Denver's Growth in Beloved.

Denver's character growth in part 3 of Beloved, by Toni Morrison, was definitely my favorite part of the book so far. Throughout the novel, we see the characters struggle to determine their identity through Sethe and Paul D's conversations about their experiences in slavery. The novel focuses on Sethe's personal exploration and her growth as a character, and Denver remains stagnant, expressing only a childlike adoration for Beloved. As Denver realizes the toxicity of Beloved, she steps up from her role as an isolated dependent of Sethe and takes on the role of an adult as she finds work, provides food, and attempts to keep Beloved from harming Sethe too much.

Just because of her age, Denver was the character I could relate to the most easily. In addition to that, she was the one character in the book who we as readers had no reason to dislike, no morally gray decisions to consider. I was rooting for her since the beginning, and seeing her rise above her mother's inability to care and her sister's dismissal and malicious intent to become a fully realized human being. That was the one part of the book that I could really just enjoy.

Colorism and Beloved

When Denver goes to ask Lady Jones for help. Toni Morrison reveals that Lady Jones dislikes her light complexion and blond hair. Her features, at the time, could only be accomplished by rape.  Her features are a constant reminder of what everyone in her community ran away from. In that way, she feels alienated from her community

Today, the black women that society deems "most beautiful"  have the same features that Lady Jones has. This is because are visually closer to what society deems as true beauty, whiteness. While light skin women during Lady Jones' and now feel isolated from the black community, they benefit from their features in both black and non-black spaces. Within the black community, colorism (prejudice against those of a darker skin tone, typically among people of the same race) runs rapidly. Light skin black women are viewed as more docile and feminine. Conversely, dark skin black women are seen as rough and masculine. Because of this, light skin black women are more acceptable and "wife-able" in a society where marriage is the only goal women should. 

I understand that Toni Morrison was trying to get at a particular point by talking about Lady Morrison's light complexion. I which that she would have also included the struggle that dark skin black women in the novel because it is a very important part of our history.

Margaret Garner and Sethe

Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, was inspired by the life of Margaret Garner, a slave. Many aspects of Garner’s life are reflected in the life of Sethe, the main character. Both women were victims of sexual abuse at the hands of their masters. Both women married fellow slaves while experiencing the abuse. Both women ran away. Both women chose to kill their children rather than allow them to become enslaved. One of the most important differences in the life of Margaret Garner is the presence of her husband. He escaped with Garner, fought slave catchers when she took the life of her daughter, and was by her side throughout the aftermath of her actions. Sethe is not so lucky. Her husband was not able to escape with her. Sethe had no male support system after she returned from jail. This distinction is important because the lack of a constant male presence allows for a deeper exploration of the female experience. Morrison was able to discuss the impact of slavery on women and a mother’s love in ways she would not have been able to if she had allowed Sethe’s husband to have a larger role in the novel.

How Slavery Can Destroy All Self-Love

In Toni Morrison's novel Beloved, identity is often discussed, as the former slave characters try to live their lives freely. One of the dangerous effects of being enslaved is an emptiness where your sense of self should be and a loss of self-love. Baby Suggs preaches about how they should love their hands and appreciate their bodies because they belong to them. She reminds the former slaves about how they should love themselves, not because they are especially unique, but because they need to reintroduce love and attention on themselves.

It's interesting how the schoolteacher is described as teaching them about their "animal like characteristics." It reminds the reader how Sethe, Paul D, and Baby Suggs were taught their whole lives about how little they are worth, and how they have a value of an animal.

I think that this can cause major damage to the slave's minds, even if they are freed, because they are constantly put down. Even if they have the strength to try and maintain some sort of optimism or happiness, they aren't able to because they are always told about how little they matter. This completely changes the way they think about themselves.

Sethe, for example, thinks that she is not worth saving, but that her non-enslaved children are pure and need to always be protected. She has no sense of self-worth and self-love because she was told her whole life that she is not worth anything. Furthermore, Paul D is constantly trying to block out the pain from slavery and put it in his tobacco tin in his heart. But, he doesn't have any sense of self or self love because he was never able to deal with the heavy emotional pain of being enslaved.

I think that Toni Morrison does an amazing job of getting inside the mind of an enslaved person who has been so completely destroyed physically and emotionally. It's difficult to think about how a person would be able to move on from the emotional pain of their past. But, it's important to try to think about these things when we are attempting to understand the history of slavery and its impact on the humans who suffered through it.

