Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Beloved Issues!

Comments about Beloved...

37 comments:

alekhya said...

There were a lot of things in "Beloved" that didn't make complete sense to me, so I looked online and I didn't understand something. Some sources said that all those flashbacks that Beloved had were of her coming across the Atlantic on a slave ship. That would explain a lot of the weird things she says, but why would Beloved have been on a slave ship? Wasn't Beloved the daughter of Sethe, and Sethe had been born into slavery in America itself. Could Beloved be a reflection of not only Sethe's past, but of the past of slavery itself? Or is this whole concept just wrong?
~confused~

Chairoscuro said...

Don't second guess yourself like that I think it's very insightful. Beloved is dead remember? the thing that came back could share in the collective memory of a race. Besides I thought all the stuff about water was just a visualization of Beloved clawing her way back from wherever she came from.

Mrs. Harder said...

One possibility is the collective experience of all slaves, but she DOES have to return from the dead, too, so both work, and both muddy the waters of time in the book (purposefully, of course). Why would Morrison do this? Also, can you think of other possibilities for why water would figure so prominently here?

I'm so impressed with both your comments!

alekhya said...

The fact that Beloved was "reborn" from water seemed significant to me in several ways. I think that the water may have something to do with baptism, but I only have a vague idea about the subject and I belive that different denominations have various beliefs regarding baptism. Could someone please explain it in more detail and tell whether or not this idea would work in Beloved?

Last year in AP US history, we watched the movie Amistad. Part of the movie showed the journey of a slave ship across the Atlantic. Sometimes there wasn't enough room/food for the slaves, so they were thrown off into the Atlantic. Others, who were aware of the fate that awaited them, attempted to commit suicide by jumping into the Atlantic. If part of Beloved is really the collective memories of slaves (those crossing the Atlantic in particular, as indicated by the novel), then it seems appropriate to me that Beloved reemerged from the very element that "she" died in.

Water also strikes me in the novel because it reminds me of all the tears that the slaves must have shed...from physical and emotional pain and torture.

alekhya said...

Maybe Morrison decided to muddy the waters of time to show how certain emotions can transcend time. And that maybe not all wounds can be healed by time alone.

If we view Beloved as the dead daughter of Sethe, then Morrison may be trying to show how the love of a mother is not restricted to time. Well, I don't know. Because while Morrison shows Sethe's obsessive, "thick" love, she also shows how Baby Suggs can barely remember her children. But I guess that Baby Suggs never really had a chance to actually be a "mother" to those children. Another possible angle is that Morrison is showing how Sethe's guilt was something that could not be washed away with time, but that guilt is so intimately woven with her love for her daughter.

On the other hand, if we perceive Beloved as a collection of memories from slaves, maybe Morrison is showing how the pain and the suffering of the slaves also transcends time and was not a wound that could be healed by time alone.

See, slaves were not treated like human beings, but THEY WERE. As a result, they were damaged so deeply that Morrison had to write her novel in such a unique way just to grasp that. I don't think simply saying it could capture that pain.
Ana and I were talking about Beloved (and no, this is NOT what we do during our spare time). Ana said that there was something fundamentally wrong with each of the characters that had been once enslaved and I think that that's a great way to put it. Slavery did something to them. It messed up their minds and hearts in away that was not going to get better over time. Especially in the environment they were in.

alekhya said...

wow, i've written a lot. somebody else please write more on here so i don't feel so stupid!

Renea said...

Beloved was a page turner - but I almost wish we had more details, more evidence to get me to sympathize with Sethe. I did get a better understanding of slavery, but I still think it was horrible what she did. I needed more convincing.

ashleigh said...

I thought the scars on Sethe's back were interesting. They symbolized the baggage of her past that she carries aroung with her at all times. Its always there to remind her. I think the scars can also represent change i guess. Like Paul D thought her scars made her beautiful - they can show how far she's come.

Ultimate CYTer said...

What Sethe did was horrible, but it makes a deep statement. She is willing to kill her children to keep them from slavery, and her experience with slavery is not as bad as many others. She thought anything, even death, is better than slavery. It shows us just how dark and gruesome slavery really is.
I also noticed the change that slavery made on all the characters. Look at Sethe, for instance. Sethe originally had a fire in her eyes, but now her eyes are likened to wells without end. Slavery has a lasting impact, and never a good one.

kolacki said...

O Beloved...this book was unlike any book I have ever read in some ways, but also really interesting in other ways. At points I got so into the story that it was hard to even put the book down. I thought it was interesting that most of the novel is told in flashbacks. This allows the narrator to put in their inputs about the event looking back. For example, when Sethe was trying to rationalize killing her child, she had a long time to think, however I believe that she was only thinking in the best interest for her kid...she didn't want her to go through all the pain and torture that she herself had had to endure. I am not saying it was right, but one can see the reason it was so important to her and why it hurt her so much also.

