Sethe's Act of Filicide in Beloved Shortly after the publication of Beloved, Toni Morrison commented in an interview that Sethe's murder of Beloved " it was the right thing to do, but she had no right to do it... It was the only thing to do, but it was the wrong thing to do."1[1] This observation demonstrates moral ambiguity of infanticide, as Terry Otten claims?2[ 2] Yes, it was right but wrong, and wrong but right. However, the most important thing is that "it was the only thing to do". Sethe had no choice. If there is anything wrong, it must be, in Paul D's words, his love being "too gross", or the inhumane institution of slavery. However, as Sethe responds to Paul D, for her, “Subtle love is no love at all” (164). For Sethe there is no such thing as "subtle" love, and it's true. His love is not "too" deep but "so" deep that he would kill his own son rather than see him live like a slave. Another interview in 1994 makes it even clearer that Toni Morrison was supportive of Sethe from the beginning. It's about Margaret Garner, whose story gave Morrison the inspiration to write this novel. Sethe's story is almost identical to Margaret Garner's. I had an idea that I didn't know was a book idea... One was a newspaper clipping about a woman named Margaret Garner in 1851... she had run away from Kentucky with her four children. She had run away to a small woodshed right outside the house to kill them because she had been captured as a fugitive. And she had decided that they would not suffer as she had suffered and that it would be better to die. He managed to kill one; he tried to kill two more.... That the woman who killed his children loves... middle of paper......managed to hold him longer. Twenty years... Her two daughters, neither of whom had adult teeth, had been sold and gone and she hadn't been able to say goodbye to them. To make up for mating with a straw leader for four months in exchange for keeping their baby, a male - only to have it exchanged for lumber in the spring of the following year and find herself pregnant by the man who promised not to and I did it. The child he couldn't love and the rest he wouldn't. (23)He could not claim any child as his own. Being someone's property, he could not and did not want to love his children.7[7] Eric Jerome Bauer, "Beloved: The Paradox of Freedom", It is almost annoying to read such a naive opinion based on a “too abstract” humanism, but it is worth thinking about what makes such an opinion possible.