Adjectives Defining Identity

In Beloved, Tony Morrison masterfully tells the story of life after slavery in a haunting manner. In addition to her literary techniques, Morrison's language surrounding race and identity caught my eye.

Throughout the novel, the color of one's skin is always tied into the person it describes. For example, Amy is a "whitegirl" and the house on Bluestone Road is in a "colouredpeople" neighborhood.

Although Morrison's deliberate combination of the two words makes perfect sense seeing as how race defines your position in society, I've never seen an author do this before. Subtle yet striking, this combination contributes to the author's depiction of identity where slaves are animals and stripped of agency. Denver isn't just a girl, she's a colouredgirl. Amy isn't just a girl, she's a whitegirl.

With this technique, there's no way to truly escape how society defines you. Whether you're free and just beginning to exert your power in the world, like Sethe attempting to murder all or her children, or if you're attempting to find some humanity in your enslavement, like Paul D and the bit, you're stuck in your own skin, haunted by the past, and powerless.

What Role Does Paul D End Up Playing?

In the last section of the novel, Part III, the reader gets another glimpse into Paul D's point of view. It's really interesting because following the vague, poetic sections of Part II in Sethe, Denver, and Beloved's points of view, Paul D's point of view comes as a bit of a reality check. It is through his eyes that the reader learns what actually occurred on the day when the mob of women confronted 124 and Sethe attacked Mr. Bodwin. Through his interactions with Ella and Stamp Paid, the reader can piece together the events.

And yet, after a brief run-in with Denver, he starts to realize that he still feels some emotion or obligation to Sethe and Denver after Beloved apparently disappeared. After a few brief flashbacks to his own life of constant running, he revisits 124 to see Sethe. But why in the world would he want to see Sethe? He doesn't seem to have feelings for her since he learned she killed Beloved and tried to kill her other babies, and he seemed to agree with other people who insisted Sethe had gone crazy after trying to kill Mr. Bodwin. He didn't show any trace of his previous emotions, but through his last act of kindness in the book, returning to 124 to take care of Sethe, the reader realizes that throughout the entire novel, Paul D has been somewhat of a beacon of straightforward kindness and purity in comparison to the convoluted thoughts of the three women in 124.

Although he had some questionable things on his own record during his time there, namely sleeping with Beloved, nearly every action he took since arriving, even banishing Beloved's ghost in the beginning, was done genuinely and out of his compassion for other people and Sethe. The reader doesn't get much of a sense of heartbreak from him upon his first leaving, mostly because despite being a general good person, he insists that his heart doesn't feel because it's tin. But in his return to 124 following still more drama surrounding Sethe, the reader understands that, despite the semi-craziness happening around him as all three women seem to border the living and the dead, Paul D has been a steady, well-meaning hand trying, with little success, to guide them toward some unknown goal simply out of the goodness of his tin heart.

Who Can Really See Ghosts?

Who can see ghosts? Are they even real? Toni Morrison, the author of Beloved seems to think that ghosts are real. She uses the main characters haunted house to drive the plot. Even part way through the book we are introduced to one of her characters who seems to even act like a ghost. Thinking of this character and this haunted house has led me to wonder if I can see ghosts or even who can see ghosts.

I have always wondered if my dog could see ghosts. The way that the hair on her back lifts as she stares at the door even when nothing is there always makes me wonder if there is a ghost there. My dog seems to stare at something even when it is clearly not there.

I think the prevalence of ghosts in this book and in the world is extremely interesting. I think it gets people wondering on if they are real or not and even what their actions or consequences can be. I really wonder if my dog can see ghosts sometimes but in the end who really knows?

The Depth of Sethe's Love

As shown through many forms of media, a mother is supposed to give their child unconditional love. However, there may be a limit to how far this love should be expressed. In the novel Beloved by Toni Morrison, Sethe, one of the main characters, expresses her love to her children by killing or attempting to kill them in order to protect them from being brought back to the horrors of slavery.

Sethe clearly wanted her children's lives to be better than hers, especially considering that she had to endure being a slave. When Sethe saw her former master, the schoolteacher, approaching her with a slave catcher, she ultimately decided to kill her children as means of protection. She "couldn't let all that go back to where it was, and [she] couldn't let her nor any of them live under schoolteacher" (192).

