Beloved as we know is a very mysterious character in this novel. She leaves us with many questions but one main thought to think about is her contribution in the growth of each character. In other words, the arrival of Beloved is probably the most pivotal moment of this story. This is due to the fact that this mysterious character known as Beloved is the center of this story and pretty much is the heart of what goes on in this story.
124 Bluestone Road. A house located in Cincinnati and a main setting of this story. This one address is where it all begins. It went through many phases of being loud and quiet however it’s a peaceful house that turned into a haunted house. Why has it become haunted? Reason is the arrival of our mysterious character by the name of Beloved. Beloved is what stirs the household with our characters around.
Moving through our characters, let’s start with our center. Sethe, a former slave who was sold at the age of 14 to the Garners of Sweet Home was a character who went through several children as a result from interactions with Halle. Later on in her life, she moves into 124 and meets Paul D which eventually leads to a sexual relationship. Soon, Beloved enters and without question, Sethe takes her in. An argument soon erupts regarding the truth behind Sethe leading Paul D to move. Beloved becomes someone Sethe cares for. She becomes the reason for Sethe’s existence. She spends almost all her time with and thinking about Beloved. That was until Beloved disappears for good. Without Beloved, Sethe has no where to go that is until Paul D finally returns. So pretty much without Beloved’s arrival, this whole argument and fracas would have never happened and life would’ve been much different and 124 would remain peaceful. Sethe wouldn’t have had any worries or regrets in her life.
Paul D was a major character in this story and had several interactions with Beloved. When Beloved showed up, Paul D showed some confusion. Paul D was known as the frail man with the “Tin Box Heart.” This was due to the many experiences he had as slave and as an escapee from Brandywine. He had no one to be with due to his brothers being dead. That was until he moved to 124 with Sethe. At this point, Paul D still had his “Tin Box Heart”. Beloved was the one who changed that into somewhat of a renewed Steel Beam Heart. After having sexual intercourse with Beloved, Paul D changed and evolved. Later on the story after Paul D moves out, Paul D returns after hearing what happened to Sethe as a result from Beloved’s disappearance. The Tin Can Heart is what Paul D was known for and it was an important symbol in the story. If Beloved didn’t arrive, he would’ve still remained frail and he wouldn’t have had to move out which would really change the story significantly.
To conclude this post, there’s more things to talk about when it comes to the reasons why Beloved’s arrival was very pivotal however the changes in Sethe and Paul D I believe sums this up. Our mysterious character that we call Beloved was the key to each character involved with 124 and without her, this story wouldn’t even be Beloved. It would probably be just a story about a family living in a utopia after slavery.
Tag Archives: Homework
HomeWork #2
In “A Rose for Emily,” Miss Emily is the character who has power. “On the first of the year they mailed her a tax notice. February came, and there was no reply.” Miss Emily was mailed a tax notice, but she disregarded it. She was then mailed a formal letter asking her to call the sheriff’s office at her convenience, followed by a letter from the mayor. The Board of Aldermen then went to her house to convince her to pay her taxes. “I have no taxes in Jefferson,” is what she muttered repeatedly. She eventually chases them out of her house, without her having to pay her taxes. This shows that Miss Emily is powerful, for she didn’t comply with the laws of the town, and the Alderman probably feared to punish her because of her old age.
“She carried her head high enough—even when we believed that she was fallen. It was as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson; as if it had wanted that touch of earthiness to reaffirm her imperviousness.” The narrator feels that Emily knows that she is a powerful woman, and that she wants to be recognized for it.
As Miss Emily asks the druggist for poison, she wasn’t hesitant. She insisted on getting arsenic. When the druggist mentioned that he must be told what she will use the poison for, due to the law, Miss Emily just stared at him. The druggist packaged the poison and when Miss Emily opened it, written on the box was “for rats.” Here, Emily is ignoring the law once again. She is a powerful woman, and people must’ve feared to challenge her authority.
HomeWork #1
In “The Story of An Hour,” the protagonist, Mrs. Mallard, is informed about the railroad disaster where her husband was killed. She is immediately devastated. “She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone.” After Mrs. Mallard enters her room, she sat into the arm chair facing the open window. As she observes the landscape, she felt something possessing her. She began to whisper, “free, free, free!” She came into realization that she was free, free from her husband, who probably prevented her from living her life the way she pleased. In the end, Mr. Mallard walks through the door. At the sight of her husband, Mrs. Mallard dies.
In “A Jury of Her Peers,” the protagonist Mrs. Wright, or Minnie Foster before her marriage, has murdered her husband. The cause of this I assume was because just as Mr. Mallard, Mr. Wright prevented his wife from living how she wanted to. Mrs. Hale finds Mrs. Wright’s bird with a broken neck, wrapped in silk. The bird used to sing along with Mrs. Wright, which was something she loved to do as Minnie Foster. As her husband probably despised this, he wrung the neck of the bird to prevent it from ever singing again. This was the same exact way Mr. Wright died, from his neck. Mrs. Wright probably wanted her husband to feel the pain of that what her bird felt.
