Family and Brighter Beloved Essay

Submitted By ritschardm
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Pages: 3
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Sethe is introduced as a troubled mother. She has a past that is unimaginable and a ghost baby that haunts her house and terrorizes Sethe and her daughter, Denver. During the beginning, I considered Sethe a warm, loving mother. But as the story unfolded, I began to make other judgements. I learned that Sethe killed her daughter and tried to kill her other daughter Denver and two sons. I was really taken thrown off by how she killed her baby. I understood her reasoning behind her actions which was to prevent her children from being taken into slavery. However, she killed her baby girl in an awful way. She slit her throat and threw her across the barn into a wall multiple times. This seems so heartless and just plain terrible to imagine. Sethe could have taken these actions because of her experiences of a slave; she fled Sweet Home, where she was enslaved, because schoolteacher, her owner, was ruthless and let his sons steal Sethe's milk while she was pregnant with Denver.
After Beloved somehow comes back from the dead, it seems nothing can go bad. She, Sethe, Paul D, and Denver make a family. After Paul D leaves, it's just the girls: Sethe, Denver, and Beloved. But, Sethe starts leaving Denver out of everything, She only plays with Beloved. She only loves Beloved. She only sings to Beloved. She only feeds Beloved (p 239-240).
The two of them cut Denver out of games. The cooking games, the sewing games, the hair and dressing-up games. Games her mother loved so well she took to going to work later and later each day that the predictable happened: Sawyer told her not to come back. And instead of looking for another job, Sethe played all the harder with Beloved, who never got enough of anything: lullabies, new stitches, the bottom of the cake bowl, the top of the milk. If the hen had only two eggs, she got both. It was as though her mother had lost her mind, like Grandma Baby calling for pink and not doing the things she used to. But different because, unlike Baby Suggs, she cut Denver out completely.
Soon, the drama and the truth comes out. Sethe and Beloved start fighting and arguing over what happened 19 years ago. Beloved cries that her mother abandoned her and didn't love her. She claims that Sethe never looked for her or smiled at her. All of these ridiculous accusations Sethe denies. Sethe defends herself and says she loves Beloved more than her own life and wishes that she could take what she did back (p. 242). Sethe made a few attempts to assert
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