Tuesday, November 14, 2017
Community in Beloved
There is a great amount of community in Beloved. It presents community as something that is essential for life. Baby Suggs holds these gatherings in the Clearing where she tells the men, women and children to love themselves in a physical sense. During these gatherings the women would cry, men would dance, children would laugh and they could all just be physically free in this group setting, as a community. When Sethe experiences her first few days of freedom she becomes a part of the Cincinnati community and this was when she discovers her sense of self of as an individual. But the Cincinnati community also played a more negative role as well. When the community failed in alerting Sethe about the schoolteacher, that was ultimately the cause of the death of Sethe's daughter. These events display the importance of community for survival.
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I think that community does play such an important role in survival of the novel. From experiencing similar traumatic experiences, the community that we as readers are exposed to in the novel really shows how empathetic and charismatic they are. Yet, I can't help but be mad at the community. They abandoned Sethe, judged her, and as you mentioned, had the ability to warn Sethe of schoolteacher approaching. I feel like this community really did not show enough support for her, and instead, ostracized her.
ReplyDeleteThis is further seen in the case of Sethe after going to prison. Without the community around her anymore she completely failed to cope. Only when Denver finally reached out to the community at the end did they come together to help Sethe.
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