Preview

Sethe Killing In Beloved

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1079 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Sethe Killing In Beloved
Desperation or Murder? Desperate times call for desperate measures. Sometimes, people have to do things that they don’t want to do to protect the ones they love. But what if that involves murder? Within Beloved by Toni Morrison, Sethe believed the decision to murder her infant child was necessary, yet instead it was a monstrous and an unjustifiable act that would have devastating effects on the events to come. In order to really grasp why Sethe made such a hasty, rash decision, her prior experience with slavery and the standard of motherhood within slavery must be analyzed in order to realize the yet unforeseen effects of her actions. Sethes life had never been one of luxury. Until her escape from the Sweet Home plantation, not a single …show more content…
While mothers are culturally known as the warm and nurturing type, there wasn’t that opportunity within slavery. Most women had multiple children from multiple different men, and were bred like cattle. Schoolteacher had described Sethe as “having at least ten breeding years left” (149). Women and mothers were seen as cattle, and most often treated as cattle, bred for extra workers. Additionally, most parents would never get to keep their children. Either they would be auctioned off, would run away, or end up killed. An example of this would be Baby Sugg’s experience with her eight children, all of which had gone from her. “I had eight. Every one of them gone away from me. Four taken, four chased, and all, I expect, worrying somebody’s house to evil” (5). In order to counteract this and keep her livelihood, Baby Suggs never made any connections or maternal bonds with her children. The expectations of motherhood weren’t all that sweet, but the harshness was needed to survive their harsh world. But with all of these hardships involved with slavery, is this good enough reason to kill? The truth of the matter is that Sethe cared enough about her children to sacrifice them. While she took pity on her children, it probably would’ve been in everyones best interest if she took a step back form her children. Stamp Paid described Sethe’s actions in that “She ain’t crazy. She love those

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    This presentation will explore Violence, Trauma, and Knowledge as interlocking concepts in Octavia Butler’s Kindred. While it may be obvious that violence and trauma are integral parts of both the slave narrative and neo-slave narrative traditions, the part these concepts play in the slaves’, or their decedents, acquisition of knowledge may be more subversive. In Kindred, the protagonist, Dana, is somehow teleported to save her white male ancestor in slave era Maryland. During these times, she has to live as a slave in order to blend in, and she experiences the same violence and trauma as a slave during this era would. Throughout the novel, she is confront with the chose to let her white ancestor die, or to kill him or his father when they…

    • 318 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Imagine a young woman living life to the fullest and loving it, when suddenly, she is raped. Out of shame, she keeps this hard truth a secret and to make matters worse, she finds out she is pregnant. She feels as if having an abortion is her only option, so she gets the abortion. Afterward, she feels relieved because she is not carrying the rapists’ baby anymore; however that relief does not last long. Her ears meet the sharp cursing of people protesting, calling her a monster. She rushes past the people to hurry back home, ashamed of what she did. The only trace of her left behind that next day is a note that reads “Murder was never the intent, only the riddance of a horrible memory. He already took part of me that night, and I will not let…

    • 1802 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    So was Sethe justified in trying to kill her children? Life was terrible for women, and her slavemaster clearly would not make life easy for her. Bite this analogy: A jewish woman hears the S.S. breaking into her home. She hides in the basement, an area between the walls only she knows about. As the S.S. descend the stairs, her youngest child starts to cry, so she smothers the baby. When Sethe and Paul D confront each other, she exclaims, "I took my babies where they'd be safe" (164). Sethe did not fully go through with her plan, she was going to commit homicide and then suicide, so they can all live happily as a family in the…

    • 1273 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In her article, Lulu Wilson, describes the many hardships that a slave had to live with on a daily basis. “’Course I was born in slavery, ageable as I am” (Haynes, 201). No slave had a choice if they wanted to become a slave or not, and unfortunately, a majority of all slaves were born into it. They were born and raised as slaves, and they had no say in the matter. One of the greatest hardship a slave, had to face was getting ripped apart from their families. Families were separated, sold to different slave owners. A lot of the times, the slaves never saw their families again. “They must please the white folks that wanted niggers to breed like livestock ‘cause she birthed nineteen children” (Haynes, 211). A majority of slaves, were forced to…

