Stamped, Sealed, Delivered

Life is a never-ending string of dichotomies and decisions, and whether small or large, moral dilemmas often come to the forefront of the timeline; we recognize moments in which we make choices of morality as definitive and quintessential representations of us. And, indeed, the principles we hold often shine through when we make decisions dealing with family, love, and lifestyle.

It is without question that had Stamp Paid not intervened and alerted Paul D of Sethe's past actions, Paul D would not have left Sethe, at least not at that point in time. Despite his pretty weird relationship to Beloved, Paul D affirmed over and over again that he was growing to love Sethe more and more, planning to even have a child with her. Paid's revealing of the details of Sethe's life is pretty objectively an act falling into the category of "none of his business." However, had Paul D never found out that Sethe had attempted to kill her own children, his perception of her as a human being would be severely skewed (in a positive direction, but still skewed). 

Was Stamp making a good morality call in sharing Sethe's personal history with Paul D which she had not previously disclosed to him? Does it make a difference when everyone else in town knows about it?

False Sense of Progress

In the novel Beloved, set in 1865, we see racial issues like the obvious one racial inequality, slavery, discrimination, the fugitive slave act, and the traumatization and isolation impacted upon ex-slaves. 152 years later have we really made a significant headway regarding racial equality?

In current news there are several thematic racial issues: police brutality, mass incarceration of minorities, unequal distribution of resources, and endless more systematic discrimination. And these matters are hushed, ignored, and/or unaddressed.

However it is a FACT that the police treat minorities differently. Either they are more frequently ticketed, cited, seen as suspicious, dangerous, a threat, beaten, or murdered. African Americans and Latinos have a fearful relationship with the police as they are living in fear and have a higher chance of going to jail and getting shot because of their skin color. 

The prison system is racially unjust. African Americans and Latinos are the majority in prison and under the 13th Amendment labor can be forced upon inmates legally. So now there is a new form of slavery but under a disguise. Slavery still exists and it is covert to those Americans who are privileged enough to never see even a sliver of the racial issue.

Desperate Denver

There are many disturbing acts and stories of slavery described in Beloved, so it is easy to overlook Denver’s loneliness. The life of isolation that Denver lives is becoming increasingly apparent as I read, and increasingly depressing.

Denver has lived her whole life on the premises of 124. Isolated from society, she has only her mother, Sethe, to spend her time with. Sethe spends most of her time at work or caught up in memories from her past, before Denver. I can hardly imagine the intense loneliness that Denver must feel. She has no one to pass her time with, and never has. In most of her memories she is alone as well, or around people who have abandoned her. Denver has no stories or important memories of her own, so she has soaked up every last detail of stories she’s heard from others to pass her time. Her desperation to find and connect to someone is not only symptom of loneliness, but also in an attempt to find her own identity.

I think this is prevalent in Denver’s telling of the story of her birth. Denver enjoys telling the story of her birth because it is a big part of her identity, but the story she tells is much more about Sethe's escape from slavery. Empathy and recognition of her mother's past has played a large role in Denver's identity.Denver probably likes Amy's part because she is named after her, and can identify with her.  With no one around except her mother (too wrapped up in a past that Denver can't relate to) , Denver has had no one to recognize as, and no one to recognize her as, different. She has no idea where she stands or who she is in relation to the rest of the world.

A Sense of Community

In Toni Morrison's book, "Beloved", there are numerous situations of attempts to dehumanize slaves. One of scenes in this story that struck me hardest, was Paul D's account of the prison life in Georgia. On pages 126-128 Paul D recounts the atrocities he and forty five other prisoners faced at the hands of angry white prison guards. From sexual assault to murder, the White guards ravaged the prisoners. Morrison paints this picture vividly by using such strong diction and in depth description of the setting to very effectively paint the scene. Even after all that the prisoners are subjected to, they still have a sense of community and trust in each other. This trust can be seen through their communal escape from the prison.

During a massive storm, the hard ground that prevented the prisoners from escaping their cells become malleable and allowed for escape. However, every single one of the prisoners was chained together and could not leave without every single other prisoner also escaping. The prisoners had to rely on each other and trust that each one would follow through with the escape attempt even with all the uncertainty it brought. From their escape, their community and strong reliance on each other became very evident.

The Hat

Reading Beloved has been a confusing experience for me, so when we got to take apart a small portion of the book I was excited to be able to have a chance to think a long time about the symbolism in that small portion.

