A Second Birth (Reyes)

 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? 

Comments

  1. Krishnan VenkateshMay 13, 2021 at 10:26 AM

    Surely you're right, Mr. Reyes -- but is this the sign that Sethe knows immediately who this is? If so, then she decides almost immediately to accept Beloved, even if she might be a revenant -- an acceptance of the reversal of life and death, of a birth from death. This would be a strikingly perverse version of Christian faith: she believes in THIS resurrection.

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