Beloved Last Paper

                                    Beloved In You and I

            For many years African descendants and ancestors of slave children so on and so forth have faced the thresholds of society’s inequalities and have been close to merely beating the odds. Triumphantly navigate through the revolving doors of self-identity, life and death. Beloved written by Toni Morrison shows how the extraordinary past impacts the lives in the future. Though the future seems bleak at times the past keeps coming up and holds significance to the future. A novel about former slaves whose stories not only intertwine with one another but can arguably be a part of our life as well. It is said that we are in some ways detached from our ancestors, the people lost at sea only to be sold and stripped of family, language, and love and tortured by our own rememory. This is a tribute to the trials and tribulations during slavery; it's a form of storytelling through the eyes of those whose lives directly challenges each of their identity, self- worth and consciousness.

            To claim ones self shows ownership, shows identity. A sense of self is a defining moment. When freedom comes, it comes in different forms we bare ourselves when it is as stated "freeing yourself is one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another"(95). Identity is found when least expected and no matter how tangible our love is, it will always be giving and receiving. Yet Death is always near one should expect that living is not ever free. When Baby Suggs was pardon and Mr.Gardner, he let her know her name was Jenny Whitlow. She sat in disbelief because she had built an identity around Baby Suggs and if she was Jenny" than she could not be “Baby Suggs”. How could she form a new identity if she didn't know who she was to begin with? Tragic as it may be many former slaves and ancestors of those slaves life is in a constant upheaval between the beloved tales that inadvertently affects today’s African Americans whose battle between the here and now is significant to its past.

             For Paul D’s life is a spiraling mess, he is up and down and he is not here nor there. The only thing that is constant to him is his need to picks up and leaves everything. He goes because he has no ties and does not want to be bound by the dehumanizing and maltreatment suffered at the hands of a man who isn’t even a man at all. He was held captive for years, years where he was trapped by chains, trapped by fear and held by misappropriated authority. Treated as cattle and ran like animals. Held captive mentally and physically raped.

            He was raped of his identity, of his manhood, dignity, of pride, of a name and much more. So much evil lurked him that no wonder his heart was like a tin can he had to shut it off from sorrow because he wants to remain reclusive from a life fully lived. To put his suffering next to Sethe made him vulnerable. To lay down with beloved after dinner was his appetite and feeding that need to come and go had to open his heart. For him to build a life with Sethe he too had to imagine life with both Sethe and Denver and he ultimately was not ready for love. This is sad because unconsciously Paul D could not produce the love and or affection that are meant to be reciprocal in a relationship. Paul D’s identity has been damaged and his self worth has been damped by Schoolteacher and confined in Alfred Georgia in the chain gang. His mental state has been bruised and his life has been an emotional battle through disattachments from love and a fully lived life.  He tries to remove himself complexly from feeling and or emotions because he must lock them away and forget about them in order to survive the rest of his days. Remembering will lead to the endless night and painful mornings. Thus dampen his spirit and challenge his manhood. Paul D couldn’t cope with his manhood because he was broken, shunning his feeling and unable to have a connection with life and loving it.

            Paul D reminds himself that he wanted Sethe though in reality he had a need to feed his desire. An unconscious desire fueled by his memory of her. And once he feed his need he no longer desired her the way he did before. When Stamp Paid shares Sethe story with Paul D he is left in disbelief and horror that a woman could do such a thing and not just any woman but Sethe. These Memories have an effect on the present and challenge the future. It has change the way we look at the world around and how we view society. It is translucent and we are mirroring the past as we become immersed in it.

            Sethe love for her children was thick, so thick in fact that the thickness of her love turned into a rebellious one. A kind of love a mother gets when she cannot see the forest between the trees. According to Sethe "Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all"(164). In addition Sethe decides her path as they only way through escaping the atrocities of Sweet Home Farm. To take her Childs lives in the darkness of the shed shows just how desperate and how thick her love really truly was. Sethe urge to protect what was hers came into play when Schoolteacher appeared in front of 124.  She whisks away all four of her babies and is caught by Schoolteacher, his nephews, slave catcher and sheriff attempting to smash Denver against the walls of the shed, but Stamp Paid grabs the girl from her. On the floor laid Howard and Buglar, covered in blood.  Against Sethe's breasts is the unnamed child dead.  

