Voicesyesvoices

This set of questions has been haunting me since we began to pose them. I feel utterly split between different sides of myself, each seeking solid ground to stand upon in a world where solidity is quicksand at best. Was she right? Yes, of course, says the first side; yes because how can I pass judgement on the unspeakable? the inexplicable? that labyrinth of horror I know nothing of. to pass a negative judgement against Sethe would make me complicit in the further erasure of Sethe, of the "60 million and more" Morrison dedicates the novel to. Shouldn't we be silent on this? Isn't silence the only response if we truly want to listen?   But a different side voices itself: no, silence is not the only response - silence in addition to something else, an examination or perhaps even a judgement, might be necessary - isn't Morrison asking this of us?   perhaps we cannot simply say Sethe was right, not without a violation of some kind. bare with me here. wherein lies the ...

After reading Toni Morrison's  Beloved , I return to question the significance of the ghost to the entire story. Frequently associated with the cause of fear, a ghost is supposed to startle and bring horror to the characters. However, fear is never mentioned in their reactions to the existence of the ghost named Beloved. Only familiarity is prevalent as if they have been waiting for Beloved for so long and if Beloved is part of them all. To explain the characters' comfortable reactions to such a supernatural phenomenon, Toni Morrison even describes Beloved's personalities that depend on the feelings of different characters. For example, Denver senses her as lonely, while Sethe senses rebuked. Paul D is a bit exceptional in that he is not frightened of Beloved at first. Her appearance gives him a chance to show manhood to be protective of his love, Sethe. However, she scares him when his irresistibility to her sexual invite arises and challenges his sense of manhood. Besides...

I Got A Woman Who Helps My Mind Maxfield Fleishman There are too many things to say about Beloved . It contains everything: all the kaleidoscopic horrors and joys which fill the "unliveable" lives of Black Americans. Beloved  shows how love and fear will have you killing what's yours to keep it yours. It tells of how those who die don't stay dead, but also how they'll never rightly live among the living. Beloved  depicts the amputations of trauma: how a life full of struggle severs parts of you and puts them away for you to maybe dig up one day, but for now to stuff them overflowing into a tobacco box heart. Beloved says that the same person who kills their child can go ice skating on no skates, and that the man who wears a bit and eats living wild birds in the woods can bathe his beloved part by part.  In honor of Phaedrus , I'll say something about love. Paul D suddenly remembers something Sixo said about his Thirty-Mile Woman. "She is a friend of my mi...

 Final Thoughts on Beloved: “Beloved” has been the most explicit book I’ve read at my time at St. John’s, and I’m so glad to have spoken about topics that usually aren’t talked about. When talking about Beloved, I think, this is what St. John’s is supposed to be: a place where people talk about what nobody talks about—where we come to understand the most unconventional and hidden things and our deepest feelings. In doing so we are forced to wake up—to look at history and life for what it truly is even if it is uncomfortable to do so.   --- One of the things that stood out to me most was when Sethe said that true freedom is the liberty to love whoever you want, as much as you want. Not only did this sentiment stick out to me because of my own desire for this kind of freedom, but also because of it's strangeness as a concept. Despite all the goodness and happiness that love entails, love is nevertheless yoke--a burden. Love gives someone power over you, and the greater ...

  The unbearable life of Black people in BELOVED. HUMAN MALICE. That word comes to my mind when reading BELOVED.   For Toni Morrison introduces us to the cruel history of slavery through an intense and very detailed narrative of our main characters who were slaves and lived in the same home called “Sweet Home”. Yet there is no sweetness to this home, as it is rather the place where inhuman and horrific events were conducted by white people and at the expense of black people’s freedom and free will.   For instance, Toni Morrison shows the cruelty of slavery through our main character Sethe. By white standards, she is worth more than black men since she can be a potential mother who could breed future slaves. Putting an economical value to people as if they were mere objects, shows already the kind of mentality needed by white people to not falter at their atrocities or at the fact they own slaves. Hence, such objectification of black people happens from white people’s ...

    Brief Analysis of The Narrator in “Lost Much As Twice” In this poem, we see the impotence and powerlessness of our narrator, she cannot control life and death, and hence she must be subjected unwillingly to lose and be separated from two dear people to her.   This state of not having control over death and loss, makes her have an unstable relationship with God. The main reason for this instability is the fact that she alters her impression about God, she is in limbo wherein at one moment she attaches positive connotations to God, and at other times she gives God negative attributes. For instance, she positively acknowledges the fact that God is the creator and source of all life by referring to Him as a ‘Father’. But later one, she calls God a ‘banker’ and a ‘theft’, as she feels offended and attacked by God from the mere fact that she makes Him responsible for taking away the two people dear to her. By describing God with two opposite tones, we see the kind of ...

 In both Being and Time and the Letter, Heidegger talked about the temporality of Dasein. It might be summarized in this way: Dasein is thrown out of its past, fallen into its present, and projected towards its future. Unlike some traditional metaphysics, Heidegger seemed to regard these three happening at the same time. Every single one of them takes place only when the other two are also present. Interestingly, one of Morrison's description of Ella and her attitude towards Sethe's situation also included all three dimensions of time:  "The future was sunset; the past something to leave behind. And if it didn't stay behind, well, you might have to stomp it out...'Sufficient unto the day is the eveil thereof', and nobody needed more; nobody needed a grown-up evil sitting at the table with a grudge. As long as the ghost showed out from its ghostly place...Ella respected it...but this was an invasion."(302) To me, this is an ambiguous account on the three di...

  Exorcising Beloved //Anjelo Reyes In a few of our classes, we’ve discussed the particularly possessive quality about Sethe’s love. It is a kind of love that is so strong that it lacks any sense of boundary--lacks all conventional sense of ethics. However, it seems that this possessiveness does not solely apply to Sethe, but to Denver as well. As we see, Denver was the first show a deep obsession with Beloved. In a dog-like manner, Denver would follow Beloved everywhere, always careful to keep an eye on her lest she disappears. Sethe was the same when she knew Beloved was her daughter. Both, therefore, sought so strongly to keep Beloved in their lives—to hold her, and to confine her to the point of literal possession.  In this way, Sethe and Denver are the possessors, and Beloved is the possessed. She is possessed by the spirit of the dead baby—by Sethe’s and Denver’s pasts.  There are a different number of ways to support this. To begin with, we previously di...

This is a follow-up to our class discussion today. I think Ms. Landres' misgivings have to be taken very seriously. As I'm thinking now, either Sethe was right to do it, or wrong, or beyond right and wrong -- that is, beyond judgment or self-judgment. If right, she might be right in principle and in the practical decision (that there are some things worse than death and she has a responsibility to protect her kids from that), or right in principle but wrong in practical decision (there are some things worse than death but no mother has the right to kill her kids). If wrong, she is wrong in both principle and application, or, again, only one of them. If she is beyond judgment, would you be willing to grant the same exemption from judgment to other parents who abuse or even kill their kids from what seems to them to be good moral principles? These parents are, sadly, not that rare. If you're not willing to grant this to other parents, who all might have different relations to...

When I imagine a person - my own mother, my father, my dearest friends, or someone I have no relation to, I cannot imagine them as property, as valued by a price. This is not my world. But that was the world of the south, which is to say, a completely normal world. I'm imagining the tens of thousands of white people who simultaneously were capable of seeing their relatives and friends as people like themselves, while deeming the humans they owned as priced property, and I'm horrified reflecting on this fact, realizing that I myself could have been born at that time in such a place which could have so forcefully convinced me that my skin was a superior white and that others were the color of inferiority, worth something insofar as they would support my superiorty.  The human who prices another has erased the human in the human, has turned the human into an terribly strange object, an economic tool. As a priced object, the person's worth fluctuates with market tides, with the...

Two thoughts on the word "mine" in Beloved : 1) It is one of those key words in any novel about supernatural possession, but notably vampire stories -- for instance, Dracula's famous line,  “Your girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine.” To hear the word "mine" from a supernatural being is terrifying -- so why not also terrifying from a human being, whether owner or lover?  2) Both "beloved" and "mine" are conjoined in one of the most famous and beautiful books of the Bible, the Song of Songs , of which this is section 2: 2  I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. 2  As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters. 3  As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. 4  He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love. 5  Stay me w...

  May 16 “[R]ight then a forest sprang up between them; trackless and quiet.” (194) What is this forest that springs up between Sethe and Paul D. after he tells her that what she did was wrong, yet she maintains her conviction in her actions? The paradigm of their relationship in this moment reminds me of that of Rosamond’s and Lydgate’s in Middlemarch . There, communication between Rosamond and Lydgate is impossible. They have fundamentally different views of the world, so, even after countless conversations and arguments, they never find a common ground on which they may finally begin to build a common understanding regarding their priorities as a couple. This didn’t seem to be the case between Sethe and Paul D; they are sweet together, immensely enjoy each other's company, and compromise well. Then Sethe tells Paul D about the her murder of her child and defends her actions as necessary, and Paul D responds that they weren’t necessary, that they were in fact wrong. So the forest...

