Thursday, November 2, 2017

How is Beloved a Ghost?

Beloved is a ghost who is the dead child of Sethe.  However, Beloved has grown, can interact with the living, and is tangible, so how is she a ghost?  The only thing that makes her non-human is the fact that she is dead, but she does not fit with my concept of a ghost.  When I think ghost, I think: floating, transparent, and intangible.  Beloved is none of these.  Beloved is tangible and walks around like everyone else.  When I first pictured Beloved, I saw a smaller and meaner Casper, but now I have a lot of trouble picturing her.  She is dead, but she also is not dead, nor does she look dead.  I also thought that ghosts stopped aging after death, but that clearly is not true in this case.  In my opinion, Beloved is just not dead, she is alive but was thought to be dead.  That is the only way I can make sense of this. 
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3 comments:

  1. AnonymousNovember 2, 2017 at 6:48 PM

    I was super confused by this too. Also why does the ghost of Sethe's child appear at this point in the story instead of having been with the family earlier on. Overall this book really confuses me with the timeline, it's really well written but kind of hard to follow. Maybe Beloved is like a reincarnated version of the dead child?

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  2. AnonymousNovember 2, 2017 at 11:17 PM

    I think there is probably another explanation. Sethe's child is definitely dead because of what we are told early in the book about the blood and the engraving of the tomb. I bet beloved is someone else entirely, but the memories/haunting experiences make Sethe and the others project the ghost idea on to her. The only problem is the name "Beloved". Maybe it's all a weird coincidence?

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  3. AnonymousNovember 3, 2017 at 11:51 AM

    I get where you're coming from because it was originally really hard for me to picture Beloved, but I think that the spirit of Sethe's child someone made a deal with the devil (as she at one point says she knew one whiteman, and I can't think of another white man the child would know) and has possessed a beautiful person or the devil created some sort of host for the child to gain the family's trust.

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