabs, that they used to, women and girl children that are born as a big, big, big sign of getting the pride that these had, that it was only good if you had a male son. And it wasn't good if you had a female. He literally would bury their daughters alive. Allah of course completely called that in the Quran. He gave the prophets, Allah, many, many daughters. Among them, Sayyidah Fatima, Zahra, radiAllahu anha. And he showed this is one of the perfected women of paradise of the many, many, many beautiful aspects of, and the lessons from the life of Sayyidah Fatima. But this was, he was at a point where he heard about the messenger of Allah, and he wasn't having it. He then went and he was on his way to kill the prophets. Literally on his way to kill him. He said, this man is corrupting our society. This man is telling us to not worship the gods that we should be. This man is creating problems. I'm gonna go handle it. And Omar is mighty. They reported he's seven feet tall. And it's like, tell it in this thing. Really tall, mighty. They have his sword in the top copy palace in Turkey. His sword literally goes from the ground up until here. Huge sword, mighty. These were intense people.  On the way there, a man sees him. Now this man was a believer, but he didn't tell Sayyidina Omar that he was a believer because obviously he didn't wanna get killed himself. And so he says, what are you gonna do?  He said, oh, you are.  He said, what do you mean? He said, go to your sister's house. His sister had secretly converted into Islam. And so he goes near his sister's house and he hears a humming. They were reciting the Quran in the house. He hears a humming and immediately as he's approaching and he's by the doorstep and knocking on the door, they know that it's Omar. They stop the recitation of the Quran. And he goes inside, he barges inside of the house. So what were you doing? What is that sound that I heard? And he finds out that it was the Quran. He literally gets into a physical confrontation with his brother-in-law, with his sister's husband, fighting him because of what he was doing because they had accepted Islam. And then he takes his hand and he strikes his sister and she falls to the floor. Blood starts to emerge from her. Immediately she says, what are you doing? You're doing this because we say there's one God? What is going on? And she was of course also, she's the sister of Omar. She's also mighty. And now a remorse overtakes him. And he's like, what did I just do? This is my sister. He sees the blood. He comes, a remorse completely overtakes him. He says, you know, maybe you could actually recite what it is that you were reciting. And I, you know, I could look into that. He says, and you're not even pure right now, go make Udu. And then he starts to recite the Quran. And now tears begin to flow down his eyes. He begins to read the book of Allah. And the words recited to him. And tears began to flow and immense change overcome in that moment. Allah completely changed it in the Omar from this vicious, intense, angry person with immense, immense, immense hatred towards the religion of Islam to now the impact had started. Know that this moment can come for every single person in humanity. It is not beyond Allah for this moment to come to everybody. It is certainly not beyond Allah for this moment to come for ourselves or for our family members or for our children or for our loved ones. So we can't box people in and just put them to the side. We have to see the potential in people. Now Sayyidina Omar, he goes and he starts to walk to the house of the messenger, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. He enters into the majlis into the gathering of the Prophet's Islam and they all think that he's coming to kill him. Prophet says, Ibn al-Khattab, what can I do for you? And he goes up to him and he says, I bear witness that there is no God except Allah. And I bear witness that you are the messenger of Allah. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is in an extreme state of happiness with the conversion of Sayyidina Omar. He had made the offer this. But one of the two Omar's to enter Islam and Allah strengthened the religion then with Omar. Now the believers were able to do things that they weren't able to do before because this person came in and he gave them a certain type of protection. This was the example. Look at how bad of a life that he lived and then look at how he changed. And he goes on to become one of the greatest companions of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and they were all great. And one of the Khulefa Rashidi and one of the rightly guided caliphs of this religion who had immense contribution to this religion and to the development of this religion. Tashash to the point that he got to a point in his life where he told the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam that there is nobody I love more than you, Ya Rasulullah. And there was a point where there was nobody he hated more than the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. This is the potential that people have deep down inside. Somebody just had to mix that sugar inside of him that was literally settled at the bottom. You see the same example with Sayyidina Khalid Ibn-Al-Walid, radiallahu anh that one of the generals of the Muslim Ummah he used to literally lead the Khufar, lead the disbelievers in the Quraish with their armies and fight the believers and use all of his military tactics against the believers and win many of the battles against the believers. But Allah inspired change in him such that he eventually enters Islam and goes on to lead the Muslim armies in immense, immense, immense victories against the attacks that they were having on them. You had somebody not too long ago in our own country that he used to deal drugs. He was a hustler on the streets. He used to have promiscuous relationships with many, many, many women. He used to be somebody who would engage with prostitutes. He would be somebody who would be caught up in gambling