English Final - Beloved Flashcards
summary
Sethe is born in the south to a mother she doesn’t know and is sold to Sweet Home when she is thirteen. All the other sweet home men, Halle, Sixo, Paul A, Paul D, and Paul F, lust over her but never touch her. She decides to marry Halle. Eventually, Mr. Garner dies and schoolteacher replaces him as the head of sweet home. He is terrible to them, so they all decide to escape. Paul D and Sixo are caught, and they kill sixo and bring Paul D back to sweet home. Sethe is still there when Paul D gets back, and she still wants to run bc she sent Howard and buglar to baby suggs’ house already. Schoolteacher and his men then rape seethe, taking the milk she is making for her unborn baby. Halle sees this happen and it makes him go crazy. After being whipped by schoolteacher, seethe still runs away. Exhausted and super pregnant, she collapses in a forrest. A white girl named amy helps her and eventually delivers he baby for her. She eventually gets to Baby suggs (her mother in laws) in Cincinnati. For 28 days, life is great until schoolteacher finds her. Rather than let her children be subject to the horrors of slavery, she decides that death would be better and goes to kill her children. She only successfully kills her third daughter, and she gets Beloved put on her headstone. She goes to jail. when she returns to 124, baby suggs has sunk into a depression, the community shuns the house, and the family lives in isolation. Meanwhile, Paul D is experiencing torturous conditions in his chain gang. These traumas have caused him to become disillusioned and he locks away his emotions and his ability to love in his tin tobacco box. The chain gang later escapes and he finds himself in Cincinnati on Sethe’s porch. when he gets there, he chases Beloved’s ghost away, which makes denver resent him. Seth and Paul D think they can live a promising future together until one day they come home and and 18 year old woman pops up at their house. Denver figures out pretty quickly she is her dead sister/the ghost reincarnate. Denver has an obsessive attachment to Beloved, and Beloved has the same for Sethe. paul D and beloved hate each other, and she moves him around the house like a rag doll and seduces him against his will. When Paul D learns about Sethe killing her children, he leaves 124. In his absence, Sethe and Beloved’s relationship becomes more intense and exclusive. Beloved grows increasingly abusive, manipulative, and parasitic, and Sethe is obsessed with satisfying Beloved’s demands and making her understand why she murdered her. Denver becomes cut out completely. She decides to leave 124, which she hasn’t in 18 years, and find help. The community provides them with food ad eventually goes to try and get Beloved out. A man goes with them, and Sethe tries to kill him bc she thinks he’s schoolteacher. She is restrained, and Beloved peaces out. Paul D comes back and wants to have a future with Sethe and tries to convince her of her self-worth.
characters
Sethe, Paul D, Baby Suggs, Denver, Halle, beloved
sethe
doesn’t allow herself to remember the past bc it’s too much for her to handle
loves her children more than anything; considers herself a mother first
self preservation
independent, doesn’t rely on anyone
loves despite the loss that will inevitably come with it
Paul D
loves sethe, but is afraid to love anything too much bc his experiences w slavery have taught him that it will just be taken away; self-preservation
emotionally scarred
tries to get Sethe to believe that “she is her best self”
struggles w manhood
Baby Suggs
a source of emotional and spiritual inspiration for the city’s black residents; teaches her followers to love their voices, bodies, and minds
community respects her
after Sethe’s infanticide, she retreats to her bed to die and becomes obsessed w colors
Denver
worried Paul D is gonna steal her mom; possessive
isolated from rest of community; no friends but the ghost
imaginative
loves the ghost
grows a lot throughout the course of the novel
doesn’t really like Paul D
Beloved
coming out of the water suggests rebirth
may also represent many dead slaves, the ones who were on the middle passage, not just Sethe’s dead daughter
loves sethe; wants her for herself but is also mad bc she killed her - wants revenge
was insanely destructive but brought the community together
represents the past returning to haunt the present
allows seethe to forgive herself for murdering her child
halle
Sethe’s husband
goes crazy when he sees her being raped - disillusioned
worked for years to buy his mother’s freedom
themes
slavery's destruction of identity self-preservation isolation disillusionment abandonment and loss maternal communalizing
why did Sethe kill her kids
saving them from slavery; protecting them from feeling inhuman
possessorship - her kids are hers, not schoolteachers
killing them is better than not being able to love them
preserving the love
sending them to heaven for a better life
