The Ultimate Sacrifice - A Response and Reflection by Madison Schmidt

Motherhood plays a incredibly complicated role throughout the entirety of Toni Morrison's Beloved. Baby Suggs, arguably one of the strongest mother figures, is not only a good mother to her son Halle, but an amazing mother figure and example to her daughter in law, Sethe. For her own children, Sethe is also an extremely strong mother figure, in her very own way.

Sacrifice is a huge theme that goes hand in hand with motherhood in this book, as it does with motherhood in general.
                               
In the same way Baby Suggs makes a huge sacrifice leaving her child, Halle, on Sweet Home working for her freedom, we later find out that Sethe has made the ultimate sacrifice for her own children, shortly after arriving at 124. Upon settling in, and finally having a home base for herself and her family, Sethe feels able to embrace the fact that her children are finally hers to love fully.

During the time the book it set, the Fugitive Slave Act is in place, making it so that slave owners can find and reposes escaped slaves - like Sethe. When a 'slave-catcher' comes for Sethe, along with the schoolteacher, his nephew, and a sheriff, she does the unthinkable, in fear that if she and her children are taken back into servitude, they will never know freedom. Living through so many horrors on the plantation, Sethe does not want her own children to have to go through her same experiences. She can not bare the thought of letting white people "dirty [her children] so bad [they] couldn't like [themselves] anymore," - Sethe simply could not bear the best part of her - her children - being anything but clean (251).

A mother's worst crime, the murder of her own children, committed out of maternal instincts of love and protection. One of the most shocking, twisted revelations we are faced with in the entire book, upon which the reader is left stunned. Part of us feels angry and disgusted at the fact that any mother would take the life of one of her own, and part of us is sympathetic with what she has done to protect her child from a life she knows to be too cruel. The attempt to kill her children and her success in killing Beloved is something that is terribly hard to grapple with. It takes a huge toll on Sethe at the time, and a huge, confusing toll on the reader as well.

Knowing how awful living a life of servitude is, especially for women, the act of murdering her baby girl is truly in efforts to prevent a life of suffering. What she does for her daughter shows just how terrible her experiences on Sweet Home were, so much so that she would choose death over them for Beloved. On a much lesser scale, I hope to be the type of mother who would sacrifice everything for my children. While I would never murder a child, let alone one of my own, personally, I see where Sethe was coming from.