Community women exorcise Beloved and Sethe attacks Mr. Bodwin

The community exorcism of Beloved and Sethe's attack on Mr. Bodwin is the novel's climactic confrontation, where the accumulated trauma of Sethe's past and the supernatural presence that has consumed her household erupt into a public, violent spectacle that simultaneously breaks Beloved's hold and forces the community to reckon with its own complicity in Sethe's isolation.

The Gathering of the Women

The exorcism began not as a planned ritual but as a spontaneous response to Denver's desperate plea for help. After Denver had left 124 to seek work and food, the story of Sethe's deterioration spread through the neighborhood, carried by Janey Wagon, the Bodwins' maid. The women of Cincinnati fell into three groups: those who believed the worst, those who believed none of it, and those, like Ella, who thought it through. Ella, a practical woman who had herself been locked in a room by a father and son for more than a year, was infuriated by the idea of past errors taking possession of the present. She did not mind a little communication between the two worlds, but this was an invasion. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," she thought, and nobody needed a grown-up evil sitting at the table with a grudge. So thirty women made up that company and walked slowly, slowly toward 124 on a Friday afternoon so wet and hot that Cincinnati's stench—from the canal, from hanging meat, from things rotting in jars—had traveled to the country. They brought what they could: some carried Christian faith as shield and sword; others stuffed roots and charms in apron pockets. They had no idea what they would do once they got there; they just started out, walked down Bluestone Road and came together at the agreed-upon time.

The Sound and the Vision

When the women arrived at 124, the first thing they saw was not Denver sitting on the steps, but themselves—younger, stronger, even as little girls lying in the grass asleep. They saw themselves scooping German potato salad onto plates, hoisting children on their hips, straddling the ankles of old men who gave them horsey rides. Baby Suggs laughed and skipped among them, urging more. The fence they had leaned on and climbed over was gone; the stump of the butternut had split like a fan. But there they were, young and happy, playing in Baby Suggs' yard, not feeling the envy that surfaced the next day. Denver heard mumbling and looked to the left. She stood when she saw them. They grouped, murmuring and whispering, but did not step foot in the yard. A woman dropped to her knees; half of the others did likewise. Denver saw lowered heads but could not hear the lead prayer—only the earnest syllables of agreement that backed it: "Yes, yes, yes, oh yes." Among those not on their knees, who stood holding 124 in a fixed glare, was Ella, trying to see through the walls, behind the door, to what was really in there. She remembered the bottom teeth she had lost to the brake and the scars from the bell that were thick as rope around her waist. She had delivered, but would not nurse, a hairy white thing, fathered by "the lowest yet." It lived five days never making a sound. The idea of that pup coming back to whip her too set her jaw working, and then Ella hollered. Instantly the kneelers and the standers joined her. They stopped praying and took a step back to the beginning. In the beginning there were no words. In the beginning was the sound, and they all knew what that sound sounded like.

Sethe's Response and the Attack

Inside 124, Sethe was breaking a lump of ice into chunks. She dropped the ice pick into her apron pocket to scoop the pieces into a basin of water. When the music entered the window she was wringing a cool cloth to put on Beloved's forehead. Beloved, sweating profusely, was sprawled on the bed in the keeping room, a salt rock in her hand. Both women heard it at the same time and both lifted their heads. As the voices grew louder, Beloved sat up, licked the salt and went into the bigger room. Sethe and she exchanged glances and started toward the window. They saw Denver sitting on the steps and beyond her, where the yard met the road, they saw the rapt faces of thirty neighborhood women. Sethe opened the door and reached for Beloved's hand. Together they stood in the doorway. For Sethe it was as though the Clearing had come to her with all its heat and simmering leaves, where the voices of women searched for the right combination, the key, the code, the sound that broke the back of words. Building voice upon voice until they found it, and when they did it was a wave of sound wide enough to sound deep water and knock the pods off chestnut trees. It broke over Sethe and she trembled like the baptized in its wash. The singing women recognized Sethe at once and surprised themselves by their absence of fear when they saw what stood next to her. The devil-child was clever, they thought. And beautiful. It had taken the shape of a pregnant woman, naked and smiling in the heat of the afternoon sun. Thunderblack and glistening, she stood on long straight legs, her belly big and tight. Vines of hair twisted all over her head. Her smile was dazzling. Sethe feels her eyes burn and it may have been to keep them clear that she looks up. The sky is blue and clear. Not one touch of death in the definite green of the leaves. It is when she lowers her eyes to look again at the loving faces before her that she sees him. Guiding the mare, slowing down, his black hat wide-brimmed enough to hide his face but not his purpose. He is coming into her yard and he is coming for her best thing. She hears wings. Little hummingbirds stick needle beaks right through her headcloth into her hair and beat their wings. And if she thinks anything, it is no. No no. Nonono. She flies. The ice pick is not in her hand; it is her hand.

Beloved's Disappearance and Aftermath

Standing alone on the porch, Beloved is smiling. But now her hand is empty. Sethe is running away from her, running, and she feels the emptiness in the hand Sethe has been holding. Now she is running into the faces of the people out there, joining them and leaving Beloved behind. Alone. Again. Then Denver, running too. Away from her to the pile of people out there. They make a hill. A hill of black people, falling. And above them all, rising from his place with a whip in his hand, the man without skin, looking. He is looking at her. The women grabbed Sethe and Ella put her fist in her jaw, stopping the attack before she could reach Mr. Bodwin, who had been looking so hard at the naked blackwoman on the porch that he didn't notice what Sethe was up to. He thought she was after one of the women. When they got Sethe down on the ground and the ice pick out of her hands and looked back to the house, Beloved was gone. Later, a little boy put it out how he had been looking for bait back of 124, down by the stream, and saw, cutting through the woods, a naked woman with fish for hair. The community's intervention had broken the spell, but at the cost of Sethe's final breakdown. She retreated to Baby Suggs' bed, where Paul D would later find her, lying under a quilt of merry colors, her eyes fixed on the window, so expressionless he was not sure she would know who he was. The exorcism had worked, but it had also revealed the depth of Sethe's trauma—that she would still, at the sight of a white man approaching, revert to the same desperate, murderous protection that had defined her twenty years before.