Beloved is a "Dead Heart"

            The words of Dead Heart portray the female singer being consoled by the male singer after she has apparently had an encounter with ghosts. The whole album is called “Five Ghosts,” which often invokes imagery of the dead. Personally I imagine it being a foggy dusk, in a small rural town. The male character is eagerly trying to piece together what it is that she saw in her encounter, but she is seemingly shaken.  She describes the ghosts as being visions of children she once knew, with “light” in their eyes, and she details the feelings of death and despair that came over her. "They were kids that I once knew... Now they're all dead hearts to you" seems to be a loss of childhood, or innocence that you once had that you long for again. A few of the lines make it clear that this ‘supernatural experience’ is actually a metaphor. The dead hearts or ghosts represent the narrator having a stirring reflection about the meaningful people and things from her past that she has realized are now “dead” to her. Various people in whose eyes she once saw “light,” the people who once had vibrant, meaningful presences in her life have faded over years into distant memories. The song’s meaning is effectively that there are many people you lose and places you leave over a lifetime, sometimes purposefully, sometimes drifting away slowly or unintentionally, and that those dead hearts and forever lost feelings haunt everyone should they choose to realize and reflect upon them.

The article I found describes Beloved as a character who forces others in the book to recognize the pain from the past before they can begin to work through it. This especially applies to Sethe. Her past of killing one child and attempting to kill the others, sweet home, and constantly having to run is always haunting her. Sethe’s past is so brutal that she is unable to accept it and look forward to the future. Beloved is there to help characters make peace with their past. From the beginning of the book she symbolizes rebirth. The presence of Beloved allows for the slow reconciliation of Sethe’s history and a new future not only for Sethe but also for Denver. Even though it seems as if Beloved is tearing down 124 she helps bring the community together. When they see that Sethe and Denver are really suffering they rush to their aid.

                  This is why Beloved is like the ghost in the song. The ghosts in the song, like Beloved, forces the woman to come to terms with her past. The ghost haunts her and reminds her kids she once knew. Beloved is a child that Sethe once knew and has come back to haunt her. Beloved is there to help Sethe let go of the past and move onto the future. This is like the song, the ghost makes the woman realize that her past is dead to her. This is the primary function of the “ghost” in Beloved and the song. This is why both of them are closely related.           

http://www.articlemyriad.com/analysis-beloved-morrison/