Lore said...

This book was definately the most confusing book I've ever read. However I think if i read it again I might get a lot more out of it. I am sure there is a lot of symbolism in it, but I'm still learning how to find it in the stories we read. However, I like the aspect of controversy in the book. The issue of Sethe killing her infant because she was only trying to proctect her child is still in issue in today's society.

CareBrown11 said...

This book i think is the most beautifully written. It's not straight forward, and it does keep you guessing which i think is very important to the whole feel and understanding of the story. If you think about what all Sethe went through in her life it is confusing not only to the reader but to herself as well. One today in our society couldn't imagine living half the life that she did and that's why this book to me really made me think and almost take a step back to be grateful for what i do have. It's amazing how the author made me feel like this while witting such a dark and painful story.

mollymcd said...

I have to say, Beloved really disturbed me. All that Sethe went through I actually had full sympathy for her in trying to keep her children away from slavery. My favorite character in this book was Denver, I really liked how she rose above the ties to Beloved/the ghost to make a place for herself in the community and keep her mother from being destroyed

Hannah said...

This book was definately different from any book i have ever read, the way it talked about difficult issues flat out, without tiptoeing around them, was a nice change. I'm not really sure that i actually understood most of the deeper meanings; i'm sure if i went back now, after some of the stuff we have done in class, more things would jump out at me. I get that Beloved can represent slavery, and how slavery affected an entire race. The fact that Sethe would kill her own daughter to save her from being a slave shows how horrible life really was for some slaves.

Drew W. said...

First of all, Alekhya, I don't think there's any possible way you could feel stupid with all that you've said. To answer our question, I've always been taught that baptism deals with a sense of cleansing and of "rebirth." I wish I could go into more detail for you, but to be honest, I'm not really knowledgeable in the subject myself. So I guess you could tie it in with Beloved, seeing that Beloved was, in a sense, "reborn" through the water. Also, although I'm not certain, I think baptism could be tied in since religion was such an important part of society that was displayed in the novel. I'm not really sure how else you could.

We too watched the movie Amistad las year in US History, which got me thinking about the element of water in the novel. I viewed the slaves that committed suicide as not dying, but instead as starting a new life (one that is better than where they are right now). So with the same outlook on Beloved, I think the water can be seen as a life force. Literally, it's like that since she came out of the water. But at the beginning when she was very weak, it seems like the only thing kept her alive was the very water that she was able to drink.

Ashley C. said...

Beloved was a captivating book about a slave girl and the trials and tribulations she was faced with while growing up with and later escaping from slavery. It amazes me how the author can play on your emotions by her use of flashback to actually make you feel slight sympathy for Sethe when she commits the horrid act of murdering her child. You can almost realize why she felt compelled to do such a horrific thing. I also thought it was very ironic how the slave plantation she despised so much was called “Sweet Home.”

sgrthered said...

Toni Morrison first off did an amazing job with this novel. The amazing thing is her ability to create a fictional story around an event that actually happened. I like how she created the character by not telling us but showing us their life and not even being bias. This gives the reader the chance to think about Sethe's actions for themself and i think that is a crucial thing in a novel. This story was sometimes hard to comprehend simply because i haven't had any first-hand experience with slavery but i realy enjoyed the book. Something interesting you guys may not know is that BELOVED was actually turned into an opera. Who ever thought of this honestly is pretty out there.

Aiken said...

I think the point was not to be confused because one has not had first-hand experiences with slavery, but to experience slavery vicariously and have a better understanding after finishing the book.

UNCdude33 said...

When reading beloved, the whole time i was thinking of a way to make the style of writing (the constant changing of time) fit into the "overall meaning of the work"... And here's what i came up with.

Sethe& Toni Morrison are both pyscho's, and the idea of jumping around kind of has a feel of scatter brained, rash, hasty ideas. And Sethe definately makes some rash decision (i.e. killing her baby). I don't know if that is what the rest of you got or not...

Allison said...

I think the setting of Beloved has a profound impact on the theme of isolation and being trapped in one's past. The fact that Denver and Sethe have lived in the same house for their entire lives and have minimal contact with society (no one will associate with them)is symbolic for how trapped they are in their past, particulary Sethe's murder. Sethe struggles to deal with her past decisions and is thus stuck in the vicious cycle of isolation and scorn from society, a recurring theme in this novel.

LizDee said...