I judge the two protagonists differently. Mrs. Mallard’s husband was killed in an accident, while Mrs. Wright’s husband was murdered. The settings of both stories seem to be around the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today women have more rights than they did at the time of these stories. Reading them today gives a clearer understanding of why they reacted the way they did towards their husbands.
Metamorphosis and Young Goodman Brown
I think “Metamorphosis” by Frank Kafka could be read metaphorically. This could easily represent a story of someone who got very sick and the family can’t deal with him in the condition he is in. Not only do they have to care for him (and guard him from sight), they now have to go to work since he cannot support them anymore.
Throughout the story he gets to be more and more of a burden, and he slowly gets more and more neglected. When his mother and sister try to help him out and rearrange his room, he is spotted by his mother (who couldn’t bear to see him in that state) and she faints.
Near the end, Grete is trying to convince her parents to “get rid of it” (Gregor isn’t referred to as he at this point). At this point we see that he is nothing but a burden to the family. This can (sadly enough) be a metaphor for someone withering away in a coma. He can understand them and hears more than think, but cannot communicate with them. When they were getting near the point of “pulling the plug”, Gregor passed on, relieving the family of their tremendous burden.
In the first few paragraphs of “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Brown is talking to Faith, his wife. It seems that at the same time Faith could also be a personification of his actual faith. “Faith kept me back awhile” (12) is a great line. At this point in the story the reader doesn’t know where Brown is heading, only that is something bad. He was kept back by his wife, but also by his belief, and his knowledge that what he is doing is wrong.
Essentially Goodman is in fact a good man and changes his mind before committing the evil deed. “My Faith is gone” he cried after hearing his wife is there with the sinners. This is referring to his wife but can also mean he lost the faith he so barely held onto moments before.
“Young Goodman Brown”
In “Young Goodman Brown,” the following passage stood out and defined the story to me:
“Be it so if you will; but, alas! it was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman Brown. A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did he become, from the night of that fearful dream. On the Sabbath day, when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he could not listen because an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear and drowned all the blessed strain. When the minister spoke from the pulpit with power and fervid eloquence, and, with his hand on the open Bible, of the sacred truths of our religion, and of saint-like lives and triumphant deaths, and of future bliss or misery unutterable, then did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading lest the roof should thunder down upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers. Often, waking suddenly at midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith; and at morning or eventide, when the family knelt down at prayer, he scowled and muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away. And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave a hoary corpse, followed by Faith, an aged woman, and children and grandchildren, a goodly procession, besides neighbors not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.”
After Brown’s dreadful dream, he started to view everyone differently. From his dream, he has seen what people are or could be capable of. So he distrusted the whole village, including his wife, Faith. He basically spent the rest of his life trying to avoid contact with people, for he was frightened by them. I presume the message that Nathaniel Hawthorne is trying to give in this story is that some people have a hidden personality, and they have a great way of hiding it.
A Rose for Emily
Emily Grierson from William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily is a woman who never married. It was intriguing to see Emily become a recluse. The story is an excellent example of macabre and horror, Faulkner proves if done right you can creep readers out without gory details and intense violence. The narration [third-point of view] was also enjoyable, I especially liked how the narration used the word ‘our’ to depict the feelings of the town as a whole.
The story started out with Emily already being dead, and then Faulkner starts telling us about the Colonel who made up a story so Emily didn’t have to pay her taxes, it is unclear what is actually happening in the story. However, it becomes clear what direction Faulkner was taking; key moments of Emily’s life in the eyes of the town were recalled and told to us, these events in turn helped with inferring the revelation of Emily’s chilling necrophiliac nature.
The first hint at necrophilia was Emily’s refusal of her fathers death when, for three days, she kept his dead body in her house. Emily wasn’t seen after her fathers death again until around the time construction workers showed up in town. She was seen around town with Homer Barron and the townsfolk thought she would marry him. Much later when she was well over thirty she was seen buying arsenic due to which the townsfolk thought she was going to finally kill herself. Instead she invited Homer to her house after which he was never seen again. Emily after his disappearance became a full reclusive and wasn’t seen again until her death (except for when the men in the town saw her in the window after they sneaked into her house and sprinkled lime all over the doors etc due to the horrid smell surrounding her house and for the brief period she taught china-painting). After her death the story goes back to present and reconnects with the opening passage. The women and men enter her house and go upstairs to the room that they knew was never seen in the last forty years. They see a room decorated as a bridal suite and see a man, whom we can assume is Homer Barron, dead.
The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust. Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.
The ending was the second and the most crucial hint at necrophilia. Even so, Faulkner leaves a lot of gaps in the story giving way to various interpretations, I’m sure some of you may have read the end differently than I did.
A Jury of her Peers/The Story of An Hour
I enjoyed ‘A Story of An Hour’ by Kate Chopin more than I did “Jury of Her Peers’ and the length was not the reason. Although shorter, A Story of An Hour gave more insight on Louise’s feelings better enabling the reader to connect to her. ‘Jury of Her Peers’ on the other hand gave us diverse characters letting us be the judge of them through their actions rather than internal feelings.