The passage my group read starts on page 192 of the novel, and ends on page 195. Throughout the passage, a hat is continuously mentioned. The hat first comes up when the slave master comes to 124, wearing a black hat and Sethe sees him, "she was squatting in the garden and when she saw them coming and recognized schoolteacher's hat..."(192). The hat is one of the first things Sethe recognized, and it immediately scared her.

What is even more interesting is that the schoolteacher's hat is mentioned multiple times, and by the end of the passage, Paul D leaves and, "Only then did he put on his hat"(195). Because the detail of schoolteacher wearing a hat is so profound, the hat may symbolize evil or power. Paul D struggles throughout his life with his identity, and is especially bothered by women, and others, taking power over him after being a slave. When Paul D leaves 124, he is taking power over Sethe. He wants a life with her, and was happy when he first got to his house, but things quickly changed as he was pushed around while living in 124.

A Sense of Community

In Beloved, a recurring motif of community has appeared throughout many of the characters' development. This idea of community usually becomes visible when a group has the desire to accomplish a certain task. I first began to notice this within my group for our presentations. We were given the passage where Baby Suggs is identified as an "unchurched preacher," and her tone and diction create the sense of community she is trying to create.

Accepting no title of honor before her name, but allowing a small caress after it,she became an unchurched preacher, one who visited pulpits and opened her great heart to those who could use it...a wide-open place cut deep in the woods nobody knew for what at the end of a path known only to deer and whoever cleared the land in the first place. In the heat of every Saturday afternoon, she sat in the clearing while the people waited among the trees (102). 

In this instance, people of the surrounding area gather to listen to Baby Suggs preach. Baby Suggs isn't speaking in religious terms, but an almost spiritual manner. Her uplifting manner supports the community and motivates them to reach out to each other. But, the authoritative and directive tone commands these individuals to realize their own feelings and presence in the world. To sum up, her speech is meant to spark opposition against the "other" who hold them back. I am interested to see whether or not the community motif is used to separate or disassociate from others, the complete opposite from how it is used within Baby Suggs' speech. 

Is Beloved Actually a Ghost?

While it may seem quite obvious to the reader of Toni Morrision's novel Beloved that Beloved is actually the ghost of Sethe's daughter, what if she was not? What if Beloved represents something other than the a child's rise from the dead. One of the larger themes in the novel is family connection, especially those that have been lost. The novel centers around a family that have seen it's members spread across the country due to slavery. Baby Suggs has lost 8 children, Sethe lost her mother, she then later loses her sons after they leave her. Is it possible that the same thing happened to the woman called Beloved? Maybe she lost her family to slavery and now she has no one. Maybe she has been wondering around the country with no place to go. Paul D describes his experiences as a nomadic ex-slave walking aimlessly across the country where "he had seen Negroes so stunned, or hungry, or tired or bereft it was a wonder they recalled or said anything" (78). Maybe this quotation can apply to Beloved, maybe she cannot recall anything because she is so lost. Perhaps the relationship between Sethe and Beloved is a case of mistaken identity, Beloved has no one to call her own and is desperate to belong and Sethe never got over the death of her daughter, which is why she is so ready to accept Beloved as her own so she can let go of the loss. This may explain why Beloved appears to be much older than the murdered child was. Or maybe she is the actual ghost of Sethe's daughter and that is why she knows details about that specific family. Either explanation has it's questions. 

Tobacco Tin Heart

While I was trying to figure out what I wanted to write about for this post, I mulled over Paul D's metaphorical tobacco tin box. He's sealed off his heart and let it grow cold. He doesn't allow himself to feel as much as would be normal because he's scared of being getting hurt as a result of his attachments. He is very adamant that he does not open his box. I started to wonder why it was that Paul D/Toni Morrison decided to use the imagery of a tobacco tin as opposed to a more secure lock box. It would seem to me that that the kind of seal that Paul D wants would be better found in something meant to store things a long period of time as opposed to being opened on a regular basis, contents being withdrawn and consumed. I decided to look on Google Images to see if there was something about these tins that I was missing. Turns out I wasn't missing much. They're really just like little altoid tins for carcinogens.

The images Google provided mostly showed older worn down boxes. The boxes looked like they were cheap to manufacture and sell. I did a bit of research and found that the cost of their contents were also much cheaper than what they are now. The price of tobacco has been steadily rising over the years. At the time that Beloved is set, tobacco and its tins were most likely a cheap commodity that everyone had access to. I think it says a lot about Paul D's self image that he pictures his heart stored inside of such a cheap container. The dehumanization that he faced is reflected in the devaluing of his own heart.

As I consider the metaphor of the tin, more and more possible interpretations come to me. Maybe a tobacco tin would be very valuable to an ex-slave who was previously unable to own property, showing that he does still value his heart. Maybe he put his heart in an inconspicuous container to try conceal his "weak point" from those who would do him harm. Or, maybe he chose to leave his heart in a tobacco tin and not a safe because he does not feel that he is completely done with it yet. As I said before, tobacco tins are meant to be opened, and their contents are meant to be removed. Maybe his placement shows a willingness to come out of his shell eventually and settle down a bit more. Maybe he feels like his heart is like the tobacco that would have been inside the tin before his heart, shriveled and gray, but able to be kindled, shining until death. (Although unlike burning tobacco, a revived heart isn't inherently bad for the health of all those in the area.) I hope that Paul D is leaving himself open to the possibility of easing back into emotional health, eventually discarding the tobacco tin. What do you think? Can you think of other better interpretations?

Somebody to Lean On

After being born and raised in a community with sub-10,000 people, growing up, I felt that I was part of a team. Growing up knowing nearly everyone in my town made me form very strong bonds with several people before the age of 10. Even before I was born, my family created a close network of friends that would advocate for one another. This community that we created acted almost as a safety net that would always be there for me.

Similarly, the novel Beloved by Toni Morrison, emphasizes the extent to which individuals need their communities. As Paul D explains his experiences in Jail with 46 other men. They would do labor together bound by metal chains, they all made choices as one prompting their escape. When they escaped, they decided that if one goes down, so do the others: "If one lost, all lost." All acting as one, they imitated the human body, if one vital organ goes down, it is a chain reaction that eventually shuts down the whole system.

 This theme was also found after Sethe escapes slavery and is on her journey to Cincinnati. After arriving at her destination Morrison describes the sight: "Where not one but two pots simmered on the stove where the lamp burned all night long. Strangers rested while their children tried on their shoes" (Morrison 87). Sethe found herself in a place with security and love, revolving around Baby Suggs, the driving force in the community, this home was a place where the community bonded making this place so vital to the story. 

Clearly, community bonding is stressed in this novel, and wants the reader to appreciate how much comfort a community provides.  

Smeagol Meets Sethe

Although The Lord of the Rings and Beloved look like two completely different books -- and they are -- I’ve found a lot of similarities between the two. Obviously, Morrison’s novel deals with very real issues and is grounded in a lot more truth than Tolkien’s magic-filled fantasy. But, perhaps The Lord of the Rings, despite taking place in an entirely different universe, encompasses some of the same issues as Beloved.

At its core, the ring seeks to control. First its user, then the rest of the world; the ring will not stop until it dominates everything. Unable to resist the temptation of power that comes with the ring, mankind is unable to destroy it. Even hobbits, one of the purest and wholesome species in Middle Earth, have trouble fighting the ring. Like a sickness, it festers in its user, stripping away their humanity. Smeagol, once a carefree hobbit, became something else when he found the ring. As a result of the rings power, Smeagol killed his friend, ate raw fish, and isolated himself from everyone. Smeagol eventually took on the name Gollum, marking the ring’s success in replacing Smeagol’s identity.

I think this situation is akin to Sethe and Paul D’s. Although the power dynamic is slightly different, their lifelong struggle with slavery and its ramifications are not too different from Smeagol and his ring’s. Slavery, like the ring, has taken Sethe and Paul D’s identity and humanity. Even after its abolishment, slavery takes its toll (at the time Beloved takes place and now). Sethe wishes she was crazy and Paul D relies on his tobacco tin more than his heart. Americans, then and now, struggle to end racism and sacrifice the power that accompanies it.

Reflecting on the Past

We all go through tough times in life, it is inevitable. We all do stupid things in life and it's really tough to forget those things. It's really tough for me to forget about stupid things I have done because instead of sleeping my brain decides that it wants to think about that one embarrassing thing I did in front of Jose in fourth grade. Unfortunately my brain also prefers to do my homework at one in the morning, which is exactly what I'm doing now.

