The Power of the Strength of Love

The Power of the Strength of Love

When I first started reading Beloved, I didn’t guess that this book would teach me much about strength and love.  To me, I pictured a book that focused on slavery and being able to mentally overcome slavery.  Yes, that does embody strength, but the strength I pictured was much different than the one I come away from Beloved with.  Whether it be Denver, Paul D. and Sethe, strength and love are these characteristics that is flooded throughout this book, and something that I have been truly been able to take away from.

In my last journal blog reflection, I focused on strength in terms of perseverance.  In this blog, however, I want to focus on strength in terms of love.  It might sound weird, but strength in the form of love is something that I picture as the power to sacrifice oneself or make certain decisions for the ultimate benefit of someone else.  The immediate connection I have is two scenes, one in which Halle buys Baby Suggs’ freedom and Sethe’s act of hurting, and killing one, her children in order to keep them from possibly returning to Sweet Home.  In these two acts, we see this unselfishness to sacrifice oneself, and one’s morals to try and provide a better life for both Baby Suggs and Sethe’s children.  

To create a modern day interpretation and lesson, what this shows is that sometimes the best thing we can do for others is hurt them, or hurt ourselves.  That sometimes when we truly care about someone, sometimes the lengths that we have to go to, to protect them, may be wrong and may hurt ourselves.  To me, this is a harsh reality of the situations that we face, but also a bright reality of how strong love can be.  But the flip side to having a strong power of love is that it can also distort our sense of morality and ethics.  By having both an example of one person sacrificing themselves for the benefit of someone else, and one person acting immorally for the benefit of someone else I was able to see the two sides to the power of having a strong love.  On one hand love can drive us to sacrifice for others, while on the other hand love can drive us to ignore our morals and ethics.