The home in Beloved is basically it's own character. This was something discussed in our literary analysis that I found very interesting. It takes on it's own moods and seems to have different dispositions throughout the novel although only the seasons change the setting. I think that the home reflects physically what it's tenants are feeling and what the ghost is doing. The novel opens with "124 was spiteful. Full of baby's venom..." (4). The house is spiteful because the ghost inside is spiteful. In the beginning it might not be possible to understand why it is this way, but by the end, I tried to interpret it. The ghost (and in turn the house) may be spiteful for obvious reasons, because Sethe murdered her. I think it is a lot more then that, however. The people living inside are fugitive slaves, they are people that have had their identity and their freedom taken from them. Spiteful doesn't even seem like a strong enough word to describe how they might be feeling. Sethe and Denver, especially Sethe, are trying to find some sense of normalcy, and because that is failing, they are spiteful. While things seem to be moving from day to day, there is no happiness for either of the women.

I also think that the lack of color in the house is an obvious representation of the lack of happiness and comfort in the lives of Sethe, Denver, and Baby Suggs. It may also be a representation of emotion, or of emotional realization. When red comes up, it is because it is referencing murder, which for Sethe was an extreme emotional display. After she commits this, her world turns gray and colorless. Sethe tries to push down everything she can for the sake of holding herself and whats left of her family together. Baby Suggs was so used to doing this that it wasn't until she was on her death bed that she realized the lack of color, and then couldn't get enough of it. It almost was like she had forgotten what color was, because she would pick one color and then memorize it before moving on to the next.