Beloved centers directly around overcoming through tough times, which is really awesome to me. Throughout the novel Sethe struggles with her own self, trying to forget her past and live in the present. She just can't seem to do it. This proves to be very critical because it has a huge impact on Denver, who is a literal representative of the post-slavery era. Even though Denver was born after slavery it almost seems like she is still living through it because of Denver. She even talks about how it seems like she is living in a household that seems haunted by the ghost of the past. Denver is simply trying to move into the future but she can't do it because of Sethe.

This is understandable, however, as slavery isn't just something that you can put behind you and completely forget about. It has an affect on you, physically, emotionally, and mentally. You can't really blame Sethe for living like this. We are learning about slavery because it is important for us to understand our history so that we will never repeat things like this.

Back to doing stupid stuff. If you're like me and you have a tendency to constantly think about stupid and embarrassing mistakes you make, don't. Constantly reflecting on our mistakes isn't going to do you any good. Sometimes it may be good to do so because then you can improve in the future, but reflecting on the past is otherwise pointless because unless you're Marty McFly you can't change the past. In order to get better at anything we do in life we have to move forward.

Morrison's Depiction of Neither Positive nor Negative Relationships

Paul D, a man who comes into 124, physically and figuratively shakes up the familiar relationships, throws Sethe into an unrecognizable emotional state, and evidently gets displaced by a ghost roaming the house, Toni Morrison uses this character to project the myriad of experiences, reflection, and pain of a African-American male in the Antebellum period. Morrison stalls his relationship with Sethe in front of her audience, through times where we've appreciated Paul D's presence, and times we've resented his ignorance towards his selfish treatment of Sethe. Not only does he equate a female with the home she lives in, saying;

  "He believed he was having house-fits, the glassy anger men sometimes feel when a woman's house   begins to bind them, when they want to yell and break something or at least run off. He knew all about that—felt it lots of times—in the Delaware weaver's house, for instance. But always he associated the  house-fit with the woman in it. This nervousness had nothing to do with the woman […] Also in this   house-fit there was no anger, no suffocation, no yearning to be elsewhere. He just could not, would not, sleep upstairs or in the rocker or, now, in Baby Suggs' bed. So, he went to the storeroom" (135).

Moreover, this thought process begins to be hypocritical, quoting "whom he loved (Sethe) a bit more everyday: [...] the blood in her eye when she defended her girls" (136); only to later break up with Sethe on the grounds that she had taken the life of her children to keep them from experiencing the most inhumane and degrading systematic oppression this country, and very much the world, has ever known. His vision of love pertains to a larger basis of insecurity in masculinity. The fact that Paul D would have rather impregnated Sethe than admit to having emotional struggle and turmoil is a point Morrison is portraying through his fluctuating treatment of Sethe. Men, especially at the time, were defined by their physical toughness. If a woman was to assert this "dominance" over a man, the male was not considered a man. The emotional struggles Paul D is going through at the time of his dissent from 124 relate back to his sexual encounter with Beloved. Having been raped, Paul D no longer feels his manhood is honored in the house of 124, as he has been made to feel unsafe in his own body, pressured into sexual acts, and socially isolated. Morrison ends the chapter right before the beginning of Part II by Sethe nonchalantly waving off Paul D's point to end their relationship. By ending the chapter with Sethe thinking: "Sweet. He must think I can't bear to hear him say it. That after all I have told him and after telling me how many feet I have, "goodbye" would break me into pieces. Ain't the sweet" (195). 

The audience is left feeling proud that Sethe is remaining unaffected by his absence and harsh insults, but also a large loss of a character's right to finally feel as if they are the person in control of their actions. This confusion is one of many ways Morrison depicts the lasting effects of slavery and how to many people at the time, slavery was mentally inescapable. We, as the audience, must not overlook the pain that both the main characters have gone through individually, and how they in turn allow for the treatment of one another. 

Morrison's Four Horsemen

Sethe kills her baby at an impulse. A decision she made at the sight of a hat. Schoolteacher's hat was the trigger of Sethe's action because she knew what horrors lied ahead if she did not take matters into her own hands. These horrors included the rest of the "four horsemen" as Morrison describes them as " schoolteacher, one nephew, one slave catcher and a sheriff"(Morrison 174). Morrison's use of the phrase "four horsemen" is obviously a direct allusion to the Biblical story of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It is not surprising for Morrison to be making such a clear biblical reference as she has made the reader accept Beloved's existence as a ghost. The question lies in the reference itself and its role in Sethe's actions that forced the rest of the 124 community to shun her.

