Blog Post 15: SWEET HOME...not in 'Bama

Blog Post 15: SWEET HOME...not in 'Bama.

                The name Beloved is fitting for Sethe’s daughter because as a slave, it was a blessing and anomaly at the time for Sethe to have the opportunity to have a husband and be able to nurture her children. It is also clear that Sethe highly values her role as a mother because she constantly puts her children before herself, such as when she agreed to have sex in order to engrave Beloved’s tombstone (page 5) and when she was more concerned that the schoolboys took her milk than them whipping her (page 20). Motherhood itself is a “beloved” thing to Sethe.

                It is clear that Denver’s lack of companionship has affected her emotional growth. All of her life, Denver’s only company has been her mother and Beloved’s ghost. There have been no visitors at 124 because it is haunted, and the boys and girls do not like Denver. It is evident that this condition has affected her emotional state, because she clearly feels trapped and lonely. When Paul D comes over, Denver immediately starts acting very rude towards him and jealous of Sethe’s attention towards him, because all her life Denver has been used to receiving Sethe’s undivided attention—her eyes never looking away (page 15). Once Sethe’s eyes are not focused on her, Denver suddenly spirals into a state of utter loneliness.

                Even though Sweet Home is associated with much suffering for Sethe and the men that were there, Sweet Home also represents a place of fellowship for them. Once Paul D comes to 124, him and Sethe’s friendship is easily rekindled, because they reminisce about all their times together back at Sweet Home. On page 16, Paul D says, “It wasn’t sweet and it sure wasn’t home” and Sethe replies, “But it’s where we were. All together.” Because of all the hardship they went through during their time there as slaves, they were able to form tight bonds because they were as close a thing to family as they had at the time. Because they were placed in an “us vs. them” type situation, it brought all the slaves together in a strong and tight unit.

Blog Post 17: Paul D...JERSEY FIST BUUUUUMP!

                Towards the end of Chapter 17 of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Paul D uses Mister, a rooster back at Sweet Home, as symbol for everything wrong with his life. Both Sethe and Paul D express malice towards Mister, because they remember Mister as proud and mean. For Paul D, Mister represents how slavery took away his identity, because Paul D was treated as more of an animal than Mister was. On page 86, Paul says to Sethe, “Mister always looked so… free. Better than me. Stronger, tougher. Son of a bitch couldn’t even get out the shell by hisself but he was still king and I was…” Later Paul D goes onto say, “Even if you cooked him you’d still be cooking a rooster named Mister. But wasn’t no way I’d ever be Paul D again, living or dead.” As he recollects this story, it is evident that Paul D feels that slavery dehumanized him and robbed him of his sense of identity.

Just as Paul D uses Mister to express his feelings about his harsh past, Sethe also uses symbols to voice her feelings of anguish. A prevalent example throughout the text is the way Sethe describes the scars on her back as a cherrychoke tree. In Chapter 9, on page 93, the scars are first described as a tree when Amy is helping Sethe give birth to Denver. Repeatedly, Amy mentions that parts of the scar look like blossoms, which make her “wonder what God had in mind.” Amy sees these blossoms as a symbol from God that Sethe is special, especially because of all that she suffered while she was a slave. For Sethe, she uses the symbol of the tree to say that her experiences as a slave have an impact on her that will never leave. Just as Paul D feels slavery took away his identity, Sethe uses the tree metaphor to say that she feels slavery left an imprint on her identity as well. It is even more impactful because trees are usually used as a symbol of life, but slavery is often considered even worse than death. The tree is used because it shows that the struggles Sethe faced as a slave are still alive in her years later.