Gratitude and Strength

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.  

What is Sethe Running Away From?

What is Sethe Running Away From?

"What's she talking 'bout nobody speaks to you?" asked Paul D.
"It's the house.  People don't--"
"It's not! It's not the house. It's us! And it's you!"
"Denver!"
"Leave off, Sethe.  It's hard for a young girl living in a haunted house.  that can't be easy."
"It's easier than some other things."
"Think, Sethe.  I'm a grown man with nothing new left to see or do and I'm telling you it ain't easy.  Maybe you all ought to move.  Who owns this house?"
Over Denver's shoulder Sethe shot Paul D a look of snow.  
"What you care?"
"They won't let you leave?"
"No."
"Sethe."
"No moving.  No leaving.  It's all right the way it is."
"You going to tell me it's all right with this child half out of her mind?"
Something in the house braced, and in the listening quiet that followed Sethe spoke.
"I got a tree on my back and a haint in my house, and nothing in between but the daughter I am holding in my arms.  No more running-- from nothing.  I will never run from another thing on this earth.  I took one journey and I paid for the ticket, but let me tell you something, Paul D Garner: it cost too much! Do you hear me? It cost too much.  Now sit down and eat with us or leave us be." (18)

When analyzing this passage through the psychoanalytic lens, we not only identify Sethe’s mindset in terms of the future but also see how the past has shaped this very mindset.  This passage is taken from a scene in which Sethe’s old friend, Paul D., arrives at Sethe’s house and is introduced to the ghost of the house.  Upon learning about the ghost Paul D. is confused as to why Sethe does not move away from the haunted house and find a new home.  However, Sethe is in complete opposition, referring to her past experiences with moving, “I took one journey and I paid for the ticket, but let me tell you something, Paul D Garner: it cost too much!”.   

In addition to Sethe believing that moving was not worth it, she emphasizes her opinion with a fierce tone that pushes away her opposition, Paul D.  This is continued with her saying, “No moving.  No leaving,” and “No more running- from nothing”.  What this creates is this picture of who Sethe is, a woman who is a walking embodiment of her past.  But in addition, she holds this ferocity to her, this strength that is palpable from the tone of her voice.

Sethe’s strength and desire to not repeat her past in this passage almost seem ironic though.  Sethe is resisting in every way moving, which in essence is finding a better way of life.  Yet, her reasoning is that she firmly believes that this would not be worth the cost.  Her basis for her belief is her escape from Sweet Home was not worth it.  In other words, her past is dictating her present, and her future.  Yet, her past is something she does not like to talk about as evidenced further in the book.  The past is something she does not like to talk about yet it shapes how she acts.  Instead of her “running” from a house, ironically she's running away from her past.

Feminist Lens: Analyzing Text #2

In this section of the book, Morrison shows that women can be just as aggressive and protective as men. They are capable of any good or bad act they want and gender does not matter. Gender roles are clearly switched in Beloved because She portrays an aggressive women capable of murder to getting her way, and this was not common in that time period.

A male’s common role in a household is to protect and work for their families. While a woman's role is to cook, clean, and take care of their children. In the novel, Beloved by Toni Morrison the female role is swapped with the male role.The novel takes place at a time where the male role is by far more superior than the female role. It was believed that women needed a male to survive. The main character Sethe is a former slave and a loving mother who is determined to keep her children safe from the world. Since she suffered as an enslaved child, she is extremely protective over her children.

In this novel, Sethe is both the male and female role combined.Before, Paul D formed a relationship with Sethe, she proved she didn’t need a man in her life to survive on her own. Sethe decided to isolate herself from the people in her community because she felt like she can support her family on her own.

Towards the end of Beloved, Sethe’s protective skills go over board. Her past experiences as a slave that was sexually abused,forced her to do the unthinkable to her child, kill.

“I did it. I got us all out. Without Hale too. Up till then it was the only thing I ever did on my own. Decided. And it came off right.” (190).  In this phrase Sethe refers to the murder of Beloved. Sethe slits the throat of her eldest daughter proving women were capable of violent acts.

Beloved Comparison to Another Feminist Text

In the article, “Motherhood in Toni Morrison’s Beloved: A Psychological Reading” by Sandra Mayfield, the novel Beloved is analyzed in depth by the feminist lens. I am currently examining this text for the feminist lens myself, I am very excited to reveal Mayfield's views and how they relate/oppose to my own.

This article first focuses on how Beloved “deals with both the suffering and the creativity of slave mothers”.Sandra Mayfield later mentions multiple black female experiences from slavery to freedom and how they wrote a book about them completely different from Sethe's experience in Beloved. She also brings in a perspective of another writer who studied Women that lived through the evolution of slavery by the name of Alice Walker. In her collection of essays she discusses how african american women from the south were very resourceful before and after slavery. She also suggest that these women were “artist” who even after the hardship of slavery found the ability in themselves to write, sing, compose music, and write novels. Sandra Mayfield then compares Toni Morrison's interpretation of african american women with other writers. Mayfield concludes that women like Sethe used their tragic/suffering pasts to become caring mothers.