Sethe justifies her decision to try to kill her kids by telling Paul D that she could never allow her nor her children to endure slavery as it would immediately make them less than human which is a life not worth living. She loved her children so much that being alive was not important if it meant they would have to submit themselves to being treated as animals in slavery. Paul D disagrees and thinks that death was not the way to for Sethe to retain her and her children's humanity. But, Sethe is resilient in her justification and continues to feel like her action was the right one if it meant choosing between slavery and freedom. It was a very black and white decision that. Humanity or not.

Morrison uses the phrase "four horsemen" in one of the first descriptions of the day Sethe killed her baby to preface Sethe's justification for her actions. For Sethe, death was not the end of the world. Her loss of freedom was. Her loss of humanity was. That decision to kill her children and herself was her exercising her agency to conclude what freedom meant to her. To Sethe, the end of her world was letting her children endure the animal like life that she felt at Sweet Home. Morrison makes this biblical reference obvious because she wants the reader understand the parallels between Sethe's situation and John's revelations in the Bible. John revealed the truth in the ultimate victory of good over evil and Sethe's victory is one that is very black and white just like her decision. Not allowing Schoolteacher and his nephew to treat her like an animal ever again was clear victory of good over evil.

Ghost to Me

Before my ballet performance this past Saturday, I plugged my phone into the speakers in the dressing room and put on a playlist to calm me and my friends down. As my friend braided my hair before I put on my flower wreath and tutu, I passively leafed through the pages of Beloved, contemplating whether or not I should try to focus on homework. It was then that I noticed the song "Ghost to Me" by Youth Lagoon was playing. It felt like a great coincidence, and I eagerly told the people around me how the song links with Morrison's writing. 

Toni Morrison's signature mix of shifting points of view, figurative language, and supernatural elements works to establish Beloved as an entity with both human emotion and otherworldly attributes. At first, Beloved is an immature, angry spirit, and as time passes, she appears as a curious human girl. Throughout the novel, her presence receives mixed responses--Denver has a deep need to keep her around, Paul D feels pushed away--but Sethe's acceptance of the ghost baby is fairly consistent. 

This acceptance reminds me of the lyrics in "Ghost to Me." The former half of the song references more personal events and latter half of the song is solely instrumental, but the middle stanza of the song stands out to me. It goes, "Home is where I call the ghost my own / that haunts the basement where I sleep alone / It's seen the burns on my skin showing bones / and asks me why I still sleep with my phone." Sethe has lived her entire free life in 124, tolerating the malevolence of her baby's spirit that drives everyone else away. "Home" is 124, since it is where she can call "the ghost" (Beloved) "my own" (since it is her daughter, and she can take ownership of her life at 124 rather than live by the Garners' commands at Sweet Home). Beloved haunts the entire house, where Sethe sleeps alone before and after Paul D. Finally, the "burns on my skin showing bones" can parallel the chokecherry tree scar on Sethe's back - Beloved has seen and felt the brutality and consequences of slavery. And though the book was written before the cell phone was invented, the concept of asking someone why they sleep with their phone can relate to the way that Beloved cares for Sethe, and the phone could symbolize a desire to find a long-lost connection (like Sethe feels about her other children and Halle).

I'm not sure if anyone else here on Word Choices has heard this song or thinks it relates to the book, but it's very beautiful and soothing to me! Here is the link if anyone is interested. The whole album is great too. 

A Figment of the Imagination

Before I begin, I want to say that I appreciated the comments on my last post — they were very interesting to read. I wish I could talk more about those two college subjects this week, but I've used up my one and only college post :( .

It took me until the very end of the movie, The Sixth Sense, to realize (SPOILER ALERT) that Dr. Malcolm Crowe was a ghost in Cole Sear’s mind. Because I’ve watched the movie, I’ve had the sneaking suspicion that something similar might play out in Beloved. In this case, I am referring to Beloved as a possible figment of Sethe’s, Denver’s, and Paul D’s imagination. The major difference from The Sixth Sense that may impede such a theory from becoming true is that more than one character physically interacts with Beloved, meaning it cannot be the creation of a single person’s mind.

