The Ghost of the BelovedOne of the most interesting arguments about Toni Morrison's book Beloved centers on the nature of the good girl -loved. The question is, is Beloved simply a young woman who has suffered the horrors of slavery herself, or is Sethe's ghost already crawling? little girl. Does the evidence show that Morrison already wanted Beloved to be the Creeping Ghost? girl. It's said that there are basically two reasons why ghosts walk: either they have unfinished business to attend to, or they died a very violent death. Crawl it already? the girl matches these two profiles. She died without growing up, without knowing why she died. As a result, she has unfinished business with her mother, Sethe. Crawl it already? the girl's death was also horribly violent. Her mother slit her throat with a saw in the cold shed, rather than return her and her children to slavery. Many clues that Beloved is in fact the ghost of the little girl are found in the passages where she first arrives. the house on Bluestone Road. Each of these things together support the idea that Toni Morrison already wanted Beloved to be the Creeping Ghost? little girl. The first clue is that she was “suffering from what looked like asthma,” meaning her breathing was difficult. If Beloved is the ghost, it would make sense that she would have trouble breathing; after all, because the windpipe is in the neck and Beloved's neck was almost cut, his windpipe should have been cut as well. She would be breathing fast and raspy, like people with asthma do when they can't hold their breath. Earlier in the book, Morrison told the story of how the ghost hit Here Boy in the middle of a paper.... ..bread that Baby Suggs gave him. The burnt bits on the bottom of the bread could have reminded him of the river they crossed to get to 124. The river could have looked black because they crossed it at night. When all the information is tallied and the clues counted, all the evidence points to Beloved not being a real woman, but the spirit of the little girl coming to life. She could have reanimated the body from the hunter's cabin that Stamp Paid made a passing reference to, or perhaps she created the body herself, and that's why she was so afraid that he would die. collapses. It doesn't matter. What matters is that all evidence points to the fact that, one way or another, Beloved came back to life. Is she really the ghost of the creeper already? little girl. Works Cited: Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York, Penguin Books USA Inc., 1988.