Beloved: Personification 3 key examples

Sethe personifies her brain as an autonomous being working against her to portray the lack of control she feels about her emotional response to the past. Her memories and her brain’s hunger for the past consume her by not letting her forget or move past the painful experiences of her and her loved ones. By accepting her brain as working outside of her control, Sethe resigns herself to being in a losing fight with her mind rather than seeing it as something she has control over. 

Her brain's personified form is also similar to Beloved, who likewise acts like a greedy child eating up sweets and memories alike. By invoking the imagery of the child (specifically one akin to Beloved), the personification of her brain creates another broken mother-child bond. Much of Sethe's response to the past is intertwined with her difficult relationship with motherhood. Her devotion to her children keeps her from losing her mind and freeing herself from her past; however, her trauma has also hurt her relationship with her children. Furthermore, this childlike part of Sethe implies that she is still affected by the lack of a relationship with her mother and the childhood trauma of seeing her mother's burnt body.

Paul D reduces the overwhelming powers of life and death into figures he can imagine and control as a way of reclaiming his autonomy. Slavery has made Paul D feel so powerless that he can't even control his own body outside of work, but his imagination gives him an outlet for taking control back. In the same way, he imagines beating his boss.

Furthermore, by assigning traits and genders to life and death, the novel provides insight into the interpersonal relationships between Black people in the novel. Paul D's antagonistic attitude towards life reflects his conflicting feelings toward the women in his life. Like Life, women like the weaver woman and Sethe offer Paul D a potential future beyond slavery. However, the cruelty of slavery has led him to believe that a hopeful future is only a taunting tease rather than something that can be achieved. This may be why he continues wandering rather than settling down (until Sethe). The beating of the female personification of life also alludes to how some Black men mistreated and controlled their female partners as a product of their resentment of slavery's domination. While never hitting Sethe or Denver, Paul D takes on a similar tyrannical role when "he...beat the spirit [of Beloved] away."

The two types of loneliness reflect the isolating actions of the central characters. For example, the imagery of loneliness being rocked like an infant recalls the child-like imagery and behavior of Beloved clinging onto Sethe (which heightened Sethe's isolation from her family and community). The internalized nature of the first type of loneliness also parallels how Sethe and Denver closed themselves off in 124 and the boxwood room, respectively. Meanwhile, the "loneliness that roams" resembles how Paul D isolated himself by never settling down.

Traumas such as slavery can lead people to isolate as a means of protection, but this behavior only causes more harm. The personification of loneliness highlights two insufficient coping mechanisms for dealing with the trauma of memory without limiting their application to the novel's characters. Thus, personification allows these behaviors to apply to the human condition. Beloved suggests that loneliness can control people so much that it lives their lives for them. The only way people can reclaim their lives is to build community identity and engage with collective memory.