My next thought was that Beloved is a creation of 124. After all, Denver referred to 124 as person rather than a house, suggesting that it may have an imagination of its own. Given the supernatural aspect of Beloved, I find it perfectly reasonable to assume that Beloved is an incarnation only observable to people who live in 124, which would account for why Paul D, Sethe, and Denver have interacted with her.

Another idea is that Beloved represents the accumulation of the past and the experiences Sethe. Denver loves her because she is finally getting a part of her mother she never knew. Paul D despises and fears her, perhaps because she sprouted from the time Sethe killed her own child, which Paul D sees as immoral. Sethe sees Beloved as her own child, partly because she is her dead child, but also because she is the past that Sethe cannot escape.

I guess we’ll see if any of these theories are remotely true by the end of the novel.

He Loved That Tub

This line of dialogue confused me for a while. It interrupts the serious conversation on page 85, where Paul D reveals to Sethe that Halle was in the barn when she was violated and that he felt less free than the roosters at Sweet Home when he had the iron muzzle on.

Then Sethe starts smiling: “He loved that tub,” she says about Mister the rooster’s perching habits.

In that serious moment, there’s still room for a respite of humor. That’s how it always is isn’t it? There’s always something funny, something beautifully real to reflect on mixed in with even the most horrible memories.

But that sweet moment still has really dark undertones. The rooster sits on the tub “like a throne.” Mister is free to perch on a tub and talk; he has a personality, a name, a title. The text gives that rooster so much power as a the human being watching it can’t speak or relax.

Then Halle reflects on when he helped that rooster out of its shell and its aggressive behavior towards the other animals later on. “He was always hateful,” he says. He has to be a hateful rooster. He was born into a world of inherent evil. He lords over Paul D on his throne, living comfortably and wreaking havoc on others. Mister is just like a slave owner. In a small way, he's part of the power structure at Sweet Home.

Baby Suggs, Hopeful

In Beloved, Morrison crafts a multitude of complex and interesting characters, almost all of whom struggle through intense oppression and grief throughout the novel. Baby Suggs certainly has her share of traumas to work through, but despite this she maintains a larger than life presence. Her work on the underground railroad as well as protecting Sethe and her children personally identify her as a larger-than-life beacon of hope. People's intense reverence and belief in her, from Halle's willingness to buy her out of slavery to her common suffix of "holy", further demonstrate her enigma-ness.  However, when Sethe does the unthinkable, Baby Suggs retreats - marking the loss of hope and the era of fear in 124. 

Baby Suggs work within the black community mark her as the human embodiment of hope. She ran 124 as a safehouse for escaping slaves - already instilling countless fugitive slaves with hope as they made it one stop further to freedom - and while there, served as a pseudo-preacher. In her Clearing, she called children to laugh, men to dance, and women to cry, allowing them to cope with their griefs and fears as fugitive slaves (103). She would tell the crowd that, "the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine" (103). She preached what was feasible, she gave them hope not through some divine god but through the autonomy of themselves, of the community, of humanity. She gave them hope they could actually use. 

Clearly, others had hope in her. Otherwise, she would not have been called "Baby Suggs, holy". More than this, Halle had great hope in his mother. She states that it was almost foolish for Halle to buy her out of slavery so late in her life, she had very few years left to live even if they were free. Why then, did Halle give up years of Sundays for Baby Suggs? He had hope in her. He had hope in freedom. Halle believed so firmly in the promise of a better life outside slavery that he was willing to give up what little freedom he had to give someone else full freedom. For Halle, Baby Suggs represented the hope of a better life, which is why he was willing to work so hard to get her out of Sweet Home. 

Once Sethe commits The Misery, Baby Suggs is no longer representative of people's hopes and dreams. She retreats into a room, searching aimlessly for her own hope by thinking through colors. 124 becomes barren, no longer the hotspot for hopeful runaways on the Underground Railroad. Halle never makes it to 124, never gets the freedom he believed in so hard and paid so much for. When she finally and truly dies, Sethe and Denver are left alone in the haunted house, with no hope of ever being accepted and loved again by society. 

Throughout the novel, Baby Suggs is a vessel and representation of various character's hopes. She is a manifestation of the hope the Underground Railroad brought to fugitive slaves, a proof of Halle's hope in a free life, and her retreat and death mark the point at which 124 lost all hope of being a normal and not frightful house. In Beloved, Baby Suggs truly earns the title 'Baby Suggs, Hopeful'.

