What is a tree?

Trees have a very harmless, positive connotation. In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, the main character, Sethe, struggles to compose herself after having sex with Paul D, a slave she grew up with. Morrison portrays Sethe as a mother who has been been living in a house with the ghost of her dead child, and continues to grieve over it.  

How do we cope with grief? 

Surprisingly enough, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a swiss psychiatrist who is credited for her groundbreaking “near-death” mentality studies. But she is most famous for her theory of the “five stages of grief”, which is Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. 

Similarly, as a result of basic human nature, when we feel an emotional need for comfort or passion, we become vulnerable to what we interpret as compassion. Morrison illustrates this idea by personifying a tree, and comparing Paul D with the idea that trees have emotions and feelings. For instance, she believes that Paul D was “not a tree, … Maybe shaped like one, but nothing like any tree he knew, because trees were inviting; things you could trust and be near; talk to if you wanted,” almost as if Paul D was not approachable after intercourse, but not unapproachable as a character. As a matter of fact, Morrison makes it difficult for the reader to sympathize with Paul D. This may be because Morrison recognizes Paul D's mysterious and apathetic nature and contrasts that with the idea of trees.

In other words, trees are caring and understand compassion. Despite his caring actions, Morrison believes that Paul D is not a caring person, and that his intentions were only to sleep with Sethe. Sethe experiences grief differently from others. She confides in men like Paul D, despite the fact that he does not care for her and only wants her for sex. And yet, she does not want to move away from her source of grief, and find an alternative way of living. Sethe has skipped many stages of grief and jumped straight into accepting the fact that the ghost of her infant child is haunting her house. Ultimately, we should not be afraid of grief, because like all things, it must come to an end.