Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved, provides an interesting insight to the way one's past effects their identity. The novel focuses a woman named Sethe and her family. Sethe was enslaved prior to the events in the novel, however Morrison does tell the story of Sethe's escape within the novel. Sethe is constantly haunted by her past enslavement, throughout the novel she constantly re-lives her past either through story telling or sharing memories with Paul D, a slave of the same home as Sethe.

Sethe's fear of the becoming enslaved after she reaches freedom leads her to kill one of her baby daughters when her former master arrives at her home. The murdered child immediately begins to haunt the home in which Sethe lives. This constant haunting or reminder of the past forces Sethe to become a certain person. She is shunned from society, but she also shuns society. She isolates her and her living daughter for over 18 years. Then, once society in the form of Paul D attempts to enter their lives, Beloved appears in the form of a grown woman. Immediately Sethe becomes focused entirely on pleasing and caring for Beloved. She becomes defined by Beloved.

Sethe past deeds come to define her in society's eyes as well as her own. She cannot escape or accept her past. Once her past appears as a ghost, it becomes her soul focus. Nothing else seems to matter except Beloved. Soon Beloved begins to suck the life out of Sethe. It is as if Sethe entire identity is being transferred into Beloved, or Sethe's past.

Morrison seems to show that the past can have a powerful effect on a person's identity. It can cause society to form perceptions, individual selves to form perceptions, and can even come to embody a person's identity.