Gratitude and Strength
“I was something else and that something was less than a chicken sitting
in the sun on a tub”(86).
When I read Beloved it is hard not to put what I am reading in perspective. It is hard for me to not try and look at the characters and relate their struggles to me in terms of the person I am and the person I strive to be. I think of this because before reading this book I have always had a profound respect for those who fought slavery and racism, yet now by reading Beloved I am faced with even more detailed experiences of what this time period was like. By being faced with this it has showed me even more what strength truly means and put in perspective my life and the easiness that I am blessed to have in my life.
What I see in the stories of the Sweet Home men, and Sethe as well, is this bond, this unity, and this optimism that they hold. It’s as if their struggles bond them together. They find strength in themselves. Here are these people that are chained, imprisoned, yet they somehow find this hope and this power to keep going. And it goes beyond just keep going, because Paul D., Sethe, Baby Suggs, they all found a way to escape. They mustered enough energy and force within themselves to get up and run from chains. This is strength. Before reading Beloved I had this picture of what strength was. I was wrong. Strength isn’t the will to get back up when you fall down, strength is getting knocked down, beaten down and thrown done over and over again and still having the will to get back up and fight and fight more until you cannot stand up.
I relate this to my life because it allows me to be able to realize how beautiful life is and how grateful I should be of the things around me. I don’t even mean the major things, I mean the simple things in life that can be so overlooked in a day where they have become almost normalized. Like the line of right versus wrong, the right to be able to fight for you mother or see your mother, the right to love, the right to marry. The right to be me.
Like you when I thought of strength I just thought of courage, never realizing what that truly meant. But like you, Beloved opened my mind to the real sorrow and brutality of being an African-American during and after slavery, and I have so much more respect now for those that have to combat being beaten down from society.
ReplyDeleteI really like how you connected with it and put your personal thoughts into it. It was a difficult book to relate to but as you said as you read further you come to appreciate the writing. It tells a difficult story that makes you appreciate your own life and the privileges we have. It shows that we have come a long way in society.
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