"I heard your mother is a killer" - Kayleigh Becker

“She was so happy she didn't even know she was being avoided by her classmates… It was Nelson Lord--the boy as smart as she was--who put a stop to it; who asked her the question about her mother that put chalk, the little i and all the rest that those afternoons held, out of reach forever. She should have laughed when he said it, or pushed him down, but there was no meanness in his face or his voice. Just curiosity. But the thing that leapt up in her when he asked it was a thing that had been lying there all along. She never went back. The second day she didn't go, Sethe asked her why not. Denver didn't answer. She was too scared to ask her brothers or anyone else Nelson Lord's question because certain odd and terrifying feelings about her mother were collecting around the thing that leapt up inside her.” (120-121)

Reading a text through the Psychoanalytic lens requires the reader to pay attention to the internal and emotional conflicts of characters. The lens focuses on the subconscious goings-on of the characters -- the things that they might not be outwardly expressing. The Psychoanalytic lens explores why characters act they way they do and what hidden desires and fears the characters, author, or reader might have. A common way to look through the psychoanalytic lens is by showing how each of the characters represents a piece of something inside all of us.

In the book Beloved, main character Sethe’s daughter, Denver, flashes back to a time in her life when she went to a school run by an African American named Lady Jones, who reaches out to the underprivileged colored children of Cincinnati. Denver remembers it as a time when she was truly happy; happy to be learning, happy with herself, and happy to be making her mother, grandmother, and brothers proud. Happy until, that is, she is confronted by classmate Nelson Lord about her mysterious family.

In this flashback, a portion of Denver’s inner conflict is revealed. Denver knows that there is something not quite normal about her family and the house they live in, but as a little girl at school surrounded by her “normal” peers, she longs to be normal and unnoticed. When she is confronted by Nelson Lord, the “thing” that leaps up inside of her is her id. An id is the part of the mind that is the passionate, impulsive, and irrational. It is subconscious and hidden, but can influence the whole body. The feelings, experiences, and truths about Denver’s family are collected in her id, and she has tried to suppress and hide them. At Nelson Lord’s questions, they “[leap] up in her”, and she runs. Even in the safety of her home she struggles to suppress “the thing”. Denver’s conflict leads her to run and hide instead of face her peers. She gives up the thing she loves the most because her id is irrationally afraid and too embarrassed to deal with the questions Denver is faced with at school.

Although it is not specifically stated (a gap of evidence in the quote), it is implied that the questions Denver is asked by the innocently curious Nelson Lord are about her mother, Sethe, and the infanticide that takes place when Denver is a newborn baby. This horrific event would impact any child’s emotional development and growth, even more so if the act was committed by a close family. Denver has to cope every day with the well-known fact that her own mother killed her sister and attempted to kill Denver and her older brothers to prevent them from being captured into slavery. This is a main theme in Beloved, Sethe’s love for her children, her sacrifice, and how her actions in the past continue to haunt her in the present.

Denver goes to school, struggles to fit in, and hopes that the subject of her infamous mother will not be discussed. As soon as it is, Denver copes by running away and secluding herself in her house where the subject is not touched. Her desires of a normal life and a relationship with her dead sister are again swept under the bed, and Denver is once again a vulnerable little girl. At home, her knowledge of what happened “collects” around “the thing” inside that can not rest--her id-- and she struggles silently, too afraid to ask about it