Gas Station Clearing

I think everyone can recall their first moments of true self awareness. Mine happened around age 11. I was in a gas station bathroom. Like Baby Suggs, my self awareness came through my hands. I somehow had discovered for the first time, staring at myself in a dirty mirror, that these oddly shaped tools at the end of my arms completely belonged to me and that I was the only one who could control them.

On page 166, Baby Suggs, quite a bit older than my prepubescent self, has her big moment. Big Suggs declared, "with a clarity as simple as it was", ' "These hands belong to me. These my hands." ' It took her becoming a free woman to discover her hands. This simple fact shows the oppressive nature of slavery, of dehumanizing and controlling someone so much that they don't realize they have their own hands. As a free woman, Baby Suggs has to establish who she will be and what she will be called. She would no longer be called by the name on her sales ticket, Jenny. A name she never knew why she was called. She is now Baby Suggs and, for the first time, she can feel her beating heart.

Baby Suggs shares her awakening with a huge crowd of people in, what I like to think of, as an antebellum era TED Talk. She tells her audience to love the "beat and beating heart", as well as their liver and neck and mouth and flesh and shoulders and arms and womb, and all that they had forgotten was theirs and all that they were never taught to love.

Morrison's rich imagery and layered descriptions are not as present in this passage. After I read it, I felt the passage was somehow out of place. The language felt almost "cheesy" or "clichéd", unlike Morrison. When I read the passage again, I realized these emotional and basic statements were what the crowd needed to hear. At the age of 11, when I had my gas station bathroom realization, I had been hearing these messages of self love and individuality for 11 years from my parents. In the context of the lives' of the people in this crowd, they often did not have present and nourishing parents to remind them of their worth. Baby Suggs played that role.

The Loss of Identity

In Beloved, the main theme that is present through out the novel is the dehumanization due to slavery. In various scenes you hear stories told by the protagonist's about the hardships they faced in slavery or have watched others face. Slavery has not only scared them but has altered how they view themselves through out the novel.

Escaping slavery was only half the battle. The damage had already been done and that is prevalent in the way many of the protagonist's, such as Sethe and Paul D carry themselves. For example,  Paul D dehumanizes himself when he says, "He would keep the rest where it belonged: in that tobacco tin buried in his chest where a red heart used to be. It's lid rusted shut." I interpreted this line as a way of him saying that he no longer can see himself as human or a living being. When he says, "where a heart used to be" he makes it clear, because a heart is one major key to every living thing, that he is aware he has no emotions or human like characteristics. I think this expressed the emotional and spiritual devastation brought on by slavery, and really hindering his sense of self.

The True Power of Morrison's White Point of View Chapter

Throughout the novel of Beloved, we as readers are only exposed to a certain point of view. That point of view is from the enslaved point of view. Protagonists such as Sethe, Paul D, Halle, and Denver who were either enslaved or have a family history of oppression are the protagonists for this novel. Although, in the passage my group had from pages 174-176, the point of view changes to the white race.

Through the white point of view, it is quite easy to see how they viewed Blacks during this specific time period. For instance, on page 176 the schoolteacher thinks to himself about Sethe,"besides having at least ten breeding years left." The diction in this specific line is outstanding, Morrison conveys that Whites thought African Americans more like animals and property then they did as actual human beings. I found the words "breeding years" especially significant. Something about those words hits you hard. I noticed that that one sentence in the entire passage explained the entire White mindset about African Americans. Having read lots of readings and history textbooks about the history of slavery, you become blocked from the emotional side of slavery. Morrison opens these doors back up with ease, showing the true dehumanization of African Americans put in place by Whites.

A few other instances caught my eye. On page 175 from the Sheriff's point of view, he thinks,"A crazy old nigger was standing in the woodpile with an ax. You could he was crazy right off...". The sad part about this quotation is the audience knows that the "crazy black man" is actually a kind and genuine man, Stamp Paid. This further demonstrates the butchered white point of view and they had no emotional feelings toward slaves. Slaves were not even considered human enough to care for, but it was easy for them to make assumptions based on how they looked or acted.

What do you guys think of this? Do you agree with my quotes and how they support that the white point of view illuminates just how dehumanizing Whites were to Blacks?