While Sethe's believed that it was better for her children to be dead instead of slaves, her actions negatively affected other characters that she was close to. Her daughter Denver, who Sethe had attempted to kill, was harassed at school by her peers due to her mother being a "murderer". Additionally, her former lover Paul D was shocked when he discovered that Sethe had murdered her children. When one of the townspeople Stamp Paid shows Paul D the newspaper article about what Sethe had did, Paul D initially refuses to believe that Sethe would ever do that. Ultimately, Sethe's actions cause Paul D to leave 124, as he refused to live with Sethe after learning about her past.

Love, in Sethe's mind, is not restricted to morals. While I disagree with her definition of love and do not think that her actions were justified, I can understand that she wanted to protect her children. Sethe's "love" is not love, however; her actions were driven by past trauma that she wanted no one else to experience.

Ten Minutes for Seven Letters

Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved portrays the sexual abuse and exploitation experienced by slaves and former slaves extensively. Though it is hard to read, the situations described by Morrison are stories that need to be told. In the many years I have taken U.S. history, slave narratives, but specifically female narratives discussing sexual abuse, have been left out of the curriculum and ignored. If one such experience was mentioned in passing, there has been very little time spent talking about the implications of the stories and how deep the impact was. The topic has been a part of a few novels I have read for English classes, such as Beloved, however because there has been little prior experience with the subject, many of my classmates and I have a hard time going about discussing it. This cannot be solely pinned on the lack of discourse on sexual abuse, because people feel uncomfortable and find it hard to stomach, however we should not shy away from ugly truths for the sake of our blissful ignorance. The people who experienced the horrors similar to those described in Beloved deserve to have their voices and stories heard.

Historical Accuracy of Beloved

Beloved by Toni Morrison discusses the history and experiences of slaves in America, and how these experiences haunt those who have escaped from or been freed from slavery. Morrison mentions specific years and ages of her characters in the novel and alludes to connections between the events in the book and historical events in the American South. However, when matching up these dates to the history of slavery in America, they don't fit together quite right.

The book is set in 1873, 8 years after the Civil War. In 1855, Sethe gives birth to Denver. According to Denver's telling of the story, Sethe is 19 when she gives birth to Denver, meaning she would have been born in 1836.

Stick with me, this is where it gets tricky. According to Nan, both she and Sethe's mother were "taken up by" crewmen on the boat they took to an unspecified island. Sethe's mother gets pregnant by someone on the boat's crew and gets rid of the child on the island. This means that at least a year was spent traveling to and staying on the island. If we set the minimum age for surviving a pregnancy at 13, this means that Sethe's mother was at least 14 by the time she reached the states, if not older.

International slave trade was outlawed in America (though people could still trade slaves within America) in 1808, and a very small number of slaves were illegally smuggled into the country after 1808 due to high penalties for not only smuggling but buying smuggled slaves. Assuming Sethe's mother entered the country right at the end of America's international slave trade, she would have been 14 in 1808 making her born in 1797. And if Sethe's mother was born in 1794, that would make her at least 42 if not older at the time of Sethe's birth.

While having a baby at 42 might not seem unreasonable by today's standards, it would have been pretty much impossible for an enslaved woman. For starters, nowadays it is difficult for women at that age to conceive children and deliver them healthily through a traditional birth. On top of that, enslaved women were often forced to work through their pregnancies at the same rate as healthy men, were not provided with extra food, and had no access to prenatal care. Finally, slaves had an average life expectancy of 21-22 in the antebellum South, nowhere near the minimum age of 42 that Sethe's mother would be at the time of Sethe's birth.

In order for the story to match the timeline of American history, Sethe's mother would have to be 42 years old if not older at the time of her daughter's birth, and getting up and continuing to work on the plantation 2-3 weeks later. So what explanantion is there for this impossible feat? Am I missing another piece of evidence in the story that explains this timeline error? And if it truly is an oversight on behalf of the author, why did she include specific ages and years in the story if they don't work? What purpose does that serve? And am I digging too deep into this plot hole?

(Sidenote: I understand that the historical accuracy of the timeline does not have an impact on the message and information conveyed in the book, it just bothers me.)

Digging for Stories

In Toni Morrison's Beloved, Beloved emerges out of the water in a mystical and ethereal fashion. Besides being fascinated and surrounded by water and things that are wet, little is known about her in chapters five and six. Naturally, when I was reading through the story trying to decipher Beloved as a character, I came across a passage about storytelling that caught my eye.

