Beloved 256-324

“Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name.  Forgotten and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can they call her if they don’t know her name? Although she has claim, she is not claimed. In the place where long grass opens, the girl who waited to be loved and cry shame erupts into her separate parts, to make it easy for the chewing laughter to swallow her all away.” (323, Morrison)

Beloved is clearly somewhere unfamiliar where no one cares to remember who or what she is. She is a long lost memory in the hearts and minds of those who tried to show her love; that especially of Sethe who tried to prove to her that she loved her and explained why she had to kill her from the hands of the slave masters.

Beloved was never satisfied at any point. The passage shows that Beloved is in a mental state of depression. Somewhere lost and deprived of love. This can also refer to “The Yellow WallPaper” wherein she needed love and attention and her husband thought she was sick. she was suffering, felt abandoned and alone. Perhaps suffering from postpartum depression. The similarities that Beloved showed which was loneliness, isolated and depressed and longed for love. Beloved seemed like a bad dream that noone wanted to remember. She tried to separate Sethe from everyone to have for herself.  She was selfish. Now Beloved is a lost soul in the minds of who once was known.

The narrator describes the passage as sad as that of a ghost story, wherein Beloved who once was alive in human flesh, blood pumping true her veins is no more in the minds of her people. She is an illusion, a past memory, a fantasy. Clearly an outcome of aberration.

Christina Sybblis Beloved pages 180-256

“Beloved, she my daughter. She mine. See. She come back to me of her own free will and i don’t have to explain a thing. i didn’t have time to explain before because it had to be done quick.” page 236

Sethe is remorseful yet happy that Beloved came back into her life to fill the gap that once was lost. She thinks its best to talk with Beloved about why she killed her and what would have happened if she didn’t.

I would refer this part of the passage with the abject of “primal repression” that Julia Kristeva uses as an example in one of her writings “Power”.

Sethe, for years had to live with the trauma of losing her daughter  by killing her or saving her from slavery. One which, Sethe thought Beloved would not survive if she was captured by school teacher and his team. During such act Sethe had to decide the best way to save her kids from enduring what she went through. Now Beloved is back, Sethe feels obligated to express the reasons why she had to killed her children. This is a form of suppression and repression. Whereby she had been dragging for years that without realizing she was suppressed of her doings. Sethe has been carrying a empy feeling for years of that of the death of her children. She wants to show express the love that she has for Beloved before she killed and now that Beloved is back.

For years, Sethe wanted to give up knowing that she killed three of her Kids, but she knew she had to persevere dispite her circumstances.

 

 

Group 3 Clue- Christina

What kind of attitude does Dyer take towards the Elder things( disgust, admiration)

“when Danforth and I saw the freshly glistening and reflectively iridescent
black slime which clung thickly to those headless bodies and stank obscenely with that new unknown odour whose cause only a diseased fancy could envisage—clung to those bodies and sparkled less voluminously on a smooth part of the accursedly re-sculptured wall in a series of grouped dots—we understood the quality of cosmic fear to its uttermost
depths. It was not fear of those four missing others”

At the mountains of Madness , this part of the passage shows abjection. Dyer looks at the body in disgust  and had the look of a un-dead corpse with black slime and some form of dots which indicate that the creature had some sort infectious disease. This passage gives clue where in the tunnel the other crew member went missing and now to see all that headless bodies that are decaying and has a stank waste. Dyer shows a form of hesitation as he observes the madness that is in front of him. This Gothic space as Lovecraft describes as a tunnel as vaulted and arch passage ways  that are dark and  cold.

Critical Response: Connect

Lucy’s death bed condition in Seward’s diary dated September 7.

“I was shocked when I saw her yesterday, I was horrified when I saw her to-day. She was ghastly, chalkily pale; the red seemed to have gone even from her lips and gums, and the bones of her face stood out prominently; her breathing was painful to see or hear,”

I think this is a good definition of Lucy’s condition in a decaying state, wherein Seward uses a variety of descriptive words to tell Lucy’s condition. “chalkily pale, and spiritual pathology” seems she resemble a ghost(corpse) or a vampire; because vampire are of pale color and are soul seekers of blood.

The blood seemed to have gone from her lips and gums is a clear definition of what Felluga Kristevan, defines the word “abject” as a breakdown  caused by the loss of the distinction between subject and object or between self and other..

Seward described It is something like the way Dame Nature gathers round a foreign body an envelope of some insensitive tissue which can protect from evil that which it would otherwise harm by contact. this is a form of communicable disease.

I like the first person narration as it gives a meaningful descriptive words that are sad and depressing and also terrifying., which is anticipating the outcome.

Earlier Dates before September 7th, Lucy was getting better but then a sudden change for the worse days later. Lucy  was at her mother’s house instead of a hospital or hospice. But instead Seward who is in love with her decides to consult Van Helsing whom he thinks is “The Great Specialist.”