The Chokecherry Denial

 "I've never seen it and never will. But that's what she said it looked like. A chokecherry tree. Trunk, branches, and even leaves. Tiny little chokecherry leaves. But that was eighteen years ago."

"Nor, fifteen minutes later, after telling him about her stolen milk, her mother wept as well. Behind her, bending down, his body an arc of kindness, he held her breasts in the palms of his hands. He rubbed his
cheek on her back and learned that way her sorrow, the roots of it; its wide trunk and intricate branches."

Of all of the characters in Beloved, it is without question that Sethe is the most internally affected and damaged. Her time at sweet home is nearly unimaginable, and has left her with irreparable physical and psychological scars. She tries to keep all of her emotions pent up, as secrets; she pretends to herself and her daughter sometimes that her pain was not as bad as it truly was. An example of this, as shown above, is how fervently Sethe insists that the terrible whipping scars on her back are not scars, but a chokecherry tree. This is denial at its finest. She avoids what really happened, what the scars really mean, until Paul D asks pointed questions about it, about the "cowhide" used to make the scars. And finally, when all her suffering is brought into the open as a result of Paul D's prodding, she weeps. She lets out all of the emotion she has been holding back, pretending not to have deep down, and lets herself cry. This is in part because, as noted by Morrison, Paul D has a special yet inexplicable ability to make the women of any house cry, to make them confess their woes and sufferings, and in Sethe's case, they come out dramatically, as they have not come out for the past eighteen years.

Sethe lets out another pent up secret from her past to Paul D later on, when she admits to having killed her child at Sweet Home. This is her greatest secret, her biggest regret, and her worst memory. Yet, after years of concealing it, she releases it to Paul D. This makes us wonder, what other sufferings or secrets could she be hiding, and how could they be affecting her behavior the way these have? We may never know, but it is interesting to think about.