"It became a way to feed her. Just as Denver discovered and relied on the delightful effect sweet things had on Beloved, Sethe learned the profound satisfaction Beloved got from storytelling" (69).

The role of stories in Beloved is important because Beloved, although a young woman, is portrayed like a child. It is customary for parents, teachers, and other adults to read stories to children to expand their knowledge of the world and to enhance the growth of the brain in a critical phase of development. In Beloved, Beloved absorbs these stories much like a young child would. This is especially evident in Morrison's use of the phrase "delightful effect" and "profound satisfaction" because the effect of stories on Beloved is greater than just listening and observing. In addition, Morrison's description of Beloved being fed by the stories is powerful because it suggests that she would not be able to function or survive without the stories. Further, an adult listening to a story would not necessarily be as deeply effected by a story told from a stranger. Hence, while it is not entirely clear yet why Beloved acts in a childlike way, her affinity for stories clues the reader in to the fact that she is not a normal young adult woman.

In addition to this passage, Beloved also refers to stories as diamonds, which further emphasizes the value she puts on the stories she hears. Diamonds are extremely valuable monetarily but also have a sparkly and shiny feature that makes them seem like treasure. Therefore, Beloved references the stories as pieces of treasure.

As I continue to read about Beloved, I will be on the lookout for details about her childlike characteristics. The last line of chapter six left me with shivers running down my spine; watching this story unfold is like taking a shovel and digging for buried treasure. Maybe Beloved and I have this in common.

Shadows Emanating the Past

Tony Morrison, in Beloved, writes a scene of Sethe, Paul D, and Denver at a carnival. Here, they display the actions of a "normal" family - indulging in sweets and entertaining themselves with thrill upon thrill. During this scene, she indicates that although "they were not holding hands... their shadows were" (56). She concludes the chapter with "the shadows of three people still held hands" (59).

When Beloved enters 124 Bluestone Road, the readers learn that her arrival leads to an insatiable desire of and fascination with Sethe to a point where Beloved stalks her within the house. When waking early to watch Sethe make bread, Morrison writes, "their two shadows clashed and crossed on the ceiling like black swords" (68).

The contrast between these two moments are emblematic of Sethe's past. Though she may not show it all the time, she's grateful for Denver and Paul D and shares pleasant memories with them from her past. Their shadows - or their ghosts - cling to each other in dependence. Beloved, on the other hand, is a reminder to Sethe of her murdered baby, a deed which haunts her within the physical walls of 124 and in her heart and mind. She treats Beloved as if she were her dead daughter, as if she were making up for lost time. But she's only fooling herself.

Our shadows hold our deepest secrets and our greatest despairs.

We All Have Demons

Life is no picnic. It is a rollercoaster of high highs but also of pretty low lows, which can haunt us well past the moments in which we feel like we are living the worst parts. As the saying goes, many of us carry these "demons" with us throughout life. It is each of our own personal challenges to keep these ghosts at bay, for they may very well overtake us if we don't learn how to cope.

I notice this concept in Toni Morrison's Beloved, which so far details the tension and resentment of a family whose house is plagued by the presence of mother Sethe's dead baby. The baby's ghost frightens and drives out Sethe's two eldest children, sons Buglar and Howard, from the home. The only child remaining in the house is Sethe's brave but equally haunted daughter, Denver. She experiences the burden of emotional ghosts, as she struggles to understand the reason for her own existence and her mother's prolonged sadness after essentially losing three of her four children. She cannot relate to the common past of enslavement shared by her mother and Sethe's mother, Baby Suggs. We, as readers, get a sense of this through the constant changes in narrative perspective and time periodization; in one moment Sethe may be telling a story about her own past, and it may then switch to Denver's memory of hearing stories of Baby Sugg's life.

Denver exists confused and upset by the limits of her ability to understand the slave experience. Sethe and Baby Suggs have lived it, and are haunted by their inability to forget it. Through this style of writing, Morrison reveals that the true demon is not the real or imagined ghost of the baby, but actually each character's own dark past or present.