  May 16 “It ain’t my job to know what’s worse. It’s my job to know what is and to keep them away from what I know is terrible. I did that,” (194) Sethe tells Paul D., upon his suggestion that Sethe’s murder was perhaps worse than Sethe’s and the children’s return to Sweet Home and Schoolteacher. Throughout this discussion, Sethe continuously turns about the kitchen table where Paul D is sitting, listening. Sethe’s action is compared to a wheel that never stops (187) never changes direction (189).      Sethe is extraordinarily single-minded and utterly lacking the imaginary faculty that allows us to live in the world. Of her, Paul D thinks “[t]his here new Sethe didn’t know where the world stopped and she began” (193). In her isolation as a slave, she had only her experience, or as she sees it, her knowledge, to consult (for example, she had to figure out for herself how to respond to the stages of infant and child physical development because there was nobody for he...

  April 30, 2021 We criticize Isaac for spiritualizing his situation and for his need to physically extract himself from the McCaslin lifestyle, and for which reasons giving up the estate, expressing his disavowal of the McCaslin family line’s past. These material renunciations seem non-effectual for his spiritual ends, irrelevant to them. So we condemn his attributions of the evils of propertyship and slavery to this abstract, spiritual “curse.” But if it is better to think about inequalities and their remedies in material terms, we cannot think of them in only these terms. White supremacy, slavery, and propertyship shapeshift in their material form, but they persist in often unidentifiable, insidious ways. This is the truth and the relevance, I believe, in Issac’s idea of the curse. If we should think about these ills in material terms, we also must remain wary of their spiritual, psychological persistence, as Isaac tries to be. The confusing, eerie, transmutated effects of the...

  April 29, 2021 Light streams in the window on a dreary, dead winter afternoon. Like music played in church, the light is ethereal and other-worldly, juxtaposed against the solid room we’re in and the naked wintered trees we can see through our window. But instead of the light being a delightful change that brightens our day, it oppresses. Why is this? As winter comes (that dead, inert season that takes place before the season of regrowth) we are gently heralded into it by its gradual coming. The winter is expected, and we simply wait for its bleakness to take its course. But then, if a slant of light should stream into the room, we are startled; perhaps we were unprepared for that presence of intangible beauty and brilliance in the midst of the wintery setting. This stark contrast forces the light into an other-worldy role: it signifies, perhaps, a heavenly rebirth among the still, dead, natural environment. But the observer, still living, passes in imagination through the disc...

  April 29, 2021 When I first read Dickinson’s line “This World is not Conclusion,” (line 1) I read it as “this world is not conclusive,” that is, an essential feature of this world is inconclusivity; furthermore I thought it meant that there’s no conclusion whatever. Dickinson, however, didn’t phrase her poem this way. Yes, this word is not conclusion, but that doesn’t mean there is no conclusion: for a species stands beyond this world that lacks its own conclusion (2). But what stands beyond that species? Dickinson does not say. Perhaps that species is conclusion for this world.  Dickinson’s reason for claiming the world is not conclusion is that a species stands beyond. If the species stood, instead, apart, it would have no bearing on the conclusivity of the world; so in the species’ standing beyond it must also have a connection with the world such that the world may properly be called inconclusive in consequence. So we shall ask, what is the character of this species, ...

Sethe is practicing the maintenance of beating back the past throughout what we've read so far. How does that relate to Paul D's killing of Life? It is death via beating. It is close in proximity, in order to beat the past, it has to be right in front of you. What is gained and what is lost via the death of life, and the death of the past? How does Paul D's more figurative killing of Life relate to Sethe's killing of the life of her baby?

The beautiful chokecherry tree - why the deepest pain is unspeakable? （by Qiubai Jiang）   " C hokecherry   tree " is what  Seth e  heard from the white girl  A my who rescued her. As soon as  A my saw  Seth e ’ s  back, she cried out, then didn't make a sound for half a day, and  said: “ It ’ s a tree, Lu. A Chokecherry tree. See, here ’ s the trunk — it ’ s red and split wide open, full of sap, and this here ’ s the parting for the branches.  Y ou got a mighty lot of branches.  L eaves, too, look like, and dern if these ain ’ t blossoms.  T iny little cherry blossoms, just as white.  Y our back got a whole tree on it.  I n bloom. ” It seems to be a beautiful picture engraved on  Seth e ’ s back, but from  Amy , we know that the "white cherry blossom" refers to the septic wound. Perhaps  Amy , in order to comfort the fleeing  Seth e , intentionally embellished the wound to alleviate her physical pa...