Just a few thoughts--one, Beloved said she came from 'under the bridge'--is that like the bridge between life & death & she'd never really quite crossed it, being a ghost, so when Paul D made her leave the 'under the bridge' area, she just decided to come the other way?
Another question. Why are the two chapters where she's talking about being dead so different? I mean, you can barely understand the first chapter. It's got no punctuation and maybe the reason we can get a bit out of it is because it's only a little more confusing than blog postings (in other, non-English blogs, of course, Mrs. Harder!), whereas the second one is almost clear in how you can read it, but still not exactly clear in meaning.
Third, and finally, can you really say Beloved is 'reborn' with the baptism stuff? Sure, she came out of the water, but after baptism you're supposed to be clean and good. I'm really not sure Beloved is very good at all. She creates a very unhealthy relationship with Sethe, although she does get Denver outside more. I mean, Beloved is not exactly portrayed as a good character. She comes right when Denver is starting to think they might all be able to have some semblance of a family again, and breaks it up. She demands everything from Sethe, then complains it isn't good enough. I don't know what the water symbolizes, but it doesn't seem to me to be baptism (aside from the fact that she's been born again in the sense that she's alive again.)
Any thoughts?

alekhya said...

I don't know. Is Beloved pure? Well, she's not virtuous, that's for sure. But she is "pure" in the sense that she is very childlike. She thinks and percieves like a child. But that's probably stretching it...

alekhya said...

What was going on between Paul D and Beloved? And what did the turtles represent?

Was Beloved lustful? And do the turtles represent the animal instinct that is within her? Or is Beloved just jealous of Paul D and Sethe's relationship and trying to do something to undermine it?

Caleigh said...

I agree with Sarah, one part of "Beloved" that I found interesting was the fact that it was told in flashbacks. To me this takes a lot of talent to write but it also really confused me at times. I also agree with Caroline because it really did make me appreciate what I have after I finished reading the novel. Toni Morrison used certain ideas such as controversy to make the reader relate to what she was writing. To me because of all of the specific elements she used in her writing which take such talent that makes her a wonderful writer!

Logan P. Kinley said...

I think that in some ways Beloved kinda represents Sethe's past. She seems to move on from the horrible things she's done when Beloved is not around, such as the brief time in the middle when it's just her paul d and denver, but as soon as she comes back Sethe's past seems to come back with her. Maybe (insert laughter here) I'm just trying to make a symbol out of nothing. I'm just impressed i made it through three blogs and haven't said anything um... politically incorrect

alekhya said...

Lizdee,
Maybe the reason why that chapter with Beloved talking about her death/afterlife is so incoherent is because Beloved was just a baby when she died. She really didn't know anything and that includes thinking in full sentences. So maybe Morrison is letting us peek into Beloved's head at that time. Maybe that's why she jumps around from one thought to another...

On the other hand, the depth of some of the statments she says indicates maturity. For example, she says things like "it's hard to make yourself die forever". Therefore, maybe it's just simply showing Beloved's thought process.

There were a lot of things I did not understand in that chapter. I got that the men without skin are white people and I theorize part of this chapter actually takes place on a slave ship. But what is the "hot thing", the sun? And I assume that "she" refers to Sethe. But why does Beloved want Sethe's face and say that her face is her own? And what is the cloud that seperates them?

williamlassiter said...

A Beginning Note...
I find it to be somewhat ironic that Sethe killed the child that was one of the driving forces behind her decision to escape from slavery.

Beloved is a well written novel that, unlike Wuthering Heights, has a purpose to it and a message in it. Morrison does an excellent job of slowly and incrementally revealing the full story behind Sethe's killing of Beloved; she outrages the reader and then eases him or her into at least a satisfactory amount of sympathy and understanding. I was at first outraged at Sethe's actions but as the story progressed and I learned more and more, my sympathy for Sethe grew until I finally saw her actions as somewhat justifiable. Morrison's vivid descriptions and frequent usage of symbolism (water, scars, beloved's return, etc.) also contribute to the value of the work. This novel, despite being dark and not necessarily action-packed, managed to have a much greater impact on me than did Wuthering Heights and I enjoyed it a lot more than Bronte's "classic."

alekhya said...

A lot of people have commented about how Sethe killing her own child is horrifying, but I totally understand why Sethe did it and may have done the same thing. She was just thinking about what was best for her children. In her mind, it was either a life full of slavery or a place where she thought that her children would be safe. How was she supposed to know that slavery would be gone soon? They were HER kids, the only thing that was hers, and she wasn't going to let ANYBODY hurt them or treat them like they were some animal. Maybe you could argue that she should have had faith in God, blah blah blah, but after what she went through, you can't blame her.

It's just hard for us to relate to how despicable slavery was because we are so used to our freedom. Slaves didn't even have the freedom to love! Can you imagine what that would be like? To say, look, you don't have the right to even FEEL anything, except pain of course. (Paul D is a good example...he says he knew better than to love big, so he loved small with that tin box in his chest).

And it was worse for Sethe. She actually had a good owner who was nice to his slaves and treated them humanely. So she was able to love some. Able to feel some things. But then that stupid schoolteacher came and tried to take that away from her. So she felt the pain even more! And there was no way she was going to give her children that kind of life, not if she couldn't help it.

alekhya said...