I do not completely disagree with Mayfield's views. Although I do believe someone’s past can mold your personal current life, I do not believe it makes you a creative, better mother. Slavery was a very traumatic experience for all African American women, some might not get over. Not all enslaved women had children, or even kept those they once had. Having a child is a large responsibility that they might not want as a free person outside the walls of slavery.

The character of Sethe is very mothering, however that is because she never had a mother of her own that she actually knew.

Responding And Reflecting on Beloved

A person’s memories and past can often disturb their ways of life. Tragic occurrences experienced by others are influential factors on the choices people make everyday. In Beloved by Toni Morrison, there are multiple characters displayed that act a certain way because of their dreadful pasts.

Setha is the protagonist of Beloved, and a former slave who hardly knew anything about her mother. Setha is determined to prove her competent motherhood skills, however a past incident does not let her fully achieve this goal.

As I analyzed Beloved through the feminist lens, I saw how the character of Setha was mentally abused by her own “flashbacks” throughout the text. These unpleasant  flashbacks tied her to her dreadful past. Even after she was no longer a slave, she did not feel like a free person.

When Seth was young and lived in the planation of Sweet Home in Kentucky, she was raped by the nephews of Schoolteacher(her master at the plantation). Constant sexual and physical abuse forced Setha to think differently after her time as a slave. This incident from her childhood sparked her to have tough love for the men in her life and her children as well. At one point of the novel, Paul D thinks to himself “Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love” (chapter 4). This phrase shows how slavery impacted these characters in the book negatively. They began to think that if you loved something too much it was bad. Past traumatic incidents can force anyone to believe their life must be exempted from certain things. In this case it was loving something too much, because it was something Paul or Setha were not used to.

Critical Lens (New Historical Lens) Close Reading Entry #2 - B.H

On page 28 of the book Beloved, it gives the reader a passage of what had happened to Baby's eight children, most of which were taken away from her. According to Sethe, their people were "moved around like checkers." It meant that slaves were always moving from one location to another because their owner wanted something like lumber or money. Baby's children either got rented out, loaned out, bought, stored, won, stolen, or seized. They were moved to every location around Baby, at random times her children would move to a different location. It never stopped, as these people loved playing "checkers." Using the New Historical lens, we can see this passage gives us insight about how slaves were separated from their families and how slaves were treated as "objects" more than humans. Baby had six different husbands each of which were traded off, taken away from her. At that time, slaves were used as "objects", they were traded off and were used for working in the fields. They were commonly moved around to other owners if the previous owner needed something like money or lumber. The owners didn't care if the slaves were separate from their families. All they wanted was money, greed took over their lives.

Toni Morrison, at the time, wasn't separated from her family. Slavery was illegal during the early 1900s but there was still discrimination against African-Americans. Her father, John Solomon, moved his family from the South to stay away from sharecropping and the violence against African-Americans. Nonetheless, there was still discrimination around the U.S but The South was way worse. There was separation by color in public areas, treated differently by their race, and received hate words everyday. Even though at the time Morrison was living in wasn't worse being African-American than in the 1800s, she still had discrimination as a part of her life growing up in school and in public.

Critical Lens Close Reading: Beloved -Janet Gil

The novel Beloved by Toni Morrison focuses on portraying a haunting age in American History, slavery. In the 1800’s African Americans had no rights. They were treated as animals, forced into hard labor. Women's rights were slim to none. White women were the ones who cooked and had children, while African American women were forced to do various amounts of difficult household work, including  have more children to be sold into slavery. African American woman slaves were seen as vulnerable so they were often raped by men. Woman were seen as objects, not people that could obtain any knowledge or even beliefs.The novel Beloved displays this incredible twist where social roles between genders are switched.  

When the character of Paul D is raped and seduced by Beloved, the female aspect portrayed in this book changes.

After this incident, Paul D questions his masculinity, “if schoolteacher was right it explained how he had become a rag doll-picked up and put back down anywhere anytime by a girl young enough to be  his daughter”( 124).

Schoolteacher was the Slave Owner after Mr. Garner at the Sweet Home plantation and was extremely hard and racist towards his slaves. Every slave that was at Sweet Home during his ownership remembers his cruelness. His negative actions affected Sethe and Paul D even after they were free people.

This quotation exemplifies the idea that men were not the only ones that could demand sexual attention, woman can as well. For this reason, Paul D feels weak and less masculine. Paul D relates his shameful feelings to when he was a slaved man and was told what to do. Although Beloved was a women, she manages to control Paul D. Toni Morrison begins to portray women as strong individuals capable to have some power over men.