Beloved and The Tempest

I'm in a version of Shakespeare's The Tempest right now, and I came upon a passage in Beloved that reminded me of it. Near the end of Beloved; "There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up; holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship's... There is a loneliness that roams... It is alive, on its own" (323).
In The Tempest, Ariel recounts the events of the tempest to Prospero. "And, as thou badest me,/ In troops I have dispersed them 'bout the isle./ The king’s son have I landed by himself,/ Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs/ In an odd angle of the isle, and sitting,/ His arms in this sad knot" (I,ii).

The parallels of water, isolation, ships, rocking, arms crossed, all of it is similar between these two texts. 

Near the end of Beloved when the first passage listed occurs, there is a definite sense of isolation because of the distance that has grown between Sethe and everyone around her: Paul D, Beloved, Denver, and her community. In isolation, self comfort, such as crossing your arms around your legs and rocking yourself is a common human reaction. Toni Morrison writes "...on its own" as a clear piece of evidence to how Sethe feels after her family has left her. 

In The Tempest, Ferdinand has also been separated from his family after the shipwreck, and is alone in a foreign place with no one to comfort him but himself. 

In both these stories, the characters in question have been on long, treacherous journeys and end up isolated, not knowing what to do. Yet, the island and Sethe's newfound perspective of freedom manifest themselves magically in both ominously and wondrously mysterious ways. And, as Ferdinand eventually finds Miranda after wandering about the island, Paul D eventually finds Sethe after looking all throughout the house. This parallels in that Ferdinand follows Ariel's song in order to get to the place Miranda is waiting, while Paul D only finds Sethe when he hears her singing the lullaby she would sing to Beloved and Denver. 

It is interesting that so many of the same symbols and plot devices are used in two classic pieces of literature even though they were written centuries apart and of completely different stories. I appreciate the sense of hope both these passages bring, however, to the perspective of being found after being isolated, that while freedom is often associated with independence, both Ferdinand and Sethe find a happier sense of freedom when they are united with other people.

Sethe Accepted by the Community

So I’m thinking that my theory about the community and their denouncement of Sethe was pretty accurate. As soon as Beloved begins to drain the life out of Sethe and Denver ventures out, the community finally rallies together to go to 124. Ella organized a group of thirty or so people to march to 124 to confront Beloved. Based on Morrison’s description, it did not take too much convincing to get them to come together. That means that a good majority of the community truly did not harbor extreme negative opinions about Sethe. When Ella, one of the most skeptical of Sethe and her story, works through Denver’s story, making her own conclusions, she says “nobody got that coming” and “children can’t just come up and kill the mama” (301). Although she did not agree with her actions (or did she?), she did not agree with the punishment that seemed to have been put in place.

I think that part of the abandonment of 124 and Sethe had come from not only Sethe’s actions, but also Baby Suggs and her feasts causing jealousy. After Baby Suggs decided to hold a massive feast for approximately ninety people and they had a huge celebration, a lot of people held negative emotions towards her afterwards. They wondered why she was able to do such things and why they were not allowed to themselves. She had not suffered the way that they had (although in reality, I don’t think you could compare any of their suffering) and therefore did not deserve all the goodness that she had.

Even though they may have harbored some negativity towards Baby Suggs, she was, in a sense, their teacher. She told them to love and take care of themselves or else who would do it for them? So, when she died only a short time after Sethe arrived, the community was able to combine two negative events into one and they blamed and denounced Sethe.

Yet, in the end, they came together and marched to 124 where they ‘saved’ Sethe from the life-absorbing Beloved. I now have very little doubt that their negativity was for her action alone and I believe that they may have done the same if placed in the situation. At the end, they are all (eventually) able to forget about Beloved and move on with their lives. Of course, that brings the question of what/who was Beloved, but I’m going to hold off on that question. I think that the community kind of adopts a forgive and forget attitude at the end, able to leave Beloved behind, move on with their lives, and accept Sethe into the community. Toni Morrison said that Sethe’s actions were truly the highest act of love as she would rather kill them then have them live and die in slavery and I believe that there is much truth behind that.

Finally, I just want to say that I really enjoyed this novel. At the beginning, I was kind of skeptical and I was kind of confused with all the switches in point of view, but Toni Morrison is truly an amazing writer and I loved not only the story itself, but the way that it was crafted together.

How (or what) is exactly Beloved?

At first read into the novel Beloved, many readers may seem satisfied with the notion that Beloved is merely just Sethe's baby's ghost taking a human form. Even the characters in the book seem to believe that Beloved is just a ghost transformed back into a human. However, at closer examination (and knowing how Toni Morrison seems to always leave a deeper meaning to characters and motifs in her novels), one really questions what Beloved is exactly.

It's clear that some may strongly agree that Beloved is just a physical representation of a ghost because the book explicitly states that. There is even textual evidence that Beloved could potentially be just a "regular" ghost taking shape in a "regular" human. For example, the fact that once Paul D appears into Sethe's life, Beloved's ghost magically disappears, and the house lacks its haunting qualities as a result. Also the fact that once the house seems to be rid of any sort of spiritual forces, Beloved (as a human) arrives onto the steps of 124.

But yet, there is textual evidence that refutes the idea that Beloved is just Sethe's baby's ghost taken human form. Take into consideration the passage when Beloved is recounting her past, and how she originally showed up onto the steps of 124. She mentions "men with no skin", and while yes, they are supposed to represent white men, couldn't these "men without skin", also represent skeletons? After all, skeletons literally don't have any skin. In addition, Beloved mentions dead men on her face. Again, yes, this could be symbolic of the millions of men and women that have died during the Middle Passage, but they also could represent the deceased spirits who have traveled to hell, purgatory, or the underworld. With this under consideration, what if Beloved is more than just a ghost? What if Beloved is something darker and more ghoulish, like a demon of some sort?

Similarly, what if Beloved isn't just a ghost or demon or spiritual force, but an embodiment of Sethe's traumatizing experiences as a slave and guilt for killing her baby girl? Even when taking into consideration the ending of the book when Beloved is getting bigger and bigger while Sethe is getting frailer and frailer. This simple statement could symbolize Sethe's guilt and trauma eating her up, and her inability to cope with them. As they get gain more control of not only her life, but also her thoughts, Sethe is seen getting weaker and unable to fight them any longer.

Essentially, Beloved could potentially be something much greater than just a ghost taking a human form. Beloved could really be anything, given the perspective of the situation and what you believe she is.

Slavery and Seeing Ghosts

When we got Beloved in class, I glanced at the back of the book summary and learned that the novel is set in the 1800's when slavery was still in full swing. What I would soon learn is that this book is about so much more than conquering and living through slavery. There's another huge element of the book that makes it even more intriguing; the fact that Sethe and her family are being hunted by a ghost. And not just any ghost, the ghost of her dead baby that she murdered. To me, this added a whole new layer of interest to Beloved.

My grandparents and most of my cousins live in California so since I've been five, my family has usually flown out during the summer to see them. There's a certain village called Old Town because it's one of the oldest parts of San Diego. They have an old fashioned candy store and then also a lot more modern shops and restaurants on the surrounding streets. Shopping and eating are fun but my favorite part of the day is going to the Whaley House.

The Whaley House is ranked as one of the most famous haunted houses in America and I can personally vouch that that title is well deserved. The house was designed by Thomas Whaley and then built in 1855 when he moved his wife, Anna, and their six children there to live. A few months after moving, their youngest child, still an infant, Thomas Jr., died of Scarlet Fever. And that was just the beginning of bad omens for the Whaley's. People have claimed to hear a baby wailing or have said they see the baby's old cradle moving on tours.

As it happens, the house was cursed from the beginning. Built on the site where a man named Yankee Jim Robinson, a man infamous in San Diego for lying and stealing, was hung, his ghost is said to haunt the house since the Whaley's moved in. Violet Whaley, one of the oldest daughters, committed suicide in their outhouse by shooting herself with her father's gun. By the time her father ran out and brought her inside, she had already died. Some say they see a young women dressed in older fashioned clothes disappear in mid air or get hit by a wave of absolute despair when near the outhouse. It is assumed that she suffered from severe clinical depression and spiraled when her fiance left her, turning out to be a con man just wanting her money. I've caught multiple orbs (circular balls of energy that in the right context, can represent a ghost)  by the outhouse when it's too dark to be dust or anything my phone created.

Since I was 9 or 10, I've always had a connection with the house. From seeing apparitions appear in front of me to feeling the Whaley's dog brush against my leg, I've always experienced something that my brother and mother never have. I've even caught orbs on camera in places where I felt an energy draw to me. Clearly I believe in ghosts and while it may sound crazy, I have always felt a connection to the "other side."