    • 240 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sethe's Change In Beloved

    • 875 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Toni Morrison´s novel Beloved was written and based on the American Civil War era. The author´s use of certain characters in the story provides the reader with an inside to the consequences and results of the Civil War and slavery in the United States. The novel is based upon the characters who have been slaves or have undergone an escape from their masters. The most prominent character in the story is Sethe who had previously been a former slave and remains haunted by this and all the other scarring moments in her past who in vain attempts to repress. Regardless of her past and the hardships that she has faced starting at such a young age and lasting up to her adulthood Sethe has come to become a proud and independent woman who shares an incredible…

    • 875 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    This plot line alludes to God’s love for his children in the Garden of Eden, referenced in the best known Biblical story. When being repeatedly tormented by the spirit of Beloved, Denver remarks that “for a baby she throws a powerful spell” in annoyance, but Sethe replies that Beloved’s haunting is “no more powerful” than the way Sethe “loved her," exemplifying the strong sense of maternal love Sethe feels for Beloved (5). This strong sense of love is later criticized by Paul D when he hears of how Beloved died. He remarks that her “love is too thick” and that it hinders her from living. But Sethe responds that “thin love ain’t love at all," reminding us of the allusion to God’s love in the Garden of Eden (5). Another drastic example of Sethe’s love is when Beloved begins to consume Sethe, who was unable to wear an article of clothing “that didn't sag on her," whilst Beloved “was getting bigger, plumper by the day” (281). This sacrifice is an allusion to God expressing his love for all of his children, by letting his son, Jesus Christ, die for our sins; Therefore, in many ways, Sethe is atoning for her sins, acting as a Christian, but also loving beyond natural limits, acting as God. Morrison infused her knowledge of the Bible and irony into her work to strike her readers with the stark similarities of slavery and the dangers of early…

    • 1272 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Novelist Edwidge Danticat contends Nanny “has craved small comforts, like sitting idly on a porch, and wants her granddaughter to have them, along with money and status, no matter what the emotional cost” (xvi). From early in her childhood, Janie strives to obey and submit to the will of her elders, regardless of her inner desire to find “her authentic self and real love” (Danticat ix). However, Nanny’s concern is that Janie will relegate herself to a life of promiscuity like her mother or, worse yet, to a life of poverty and bare subsistence unless Janie finds financial freedom through the sanctity of marriage. Nanny’s constant worry becomes the primary motive to orchestrate Janie’s marriage to Logan Killicks, an elderly but independent and financially stable farmer who offers enough provisions to spare Janie from treatment as “de mule uh de world” (Their Eyes 14). The marital arrangement is Nanny’s highest desire to protect Janie’s virtue, as well as provide a respectable alternative to the demeaning social conditions of an impoverished life. Like Nanny, Logan is the epitome of Washington’s ideal of the post- slavery African American, for Logan has “the onliest organ in town, amongst colored folks … [got] a house bought and paid for and…

    • 600 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The attempt at recapturing the past is important in plays, poems, and especially novels. In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, the character Sethe views the past with feelings of longing because she was a former slave who endured a tough life. Due to Sethe’s longing feelings, the theme of slavery as a destruction of one’s identity is developed in the work. Sethe is an enslaved woman in Cincinnati, Ohio who is determined to escape to freedom in the 1850’s. In order to keep her children from any trauma from Sweet Home, she attempts to murder them. She manages to kill Beloved and her two older boys run away, so she is left with Denver. Her feelings of longing come into play when Beloved shows up out of the water. Immediately, Sethe finds it strange…

    • 356 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Summary Of City Crimes

    • 702 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Julia Fairfield killed an innocent child. The newspaper confirmed that the baby had been “strangled, and its body thrown into the water” (Thompson 43). Miss Julia is of high society and had no regard to her own child. Fairfield chose to have relations with a black man not taking into account the consequences of her actions. Fairfield knew that if anyone found out she slept with a black man that she would never get married and no man would ever touch her.…

