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Genre: Drama Main characters: Sethe, Paul D, Denver and Beloved Time and place: Mostly Georgia and Cincinnati, second half of 19th century Summary: Sethe, a former slave, spends her days together with her daughter Denver in a house haunted by a ghost. When Paul D, a friend of Sethe and her missing husband since they all were still slaves, arrives and moves in with them, long repressed memories and feelings start to resurface. The most haunting of them are related to the death of Sethe’s two-year old daughter, thought of as Beloved since that was the single word Sethe managed to have carved on the little girl’s pink tombstone. Paul D is doing his best to help Sethe (and Denver too) get over their sadness and isolation, and he even manages to take them out of the house and almost socializing with people. This happy event ends on a somewhat curious note: when the three of them return from the carnival they went to, they find a young girl sleeping near their house. Sethe takes her in and takes care of her — and in time she starts thinking of her not only as her daughter but as Beloved, the lost daughter, came back from the dead. |
While I couldn’t really identify with any of the characters (because I am convinced I cannot imagine in my wildest dreams how slavery really felt like), I have come to admire them nevertheless — precisely for having gone through and having survived my unimaginable. Sethe (the feminine form of Seth, the one who fathered the whole world) impressed and intrigued me the most by the way she seemed to have lost all her identity of herself other than seeing herself through her children — even when she is nearly dying she does not think of keeping herself, Sethe, alive but of keeping alive the mother of her children. It is this very devotion (love too thick, as Paul D calls it) that probably pushed Sethe to her desperate gesture that resulted in jail and loneliness ever since. Jail and loneliness both shared by Sethe’s daughter Denver too, and leaving their print in the girl’s mind: she lives with the fear that her mother could kill her any minute, and she’s also so lonely it is painful to watch her. So lonely that when Beloved appears and, together with Sethe, starts acting in their own rendition of the parable of the errant son, shutting Denver out almost completely, Denver is still happy Beloved exists, Beloved has returned and she is lonely no more.
While this is not the first book on slavery that crosses my path, I was nevertheless touched, once again, by the hard life those people had. Starting from the very things we now take for granted: like, for example, having a family. A luxury they could not afford, being separated and sold every which way. Also, the women were used for breeding purposes (obvious enough when one thinks about it but somehow the thought never crossed my mind) — ending up having lots of children (Baby Suggs, Sethe’s mother-in-law, had eight), usually with different fathers, children that were most of the times taken away at a young age.
The thing that touched me the most was their sense of not having a thing of their own and their knowledge that even their smallest pleasures, like looking at the moon (not to mention the privilege of loving someone), could be taken away. My mind has a bit of trouble imagining how that might be, how the fact that every single part of you belongs to someone else actually feels. Suffices to say that I was very happy those times are now through.
I have not decided yet how I feel about the main event of the story (what Sethe did to Beloved, what Sethe did to all her kids actually). Can it be understood, since it came from love? My initial thought would have been that well, slavery was probably that horrible to push Sethe that far. I was surprised though to notice that the other former slaves felt differently — they never forgave Sethe, although they all knew all the awful things and feelings slavery implies. Having decided that well then, the author has probably exaggerated pushing Sethe so far, to my amazement I have discovered that this part of the book is inspired from real events. It seems like some people really did feel so strong towards protecting their own from slavery. Which made me understand, once again, how awful being a slave actually was (I never thought it was a good thing, of course, but I don’t think I ever understood its depth and all its implications; truth be told, living in the world that I do, I probably won’t ever understand it completely either).
A quote, summing the things Sethe was so afraid of:
That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn’t like yourself anymore. Dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn’t think it up.
What I liked most: Some of the metaphors. Such as the way Sethe thought of her unborn baby as a little antelope (“But she could not, would not, stop, for when she did the little antelope rammed her with horns and pawed the ground of her womb with impatient hooves.“, “The sound of that voice [...] kept the little antelope quiet and grazing.“). The way Paul D thought of his missing “red heart”, replaced by a tobacco bin rusted shut. The way Sethe’s mother-in-law discovered freedom, together with a heart of her own, beating in her own chest.
What I liked least: The supernatural parts. They sort of made the book feel less pregnant and less real.
I have also found the writing style to be somewhat disjointed at times. I think I see what the author’s been trying to do — giving the reader clues and letting him/her think up the rest on his/her own, and only then disclosing what had actually happened — but sometimes there were perhaps too few such clues, making me confused and as a consequence less interested in what might have happened.
Recommend it to? Anyone, it’s a Pulitzer winning book so it’s probably very good :)
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