When we dove into the possible theory that Beloved could be Sethe's baby reincarnated and learned about the whole plot of the ghost that haunts her house, it immediately caught my attention. I really like how Morrison added this to the plot because it adds another layer to the novel that you don't usually read about in books set during slavery or about slavery. Whether you're a skeptic or a fully fledged believer, I think this element to the story line makes the book even more unique and intriguing than it already is.

Orb in the lower right corner

Orb by the outhouse in middle left corner

The white area that looks like Thomas Whaley

Ella's Beef

One part of the recent reading that stood out to me was when the audience was reading from the point of view of Stamp Paid. After he tells Paul D that Sethe had killed the baby, Paul D leaves the house without a goodbye and spends weeks sleeping in the church basement. Ella says he did not ask for help, so she didn't give it, and Stamp Paid is appalled. Frankly, I was too, and I empathized with his not being able to understand how a christian would not offer help to someone who needed it just because they didn't ask for it, particularly since Stamp Paid and Ella had spent years helping slaves escape across the Ohio River. So, my question is, why wouldn't Ella reach out?
Is it because Paul D had been involved with Sethe? Ella clearly has harsh feelings toward Sethe, along with nearly everyone else, for murdering her child. However, Paul D demonstrated the same fear and disgust by leaving when he heard the news, so his previous relations with Sethe being the reason doesn't really hold up.
Is it because, as Ella reveals in her conversation with Stamp Paid, that she knows about Beloved having moved in? I doubt she knows Beloved is the ghost of the dead baby, because not even Sethe realized that until she had spent quite a long time around her. Additionally, in that argument, Paul D hates Beloved, so that doesn't hold up either.
As a christian whose job is to help other black people in need, why, in this case, does she not?

Beloved and Ghosts from Outer Space

Morrison’s treatment of supernatural elements, especially the character of Beloved, bears a close resemblance to Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 science fiction novel Solaris. Lem describes a crew of researches from Earth fruitlessly trying to establish communication with a telepathic alien organism - a living ocean covering the surface of planet Solaris. After the scientists turn to more radical methods of stimulating the ocean, the organism responds by materializing replicas of people from the crew members’ individual repressed traumatic memories. In nearly every aspect, Beloved’s nature seems much closer to those replicants than to traditional folklore ghosts. Just like the Solaris replicants, Beloved doesn’t have a past. She has no memory, and hence identity, of her own, separate from Sethe’s. Also, just like the replicants, Beloved can’t physically bear to be separated from her host. Beloved was even spawned from the water, just like the mirages of Solaris.

Writing the character of Beloved, Morrison could have drawn inspiration from Solaris, since the novel’s first translation into English in 1970 received fairly wide recognition. But the similarities might also be incidental, since Morrison and Lem crafted their analogous supernatural creatures as physical metaphors for similar psychological phenomena. They represent, in terms of psychoanalysis, autonomous complexes: systems of memories, emotions, and thoughts repressed from the conscious, but continuing to independently affect a person’s psyche. Beloved, as before her materialization did the ghost of 124, is a tangible force that uncontrollably influences Sethe’s personal identity as well as her interactions with others. The symbol of the ocean, or water, may also be explained in terms of psychoanalysis as the archetype of the unconscious. Yet, it seems that unlike the Solaris replicas, Beloved possesses some sort of agency, altering Sethe’s life not simple by the mere fact of her presence, but sometimes by active effort. She also meaningfully interacts with other characters, like Denver and Paul D. Although the similarities between the supernatural in Beloved and Solaris seem obvious, the few but important differences that there are make me wonder if this comparison limits the range of Beloved’s character to a narrower framework than Morrison intended. Can Beloved be reduced to a mere psychological function of Sethe’s mind, or does she have an even greater significance in the novel?

Perspectives

One of the most interesting parts of Beloved and something I like the most about the book is how it is told from the slave's perspective, as opposed to a white person's. Most books are from a white person's perspective- Huckleberry Finn for example, and I think that while they are talking about slavery, it is much more powerful for the slave to tell their own story. rather than how the white people see them. In Beloved, when the perspective turns to the white person for a little bit,  you can see how they look down on the people you have gotten to know so well. For example, how the slave catcher, schoolteacher, and the nephew, look at Sethe, Baby Suggs, and Stamp Paid as crazy and wild when we, the audience, have gotten to hear their stories and the hardships they've gone through. We have gotten to know them as very strong, powerful people. This change in perspective was very powerful for me, and, for this reason, this is my favorite book I have read about slavery and the time period so far.