            Sethe will to save her children from a life of enslavement and lack of identity was not going to be easy. Furthermore she came to a conclusion driven by fear and too thick of love, the inconceivable had to be done in order to save them. "For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing... (45)". Sethe knew that it was dangerous to love her children the way she did hence she brought them into this world she is the only person in her unconscious mind that could take them out of this world. Too much fear can catapult a person to do something irreparable, too thick of love can drive a sane person mad. Sethe would not give her children to Schoolteacher and once she made up her mind there was no turning back.

            Some may never empathize with her willingness to kill her children.  Ex- communicated by the community because they too could not understand how thick Sethe love had become. Sethe showed her inherent nature to do anything and everything to never have her children endure a life half lived. Sethe only crime is that when “I took and put my babies where they'd be safe"( ) .And if saving her children was a crime she was guilty a life without freedom, freedom to love or be loved. The abundance of love she gave to her children was presented in some ways thick and to a degree carried out in an unfathomable cry for help. Thus they are her one and only claim in this world never to be brought or sold and given a name unbeknownst to them for her children were her own best thing.

            Denver is troubled with lonesome and her mother’s attentiveness towards her starts to become withdrawn due to the company of Paul D and Beloved. Her main objective is to be seen constantly because she does not yet fully know where she fits in and how to react with people. She faces isolation from the community and has fallen into what seems to be her hunger and her constant need to feed that hunger is being acknowledged and reminding herself of the day she was conceived. In fact Morrison states "Denver hated the stories her mother told that did not concern herself, which is why Amy was all she ever asked about. The rest was a gleaming, powerful world made more so by Denver's absence from it. Not being in it, she hated it and wanted Beloved to hate it too, although there was no chance of that at all” (62).  When given the facts about her birth Denver is intrigued about how she came unto be and the circumstances that surround her birth. Which involve a young slave mother running from her cruel past to her future that only involving Denver. Most of the novel portrays Denver as a child who is starving or better yet craving relationships. Being she is Sethe last child she has little communication with the community. The acts created by her mother led to a shunning of all those who lived on 124 Bluestone Road. And later drove Baby Suggs into depression. For Denver tending aid to Beloved is that of a lost Beloved was the baby that died eighteen years ago.

When it is conducive for a mother choose to kill her children and even worse how can she make a difference and choose to kill one over the other. For Denver’s hunger is fueled by s it claims "Denver took her mother's milk right along with the blood of her sister"(152). This relates to the hunger of Denver as she drank the milk and blood of her sister speaks to the lonesome and horrifying manner her older sister died. Denver need for survival was drinking the milk from her mother’s bosom, nourishing one after slitting the throat of the other. Blood stained with her sisters innocence conveys how bad the hunger for life. This loneliness spoke much more volume. For eighteen years her sister’s innocence conveyed how bad the hunger for life was deeply deprived of being loved in so many ways Denver need to here her story was a rememory to speak about the lost one.  Every time she Sethe about Amy Denver and the boat it was like giving life back to the unnamed baby whose blood she drank from to live.  Perhaps leaving was the best thing the only thing that’s keeping Denver separate from the horror Sethe committed. Denver states "All the time, I'm afraid the thing that happened that made it all right for my mother to kill my sister could happen again. I don't know what it is, I don't know who it is, but maybe there is something else terrible enough to make her do it again… “What really need to know what that thing might be, but I don't want to. Whatever it is, it comes from outside this house, outside the yard, and it can come right on in the yard if it wants to. So I never leave this house and I watch over the yard, so it can't happen again and my mother won't have to kill me too" (205).  In conclusion the past makes Denver reevaluate and question who and what type of a mother Sethe could be to kill her kids and go about her life as though not a thing happened. In conclusion her mother best thing was her children to protect them were killing them. Thus every memory shared good or bad brings back Sweet Home and the eagerness to run away to find self identity, self-worth and consciousness in addition Sethe eagerness to get her babies to safety was a mother’s undying love and devotion for her best thing.

                                                Work Cited:

            Morrison, Toni. Beloved. A Plume Book, New York (1989).