Preview

Pregnancy and Sweet Home

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
650 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Pregnancy and Sweet Home
4. What new information do we learn about Sweet Home in this chapter, specifically about Denver’s birth?
In this chapter, we learn that Sethe was already pregnant with Denver when she ran away from Sweet Home. By the time when Sethe collapsed her feet in the woods, a white girl Amy Denver had found Sethe. Due to Sethe’s fear about Sweet Home, she told Amy Denver a false name- “Lu”, because if she were caught, she would be returned to Sweet Home, and she would continue experiencing her previous painful daily life again. Amy Denver helps Sethe by massaged her feet and release her pain. Later, Sethe gave birth to her baby successfully with Amy’s help and Sethe also naming the child after Amy Denver.
5. Retell the night of Denver’s birth, from Amy’s point of view.
That night, when I escaped toward Boston from Mr. Buddy, I found a pregnant woman in the woods. Her feet were collapsed and she seems prepared to die. She told me that her name is Lu, but I feel that she was trying to hide something which cannot tell anyone. Later, she gave birth to her baby successfully with my helps, and I can see how joyful she was. Maybe as thanks to my help, she named her baby after my name- Denver.
Journal Entry Chapter 1
1. Write a journal entry as Sethe or Denver, describing how you feel about Paul D’s arrival. How do you think it will change life in 124?
Paul D’s arrival brings negative impacts and feelings to Denver and consequently changes Denver’s daily life from now on. As the youngest child of her mother Sethe, Denver was born in freedom. Even though Denver has no friends because the community knows that the house is to be haunted, but she still received all the loves from her mother before Paul D came in to her family’s life. When Denver’s mother introduces Paul D as a special guest to her, a feeling of jealousy and anger comes directly into Denver’s mind, because she clearly knows that she would not anymore be the “only one” for her mother, likewise, Paul D plays a

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Overlaps Beware Falling Ice a little. This is Lynn's story, who we meet in Beware Falling Ice. Paul had to say good-bye to her two years earlier when his wife (who had given them permission to be poly and play together) had a mental breakdown. (NOT cheating, they'd had permission to be poly, and that's in the past and had happened before this book opens.) Now, he's back, divorced since his wife refused to get help and uphold her promises to him, and wants to make amends and regain Lynn's trust. Meanwhile, Lynn had literally hit Powerball, and travels to South Dakota with her friend, Terrie, to help Rachel's brother Justin (from Beware Falling Ice) move. She finally calls Paul and flies him up to have alone time with him and talk it out. But…

    • 213 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    After reading and evaluating this chapter, I think Flashbacks is a good chapter title. This chapter provides two flashbacks: one to Sethe’s arrival and first days at 124 Bluestone and one to Baby Suggs’ release from slavery. Stamp Paid, who rowed Sethe and Denver to freedom, comes to check on Sethe twenty days after her arrival. He goes out to gather blackberries for Sethe to eat. When he returns with two full buckets, he shares the berries with everyone and puts one in the mouth of Denver, as a blessing. Baby Suggs was afraid to celebrate the arrival of her new grandchild. She thought the party might jinx the safe return of Halle. When she does decide to celebrate and throw a party, it does not go well. The neighbors who attended the celebration become jealous of Baby Suggs. They are particularly envious that she was bought out of slavery early and has her own home now. In her concern over the safe arrival of Halle, Baby Suggs thinks back to the time that she and the ten year old came to Sweet Home.…

    • 1862 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Quakie gave birth to her child in a small cottage, where a young nurse delivered the child. The nurse was a family friend and knew that Quakie would pass.The baby came and Quakie got one look at her child before she died. Quakies last wish, was that her daughter's name was to be Aspen because she loved the way aspen trees looked. Quakie wasn’t pleased about her life coming to an end, but she believed that her daughter would do something great in this world. Trey too believed that their…

    • 2000 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Finally in the end, he realizes that coming home isn’t right for him in the aspect that the town has not changed except for the girls who are now all grown up. His father still drives the same car and works at the same job and lives in the same childhood home…

    • 1256 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sethe's Breastmilk

    • 115 Words
    • 1 Page

    The protagonist in the novel, Sethe, is deprived of her femininity by being denied motherhood. Infants born into slavery are typically removed from their mothers to disallow any chance to form emotional attachment, making it easier to debase women as human beings by denying them the natural desire to mother their children. The idea of motherhood and a mother’s identity was not just seen in the physical separation between a mother and her child. In an attempt to save her children, Sethe sacrifices herself. In a very abusive and animalistic fashion, Sethe loses the essence of motherhood, her breastmilk. Throughout the novel, Sethe focuses on her breast milk, the life-force she is naturally supplied…

    • 115 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    An example of Baby Suggs’ ‘healing ceremony’, Sethe follows the advice of her to deal with her past and "lay it all down." Before Paul D's arrival, she was satisfied to live with the memories of faces of Howard and Buglar and to keep her husband in mind somewhere out there. Now, because of Paul D’s revelation,…

    • 724 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Sethe’s guilt after killing her daughter eats her inside and she does not express this nor does she open up until Beloved comes. Beloved is there ultimately to free Sethe from her burden of guilt so she may come to terms with herself. Sethe kept all of her hurtful past traumatizing history to herself because to dwell on the past was something they were not to do. Though surprisingly when beloved comes Sethe makes a strange bond and connects with her on another level that is not…

    • 1966 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    I didn’t know that your last speech would be “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” and neither did your followers, nor did the sanitation workers, nor did our friends and family. But if I did, what would I have done? The truth is, nothing. There is nothing you have done that I could have done better. That was your last day and I think you spent it well.…

    • 1260 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    For example, the character Paul D is a character that falls in and out of the story. In the beginning of the book, Paul D temporarily stays with Sethe setting the tone that Paul D, Sethe, and Denver could all work together as a family. “The shadows of three people still held hands.” (Morrison 49) As explained in the quote, the three of them held hands via shadow when they went to the carnival and seemed like everything would work out in harmony, all until Beloved was brought into the picture and throws off the balance in the house. The importance of family is also explained when Denver, Beloved, and Sethe develop a relationship upon each other developing the concept of she is “mine”. “You are mine”,( repeated three times by each character)( Morrison217) A final example of love for family is the point in the book when Sethe killed Beloved for her own benefit to protect Beloved from being raised into…

    • 646 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Denver’s beginning of her transformation first occurs when she meets the young woman Beloved. She begins to change from a childish, self-centered girl into a compassionate, caring and selfless woman. Beloved comes into their family and once Denver finds out what her name is, she immediately takes her under her wing. She “tends her, watches her sound sleep, listens to her labored breathing and, out of love and a breakneck possessive that charges her, hid her like a personal blemish Beloved’s incontinence.” She becomes infatuated to tending Beloved. Denver devotes so much of her time nursing Beloved back to health that she often “forgets to eat or visit the emerald closet”. This wooden box is very important to Denver, as it used to be an escape haven for her. Denver’s greatest step to adulthood is when she stops hiding away in her wooden box. The way she treats Beloved is very motherly. Denver’s motherly acts of taking care of Beloved are the first steps of Denver’s change…

    • 603 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Fat Girl by Andre Dubus

    • 6416 Words
    • 26 Pages

    Her name was Louise. Once when she was sixteen a boy kissed her at a barbacue; he was drunk and he jammed his tongue into her mouth and ran his hands up and down her hips. Her father kissed her often. He was thin and kind and she could see in his eyes when he looked at her the lights of love and pity.…

    • 6416 Words
    • 26 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Personal History Project

    • 1929 Words
    • 8 Pages

    On September 8th 1990, it was a hot sunny day in the city of Cali, Colombia. Temperature around 88°F with very low humidity, normal for that time of year, since the summer was about to begin. A sky full of altocumulus clouds cooled the estimated population of about 1.7 million people ("1990 population estimate for Cali, Colombia."). Among that population there was my mother. Already late for her gynecology appointment, inconveniently causes by a car accident, she would shortly find out when I would be entering the world. The accident turned a 20-minute drive in a 45-minute drive. Rushing into the clinic, as the doctor’s assistant was calling her name, she rapidly was taken to the back to speak with the provider. When the doctor came into the room he calmly said, “I have good news, and bad news”. My mom’s heart already racing she decided to go with the bad news first. “The probability of being a complicated birth is pretty high, which means the surgical team will have to perform a cesarean section instead of a vaginal birth”. My mother relived thinking it would be something much worse she asked the doctor to go ahead with the good news. “The baby will probably be arriving today”. My mom became frantic, “that’s the good news? They might as well both have been bad! My mother panicked, she had nothing ready for the birth, since her first child was not due for another 10 days. Her hormone levels raging at an all time sky high, she shortly began to cry. The doctor and his staff hugged her and reassured her that everything was going to be ok. They quickly rushed her to the hospital where they would have all the equipment in the event that there were any major complications. Once she was all settled in, the operating room staff started to prepare for the birth around 3:15 P.M. The staff thought I was ready to come out, however I took another three hours to make my grand appearance. At 6:23 PM I arrived spreading my arms and legs with a…

    • 1929 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    She did not look at them; she simply swung the baby toward the wall planks, missed and tried to connect a second time, when out of nowhere the ticking time the men spent staring at what there was to stare at–the old nigger boy, still mewing, ran through the door behind them and snatched the baby from the arch of its mother's swing.”]. This is not a personal essay of what I believe, but I will speak my mind. This quote made me cry. I do not know whether I should hate Sethe or sympathize with her. In a weird way all humans want to sympathize even with the wrong doers. We want to believe that all propel have a heart and have reasons to doing the wrong things they do which is what happens in this case. But now we have to think did she not just sacrifice her child to get her family out of Sweet Home? Out of slavery? But was it worth it? Was her sacrifice worth the pain she had caused?…

    • 860 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Not even former slaves that lived near her and went through similar situations. All the people in town ignored Sethe after this and acted as if she didn’t exist anymore. For example, Ella, one of Sethes old friends says, “I ain’t got no friends take a handsaw to their own children” (Morrison 221). They thought she was crazy. So a person reading this book who didn’t go through anything similar to Sethe’s experience will have a hard time understanding what and why Sethe did too. So Beloved helps get this through to the reader. Beloved returns, and once Sethe realizes it is her daughter, she goes all out to try to make it up to her. “And instead of looking for another job, Sethe played all the harder with Beloved: lullabies, new stitches, the bottom of the cake bowl, the top of the milk. If the hen had only two eggs, she got both” (Morrison 282). This shows how Sethe did love her daughter. She still loves her, and it also shows that the reason behind killing her was only out of fear and love. Sethe was a slave for most of her life and she knows what it is like. There was no way she would want her own children to have to go through…

    • 2329 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Don Radcliffe who is more than a friend for Paul, was turning back to Australia. He hadn’t been in there for a long time. Paul got Don to fly with him to Melbourne, but Don stayed away from his family and he had hesitated before he accepted Paul’s flight offer.…

    • 1171 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics