Since Susan did such an amazing job capturing the essence of this novel, I’ll focus on other messages I dredged from this text, one of the most compelling being the divide and conquer theory of colonialism, and how this has affected the African American community. Throughout the first half of the text Morrison speaks to the damaged psychological condition of African Americans as the direct result of slavery. In the second half, she introduces the relationship between the psychologically damaged African American within their community and how a divided community further deteriorates the African American experience.

In the first half, Sethe is described as being unusually strong in the face of atrocities she has known in her life as a slave. When Paul D. shows up, Denver sees a new side of her, a more vulnerable side that is not the “queenly woman” who “never looked away, who when a man got stomped to death by a mare right in front of Sawyer’s restaurant did not look away…” Sethe is aware of her image as a strong woman and believes others are threatened by it. As she walks to the fair with Paul D. and Denver, she thinks the members of the community will think she is “putting on airs,” that she is “tougher, because she could do and survive things they believed she should neither do nor survive.” In the second half of the novel, however, she begins to unravel, as she finally faces her past head-on. She is no longer able to fend off her memories, and she lets go of her final thread of sanity.

It turns out that Sethe’s assumptions about her community were correct, “Just about everybody in town was longing for Sethe to come on difficult times. Her outrageous claims, her self-sufficiency seemed to demand it…” Although the people in her community are aware of the strangeness of her isolation, and even believe that the house is haunted, they are not satisfied. They refuse to acknowledge the link between the violence of slavery and Sethe’s condition. Beloved becomes a conduit of the divide and conquer notion because her presence both divides Sethe from her community (and even Paul D.) and eventually conquers her sanity.

Although Stamp Paid seems to understand the link between slavery or “white folks” and Baby Sugg’s mental deterioration, he struggles with the link between the violence against African Americans and Sethe. As he walks home from 124, he thinks about the violence, “Eighteen seventy-four and white folks were still o the loose. Whole towns wiped clean of Negroes; eighty-seven lynchings in one year alone in Kentucky; four colored schools burned to the ground; grown men whipped like children; children whipped like adults…” It seems that there is some part of him that tries to understand the link between violence against African Americans and Sethe, but he is more influenced by the attitudes held by the majority of his community and is therefore unable to reconnect with Sethe.

Paul D. admits “He can’t put his finger on it, but it seems, for a moment, that just beyond his knowing is the glare of an outside thing that embraces while it accuses.” This double-edged blade, Morrison seems to be shouting, speaks to the importance of community among African Americans in the face of the larger evil, which is slavery and racism.