Sethe is the protagonist of the novel. Her traumatic past comes back to haunt her at house 124. She grows up as an enslaved woman, separated from a mother who “threw away” all her children but Sethe, because Sethe was the only one fathered by a Black man in an act of consensual sex. Her mother gives Sethe her birth father’s male name, but this story is relayed to her by another enslaved woman, as her mother is killed before she has the chance to explain. Years later, Sethe repeats her mother’s tragic actions against her own children. After running away from Sweet Home where she was enslaved, Sethe lives in hiding at her mother-in-law Grandma Baby Suggs’s house with her four children. When her former master finds her, she tries to kill her children and herself, succeeding in killing only her oldest daughter. While the horror of her actions prevents her from being brought back into slavery, it also results in her ostracization from the rest of the Black community, the eventual death of Grandma Baby Suggs, the departure of her two sons, and the haunting of 124 by her dead daughter’s spirit.

Throughout the hardships of Sethe’s life, she exhibits resilience and immense strength.