and in drinking and in drugs and you name it, he was caught up in it. At some point he got caught and he got thrown in jail for some of the crimes that he was doing. In jail, something overcame him as he was in prison. Something overcame him. And the change, the process of change began such that not too long after he entered the religion of Islam and Allah used him as a vehicle to propagate Islam all throughout this country. This man was Malcolm X and this man was a man who lived in a life full of sin and then the change happened and the potential that was inside of him was unlocked and that potential then began to be used in good rather than in evil. The skills that he was using to spread fitna and to spread problems began to be used to spread justice and to spread this religion. That potential is there inside of each and every single human being. We just have to see it. We have to work on it. We have to hope in Allah and we have to unlock it. Abkulu qawli hadha wa astaghfirullah. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah.  Someone in your life is saying there's no hope for you. Maybe you were in some type of bad relationship or something like that.  And someone decides to say you're never gonna change. You have no hope. Whatever sin it might be and that you're caught up in don't ever let anybody turn you away from Allah's mercy. Because only shaitan turns people away from Allah's mercy. Shaitan is the one who makes people despair in Allah's mercy. That's not my job. That's not your job to ever make anybody despair in Allah's mercy. We have to see the good in people.  I see many, many people, they struggle with this. They think, you know, I've struggled. I've done too much wrong in my life. How can Allah forgive me? Do you know who you're speaking about? This is Al Karim, the most generous, the most merciful. If you wronged your parents over and over again and we of course shouldn't do that. But many parents would have the capacity in them to forgive. Allah loves you far more than your parents love you. He loves you far more than anybody else. He literally created you. He wants to see you do well. He does not want to cast someone into the fire. Contrary to the way that some harsh Muslims may portray this religion. Allah wants to see us do well. So remember that you and I are going to mess up. Khulqa al-insanu da'ifa. The mankind was created weak. We are created with weakness inside of us. Allah knows that there's weakness inside of us. But Allah gives us the capacity to change. And so if you're in this situation and people are limiting you, distance yourself from those people for a period of time until you have the capacity to change. And if you keep struggling with the same sin over and over and over and over again, just know that there will be a moment where you sincerely turn to Allah. And I know people that this has happened, that they were struggling with an addiction. They were struggling with something. Five times, 10 times, 15 times they tried to give it up. They couldn't do it. There was a moment at which the tears began to flow.   And then the change came and they never went back to that addiction again. They never went back to that sin again. That change can happen inside of everybody. Just do not give up hope. That's very, very important. And so you emerge then from this with categories of people. You have those people that are really, really struggling and caught up with something and deep down inside as mentioned, they know something is wrong. They know, you know what? I'm doing something wrong. And they feel bad. As long as you and I are feeling bad about what we do, there's immense hope for us. Keep that in mind always. That no matter how, quote unquote, righteous somebody gets, it's important to have a humility before Allah to say, I'm screwing up in some way or another. It could be someone's sincerity. It could be someone's approach. It could be someone's focus, whatever it is. But as long as you and I know what we're doing is wrong or we believe that we're doing some wrong, there's a lot of hope. The one place we do have to be careful about on the other side of the spectrum is if Shaitan convinces us that a sin that we're doing is actually okay. And he actually makes it seem like we're not doing anything wrong. And we just have to be mindful of that. That that happens from time to time in the society that we live in. Because there's so much fitna and haram going on that whether it is the sins of morality, whether it is the sins of economic sins, Shaitan will convince us that, you know what? Everybody's doing it, so it's not a big deal. Everybody is dressing immodestly. What's the big deal to wear really, really tight revealing clothing? As long as someone knows that this is wrong, I'm struggling, I'm not there yet, but I'm gonna work on it. Alhamdulillah, at least there's potential. But it's the minute someone is like, oh, it doesn't matter what clothing I wear, it doesn't matter if I'm dressed in an immodest way, that starts to become a problem. Don't let Shaitan, I don't mean that in any bad or judgmental way. Only in the way to be careful, we have to be careful about Shaitan using this tactic against us. Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said at the end of times people will be clothed yet naked. What does it mean? In the time that we live in, you can literally have someone who's so wearing such form-fitting clothing that they're literally clothed and yet naked. And that is not the way that we wanna trend down in the situation that we wanna be in. Right, if somebody is caught up, let's say in interest loans and so on and so forth, as long as they know, hey, this is wrong and I gotta repent, at least I gotta work on it, there's potential. But the minute someone is like, you know, I found one random situation and this person who gave an opinion that this type of thing is okay, it starts to get really, really risky because you now write off a major sin that Allah has listed as a major sin in Quran and stop seeking repentance, but you just have to turn to Allah and seek repentance. This will happen often in our lives and often in the times that we live in because knowledge is limited, as the Prophet Sallam said, as you get closer to the end of times, ignorance becomes widespread and knowledge becomes limited. And so we have to be very, very careful about taking something that Allah and his messenger have said is wrong and making it into a right. As long as we're not doing that, there is immense hope then for us to change as long as we are regularly turning back to Allah. And so just to wrap up, the most important thing is that we operate our lives with the level of gentleness and with the level of mercy. That when we are approaching others, we approach them with kindness and gentleness.  