Beloved Color Draft 1

In Beloved, Toni Morrison throughout the story repeats the image of “red”. In Beloved I believe the color red represents death, hatred, sadness, deep emotion yet occasionally even life. Red I believe without coincidence is the also the color of blood. In Beloved blood has been spilled multiple times in the story. In the manner of death red represented the death of “the crawling already?”, Sethe’s third child. The child that she murdered in the woodshed. The red of the blood that covered Sethe’s body, and her childrens.

But on the completely other side of the spectrum, red represents life. Red represents the blood of Sethe birthing her children; of bringing life into the world. Her blood that runs through their veins. Her love for her children fighting for them, and in her mind keeping them “safe”.


In the very beginning of Part 1, we are introduced to “red” when Paul D first enters 124 he enters “a pool of red”, a haunting emotion that filled the house. Sethe then simply replies “its not evil, just sad”. Later Morrison describes to us the sadness and urge Paul D had to cry that fell over him as he walked through that red light.

Later in the book red reappears when Sethe is remembering the birth of Denver. The girl Amy was on her way to Boston to find red velvet. As Sethe was suffering the pain of birthing Denver, Amy comforted her with the images and story of her quest of that Carmine (red) Velvet.

Another instance of red. Is when Paul D takes sethe and Denver to the carnival, and the streets are lined with red “doomed roses”. I believe that these roses foreshadow the sadness and “doom” that comes when Beloved arrives later in that chapter.  

The most memorable occurrence of red is when Stamp Paid finds “a red ribbon knotted around a curl of wet wooly hair, clinging still to its bit of scalp.” This image gives us a very sad and violent description of his memories of Sethe and her 4 children.

Toni Morrison’s use of color in this story also strongly involves the identity of Baby Suggs. After Sethe murderers her third child, Baby Suggs goes into a deep depression. In that depression she would ask for color. Nothing else, just the sight of more color. Particularly blues, yellows, lavenders and oranges. In one of Stamp Paid’s memories he is trying to convince Baby Suggs to continue sharing ‘the Word’, but she replies with saying how she is going to only think of colors and with that response “he hoped she stuck to blue, yellow, maybe green, and never fixed on red.” Not once inaw the story does Morrison ever write that Baby Suggs seeked red, as if she had endured and seen to much in her lifetime.