The two stories albeit being different were very similar. A key theme in the two stories would be the rebellion of women [against men]. From the clues given in the stories you can assume both Mrs. Mallard and Mrs. Wright were dominated by their husbands.
Mrs. Mallard in ‘The Story of An Hour’ hears the news of her husbands death but unlike other women doesn’t go into shock instead grieves. She goes through the stages of grief and comes into terms with the death. Realizing her new found freedom she has an epiphany and dreams of living her life for herself on her own accord rather than for her husband. The first thing mentioned in this story is her heart problems so it’s safe to assume this statement foreshadows her death. The news of her husbands death had no effect on her heart condition, so you can bet a bigger news would soon arrive. The ‘big news’ so to speak was the sudden arrival of Mr. Mallard, her husband, who turns out wasn’t dead after all. Mrs. Mallard, who at this point was elated and full of joy, gets shocked at seeing her husband alive gives out a cry and dies of a heart attack. “The joy that kills’
Mrs. Wright on the other hand is under question for the death of her husband. The story starts of with Mrs. Hale, Mr. Hale, The Sheriff and his wife [Mrs. Peters] going to Mrs. Wrights house. Mr. Hale tells the story of how he went the night before to ask Mr. Wright something in front of his wife, after knocking on the door a few times someone [Mrs. Wright] tells him to enter. He sees her sitting on the chair and asks her to call John, to which she laughs, and says she can’t. She then tells Mr. Hale John[Mr. Wright] is dead, a rope round his neck had killed him. They find clues in the house that indicated at the harsh demeanor of Mr. Wright towards Mrs. Wright. -he killed her pet bird- A key point in the story would be when Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter were alone and had the conversation about John, the bird and Minnie Foster [Mrs. Wright] They spoke about John described him as ‘a harsh man… like raw wind that gets to the bone.’ They find the bird cage and then the bird itself, in a box with it’s neck wrung, in Minnie’s basket. They hid the box when the sheriff came back in the kitchen, Mrs. Hale knew Minnie Foster and said she liked the bird and wanted to bury it (justifying why the bird was in the box). Mrs. Peters claimed they didn’t know who killed the bird to which Mrs. Hale said she knew John. She convinced Mrs. Peters (who thought people should pay for their crimes) and they hid the evidence and gave Minnie a not guilty verdict.
In both stories the women rebelled against conformity [by going against their husbands]. Louise Mallard’s way was much more subtle than that of the ladies from ‘A Jury of Her Peers’ she internally rebelled by not going into shock over her husbands death but rather by overcoming it and finding her freedom. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters rebelled by hiding evidence and calling Mrs. Wright not guilty.
Just goes to show how two completely different stories can connect through similar aspects; husbands death and the sense freedom that came along with it as well as breaking the norm.
The Not so Interesting Me
There is really not a lot to say about me because I do not have a very active or adventurous lifestyle. My life does not make people “oooo” and “ahhh,” so, I am introducing a plain/generic life to you.
I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York with the aspiration of one day becoming a doctor. I had always set my heart to become a doctor and help others in their ailments. As I got older and tried to pursue this dream, well the dream of my parents, I volunteered at hospitals and found jobs working in the health field. I pursued something that my parents wanted me to have, however, this was not attainable for me because I was not doing well in basic biology 101. While working as a certified nurse assistant I started to learn that I did not want to work in a field that I was getting annoyed with every single day and that this field was not for me. I made up my mind that I rather make less money in a career that I love than more money in a career that I hate. I also had to make the decision to let go the definition of what was a true profession from my parent’s standpoint. Eventually, this led me to changing my major to Law and Paralegal Studies.
So, let me be honest I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I did not know anything about the law. With my own life experience, I never wanted to get involved in law. I would always say, “I do not like the police, marshals, FBI, lawyers, and anyone else involved in law enforcement.” And maybe I still have a lack of trust for them but I love the law. After getting the chance to go to the courts in my school assignments (e.g. NYS Family Court, NYS Criminal Court, NYS Civil Court, etc.), I got to experience the inner workings of the court, how the law was being used to come to the verdict, and the hard decisions that judges had to experience when deciding cases. I also got a chance to speak to a judge and realized these judges were people too. They were not piously sitting on a throne for people to bow and worship them. They had to make, sometimes, tough decisions that they could not go by their feelings alone but the law itself. Now, that I am a junior in college, I have aspirations of going to law school. I have not considered what field of law I want to work in because there are so many choices to pick from but I think when I am in law school the answer will eventually come to me.
Besides my professional goals, I also like baking. Baking is my escape from school. I can be creative and make up different flavor combinations of cakes, cookies, bars, breads, and other desserts. Law is not in my mind 24 hours a day/seven days a week, so the baking gives my mind a break from school and life. Also, my family gets to be my personal guinea pig in tasting my creations.
“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life”
