Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved, reveals the effects of human emotion and its power to cast an individual into a struggle against him or herself. In the beginning of the novel, Sethe is seen as a woman who is resigned to her desolate life and isolates herself from all those around her. Yet, she was once a woman full of feeling: she had loved her husband Halle, loved her four young children, and loved the days …showed first 75 words of 605 total…

…showed last 75 words of 605 total…children, the attempts are mistaken as her boys, Buglar and Howard even left home always in fear of what Sethe may try to do to them, "[they] would not let me near them, not even to touch their hair," (p.183). All of this she had to face each day, always blaming herself and therefore in a constant battle with herself in a fear of deeper love and emotion, but more so of betrayal and hurt.