  A Second Birth (Reyes) In our “Beloved” reading for this week, I was very interested in the scene where Sethe comes back from the fair and has to run to one side of the house to pee. Morrison is quite descriptive of how much Sethe pees, and although I found this scene to be funny (“she started wondering if the carnival needed another freak…” [Morrison 61]), I also noticed that the scene was reminiscent of her water breaking when she was running away.  In light of this connection, it seems that Morrison is showing that her water is again breaking—at least symbolically—with the amount of pee in this scene. Right afterwards, we are introduced to the stranger: Beloved. The same name on her dead baby’s headstone. Is there a kind of rebirth that is happening with Beloved? What would it mean that the dead baby—before a ghost—is reincarnated into a form of this stranger, one who Denver tends to? 

  Returning to One’s Desk: Lingering Questions About Go Down, Moses, by Anjelo Reyes “‘Is you gonter put hit in de paper? I wants it all in de paper. All of hit.’ And I wanted to say, ‘If I should happen to know how he really died, do you want that in too?’ And by Jupiter, if I had and if she had known what we know even, I believe she would have said yes. But I didn’t say it. I just said, ‘why you couldn’t read it, Aunty.’ And she said, ‘Miss Belle will show me whar to look and I can look at hit. You put it in de paper. All of hit.’” “Oh,” Stevens said. Yes, he thought. It doesn’t matter to her now. Since it had to be and she couldn’t stop it, and now that it’s all over and done and finished, she doesn’t care how he died. She just wanted him home, but she wanted him to come home right. She wanted that casket and those flowers and the hearse and she wanted to ride through town behind it in a car. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go back to town. I haven’t seen my desk in two days.”...

 I am curious why the baby ghost, or the haunted house, was felt and interpreted by different people in very different ways. First of all, we start with a more or less objective description of it: "124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom." However, the author then moved on to give different perspectives and how the characters felt differently towards it.  Baby Suggs was kind of indifferent and accustomed to it: "What'd be the point? Not a house in the country ain't packed to its rafters with some dead Negro's grief. We lucky this ghost is a baby." Paul D, when he was introduced to the haunted house for the first time, thought of it naturally as some kind of evil: "Good God. What kind of evil you got in here?" Sethe, on the other hand, corrected him and told him that it was sadness rather than evil: "It's not evil, just sad." Denver felt it in yet another way: "Not evil. But not sad either...rebuked. Lonely and rebuked....

  "Go Down, Moses" What is the significance of the lawyer Stevens decision to accept the responsibility for bringing Butch Beachamp home, lying to Ms. Worsham about the costs, raising the money (and likely paying for it split with the Editor), arranging for the body to be brought home by train, then picked up with a dramatic flourish (flowers, casket, hearse) and driven round the center square, then driven out to the Plantation?  What is he doing all this for?  How is this symbolic?  It could be a favor to Ms. Worsham, an elderly white woman, who requested his help. However, it could be much more, however, a symbolic act of kindness and decency by a town leader to its long-time citizens of both colors, to bring home a town son, even one that has behaved so badly. (An act that actually costs $225, rather than the $25.00 he suggested to Ms. Worsham.) The recipients are not that appreciative directly to him, however, as they stay mired in their suffering and language of...

The question concerning the unease in Was struck me tremendously when we first approached Faulkner’s literary works. The worry doesn’t come from racism. From my perspective, the entire book is touched on race, not racial discrimination, at least considered from the McCaslins’ attitude towards black people. They are entirely not racists since no racists would feel so chill like them, continually and patiently playing hide and seek with their slaves. Uncle Buck puts on a necktie every year at the exact time when Tomey's Turl runs away. Meanwhile, Uncle Buddy seems very calm after asking Ike about Tomey’s whereabouts, knowing that he is waiting in the stable when Ike gets the pony. In other words, while Uncle Buck deems Tomey’s runaway as a chance for him to get on a stage to show his chasing ability, no matter how black, white, or yellow Tomey is, Uncle Buddy is simply interested in settling the unfinished gamble. Emphasizing that Uncle Buddy never wears a necktie, Faulkner even imp...