Going in a different direction, did Sethe really protect Beloved and send her where she would be safe? Well, Beloved's flashbacks indicate that she was not happy. But then thing is, I don't fully understand that part. If somebody does understand that chapter, please explain!

swimchicmer said...

While reading Beloved, I thought it was ironic that Sethe did not recognize Beloved for who she was immediately, despite the clues (the half-smile scar under her chin, the earrings, and the "water breaking"). It seems that a mother would immediately recognize her child with such evident clues, even if she had not seen the child in many years, especially with the "mother's intuition" that people speak of. Mother's have an attachment to their children that even they cannot explain, like how some claim to be able to sense when their child is in trouble. It seems that she should have been able to at least detect the presence of her child, having lived with her ghost for so many years. Or maybe she was just numbed to the presence of the ghost, so that it was an ever-present thing?

Something else that interested me while I read Beloved was the urgency that Sethe felt to justify her action of killing Beloved. It really allows the reader to see into what Sethe was feeling at the time she committed the act. We begin to understand her belief that anything, even death, was better than slavery and that she would do anything to protect her children from harm (besides the temporary harm that she imposed on them). It also really allows the reader to begin to understand exactly how horrible slavery really was.

Marchin'TarHeel said...

The visual imagery and the voodoo references in Beloved caught my attention the most. The disturbing color of red is very much an important image in this novel. After finishing the novel and thinking back on some these specific images, I made the connection with Baby Suggs running out of the red dye soon after Sethe committed the awful act that made 123 imfamous. The red obviously represents the blood and sin of this tainted family, similar to the red light that lit up the threshold of this house when Paul D approached the house.

The supernatural element of this play strikes me greatly. The fact that the 'reborn' Beloved has a supernatural, demonic influence actually scared the crap out of my in the scene where Sethe is supposedly choked, nearly to death, by the spirit of Baby Suggs. It turned out to be the fat, greedy, selfish, reborn version of the baby that died of the worst kind of headache imagined. You know, when your head feels like its about to split? (ok that was awful) But that scene and the naked Beloved scene at the end just scared the bejeezzzus out of me.

Lastly, I'd like to mention how the persepectives changed relative to the progression of the story. When the first-person view of a certain character held the most importance in the story line, that character told a little bit of the story. It switched between Paul D, Sethe, Denver, and even Beloved (which was extremely difficult to interpret).

Meggiebaby0312 said...

Beloved was a complicated book. I didn't understand it until I was way into the book, and I still don't fully understand it. I believe that Beloved was Sethes past coming back to haunt her, and when Beloved went back to where she came from, Sethe was more at ease with her past, and was able to move on. I'm glad I can read it again, that way I can understand it.

alekhya said...

swimchicmer,
Another reason why Sethe does not recognize Beloved immediately is because she was distracted by Paul D.

"I would have known at once when my water broke...I would have known who you were right away because the cup after cup of water you drank proved the fact that you dribbled clear spit on my face the day I got to 124. I would have known right off, but Paul D distracted me."

Anonymous said...

To be honest I hated Beloved. I found it dark, gruesome, and utterly ridiculous. Obviously it was very well written and it honestly is a classic novel. It was just not to my taste. I am, however, glad I read it. It is very powerful and the fact that a mother would kill her child to save it from slavery is beyond our understanding. It pulls you in and makes you wonder what slavery was truly like. The book itself was interesting and kept u a bit enthralled against my better judgment or liking. The supernatural was also a key factor and the way it was so easily mixed in with reality was a tribute to the excellent writing. But I still hated it.

Olivia said...

I really liked the way that Beloved was written. As confusing as it was, it helped me to be able to piece together the knowledge that i actually understood and try to come to my own conclusions. It's been a while since i looked at the novel but i remember thinking that it was good of Morrison to create Beloved's character in such a vulnerable way because people can relate to her thoughts, yet they still know that she is other worldly. In the christian religion, it is difficult to fathom all the wonders of God,and the bible helps humans relate; i felt like slavery and the character of Beloved were difficult to fathom as well, and by creating Beloved in the presence of a young girl, Morrison was trying to help the reader grasp these concepts.

JourdanP said...

I'm not really sure if I liked or disliked Beloved yet. But the one thing that Toni Morrison did that impressed me the most was the way in which she told us about Sethe's horrible deed. She gave it to us in very small peices which softened the blow, so to say. Because she does this, we are not shocked but we actually feel sympathy for Sethe. It is amazing how an author can make his or her audience feel bad for someone who did such an awful and horrible thing, such as killing her own child.

andrewxthorndyke said...

beloved will be loved for generations....timeless story


"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

Lao-tzu, Chinese philosopher (604 BC - 531 BC)