We see the potential inside of them and we try to help them work on themselves. Everybody could use a helping hand in the time that we are living in. And we know that the mercy of Allah is vast. We don't on one hand take advantage of that mercy by making up our own rules. And on the other hand, we don't write off that mercy by getting way, way, way too limited with our view. And if we are caught up and if we are struggling and if we are sinning majorly, we just have to know that we have a Lord who forgives. We have to ask Him. The three components of Toba, you feel of repentance, you feel bad about the wrong you're doing. You ask Him for forgiveness and you make a commitment to try to never do that thing again. And you let the tears flow and you let the sincerity come and you ask the one who can change every heart. You ask the one by whom the humanity can be guided. You ask the one who sent prophets and messengers to humanity for the purpose of guidance because he wants humanity to be guided. You ask the one whose mercy is so vast and love is so vast that it's more than anybody of all the love of everybody combined if they were to love us, Allah's love would outstrip that. That's the one who you ask. That's the one who we turn to. That's the one whose mercy we seek. And if we do that, insha'Allah, and we exemplify the traits of the rahmatal al-alameen, of the Prophet ﷺ and his mercy with other people, we will start to now repair and rehabilitate and improve the dynamics that may be some of the damage that we have done. Inna Allah wa-malaikatu yusallun al-nabi Ya yuhal ad-dina aminu salu alayhi wa-salimu t-tuslima Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa-alihi wa-sahbihi wa-salim Allahumma gfili ma-muminina wa-muminat wa-al muslimina wa-muslimat Ya arhamur rahimin we ask Ya Allah that you forgive us and that you pardon us and that you inspire in us the ability and the capacity to change and the desire to change and the desire to want to improve in every day in every moment of our lives. Ya Allah, pardon us and forgive us for everything wrong that we have done. Wa-sallallahu was-salam wa-barak ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa-alihi wa-sahbihi wa-salim wa-alhamdulillahi al-nabun al-alameen. Wa-keem al-sala'in.


So my name is Carter Curtis. I'm a registered nurse in the neurosurgical ICU here at Jersey Shore Medical Center. I've only been a nurse for not even four years yet. I started this job maybe six, seven months before COVID hit. It was a really difficult thing to do as a new graduate in an ICU. I ended up forming these incredible bonds with the people that I work with and I was taught and supported by just a tremendous team.


All right, you will feel that I've already said good morning to you, so I won't be labored at that point. It's a pleasure to move into our first session, and that's signaled by gathering of the four of us around the table and will be joined by others in due course. This is a session on the dynamo of cities. I think we're going to play on electricity themes for the whole conference. Density, technology, and ideas already on the table with this issue of the density of interaction that is going to make Silicon Roundabout's new building into a cyclotron. The speakers that we have for this session are Dejan Sujic, the director of the Design Museum in London. Dejan was the founding director of Blueprint Magazine, directed it for many years. He was the editor of Domus and the architecture critic of the Observer. Before joining the Design Museum in 2006, he was the dean of the Faculty of Art Architecture and Design at Kingston University and a visiting professor at the Royal College of Art. He was published widely on design and architecture, including the book The Language of Things, published by Penguin. Edward Glazer is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. Now that I'm a university president and in charge of fundraise, and I always mention the full names of everyone who gives to an endowed chair. Ed has taught at Harvard since 1992. He's the director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, director of the Rappaport Institute of Greater Boston. He's published dozens of papers on cities, economic growth, law and economics. In particular, his work has focused on the determinants of city growth and the role of cities as centers of idea transformation. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago. Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lind Professor of Sociology, though I happen to know that Professor Lind did not, in fact, give the money. And nor did Fred Lind, actually, Craig. Co-chair of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. Sassen's recent books include Territory, Authority, and Rights from Medieval to Global Assemblages and a Sociology of Globalization. Her books are translated into over 20 languages. She serves on several editorial boards as an advisor to international bodies and has come straight to us from the airport. Saskia writes regularly for a variety of international news media, including Open Democracy in the Huffington Post. She's currently working on a book to be called Ungoverned Territories, which will be published by Harvard. And we will proceed in this order with Dan speaking first.