    • 702 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, embodies the painful memories and trauma that former slaves had to go through during the Reconstruction Era. Morrison tells a story of a former slave woman named Sethe that runs away from her plantation called Sweet Home, with her newborn daughter, Denver, while her other children are back with her mother-in law. Her owners are coming to look for her to take her back to the plantation. When they arrive she runs , and she kills her daughter and tries to kill the other three so they would not have to go through the pain of being a slave as she was. Sethe is shunned from her community for her heinous act and lives in a house that is haunted by her dead baby's vengeful ghost.…

    • 1966 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a novel that follows the life of Sethe, an escaped slave; her mindset after slavery, and the stories of other people in her life. By using distinctive time frames, the text presents various difficulties that arise in Sweet Home, a plantation in which Sethe, Paul D, Paul A, Paul F, Sicko, Halle, and Baby Suggs are previously enslaved. The novel offers ways in which the characters deal with the repercussions of slavery. The ultimate question Toni Morrison poses to readers is: Are slaves truly free after slavery? More to the point, is physical freedom synonymous to being wholly free? Morrison consistently addresses freedom apart from the physical release from slavery. The author depicts a lack of complete freedom in…

    • 1801 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Brooks’ poetry, so rich in personal detail and authenticity, often does not have to justify the moral side of issues like other poems usually do. Her work, for me, seems less confessional and more like realistic humanity, a difficult feat to accomplish when so much of the material speaks of inner turmoil, lost loves, and wistful sadness. Honest in tone and filled with common and often disturbing themes, the poems were ones I was able to connect with. “The Mother” and “The Sundays of Satin Legs Smith” are two poems that speak to me in terms of universal longing and pain. I have never had an abortion, but I know several people who have. In fact, last year I had an 11th-grade student who was pregnant, and I told her that I would gladly adopt the baby. She said she would consider it, but she ended up having the abortion. For a couple weeks after she got back, I kept wondering what that child would have been like; but then, I had to force myself to put it out of my mind. “The Mother” brought back all the joys of having a child and all the disappointments of not having a second one.…

    • 2505 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The custom entails separating mothers from their children as early as infancy. This custom saturated throughout southern United States. He believed that this act was practiced so as to eliminate bonding and affection between mother and child. His mother died when he was seven years old. It is worth mentioning inexplicable rape and impregnation of women slaves by their masters. This practice was often common in this era and it was done so that slave masters can maximize their profit and to increase slaves workforce. The law of the land at the time ensured that all mixed-race children became slaves just like their mothers. The existence of mixed-race children resulted in enormous enmity from masters’ wives as they perceive them as a threat and a great insult to them. Thus, masters, wives ensured that these children were treated horribly or were sold off. As explained by Douglass, “The master is frequently compelled to sell this class of his slaves, out of deference to the feelings of his white wife; and, cruel as the deed may strike any one to be.” Therefore, the act of impregnating slaves to procure more slaves for profitability and increased workforce gainsay the notion that Africans were enslaved because they were…

    • 468 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Beloved Style Analysis

    • 728 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The institution of slavery was the murder of equality, and the birth of dehumanization. In Beloved by Toni Morrison, the use of rhetorical devices conveys this point indefinitely. On pages 175 to 176, Morrison focuses in on the most antagonistic character of the novel: Schoolteacher. In portraying his perspective, Morrison is able to achieve her purpose within the novel, and about society as a whole. The effective phrasing of diction and imagery allows Morrison to give the reader a holistic view on the state of mind behind the ultimate supporters of slavery.…

    • 728 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    If slave masters saw fit that it was beneficial to split up a family, he did just that. Ultimately, these are Just some examples for the increase of single motherhood at that time. After females had their children taken away from them, it was common for them to inherit other people's children who were taken from their families. Another example of inhumane treatment, “Physical sexual abuse of women and girls under slavery ranged from acts of punishment to expressions of desire and from forms of forced reproduction to systems of concubinage. Slavery violated the masculinity of black men who were denied the ability to protect vulnerable female dependents”.…

    • 929 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics