They are not living in the past, present or future, but just living. They are almost living without hope and never experiencing the feeling of excitement of what tomorrow can bring. Sethe's anguish is about her mothering, and Paul D's, the ability to feel. Denver's is her loneliness. Its original cause is Beloved's murder, which alienates the community, makes Denver afraid of her mother and of whatever was terrible enough to make her kill her own, causing the haunting to make Denver's two brothers leave. Sethe is unable to feel; every morning she sees the dawn, but never acknowledges its color. Paul D's arrival at 124 begins their long and excruciating process of reliving the past in order to start living in the future. But then Beloved shows up and ruins what can possibly be a chance for three people to become a family. For this family to unite, they must let go of their past and learn not to be afraid of being human. .
Sethe loves her children very much, but in a life of slavery where the masters consider their slaves to be animals and to move them around like checkers, this love can only mean heartbreak and disaster. "Don't love nothing" is the beginning and end of what Ella has to say about children. Baby Suggs feels the same way, "My first born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that's all I can remember." Baby Suggs also barely glanced at her children, "because it wasn't worth the trouble." As a mother herself, Sethe struggles against this type of logic, and that puts her to use without leaving any room for her to make the physical connection between mother and child. She then decides that to be a family, she must escape Sweet Home.
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Beloved does come back to pass judgment on Sethe. When Sethe realizes that Beloved is the ghost of her third child, she welcomes the arrival as a chance to explain and redeem herself.