Thursday, March 28, 2013
Beloved compared to Seethe
I was surprised after finishing reading Beloved about the change in the way I viewed the characters. In the beginning I felt terrible for Beloved and in a way viewed Seethe as not the best mother for having the nerve to murder her own child. However, now that I look at it she really was just doing her best to protect Beloved. In many ways slavery seemed worse to the slaves then death. By the end of the story I started to view Beloved in a negative light. She takes advantage of Seethe at the end of the story and tries to make her feel guilty for killing her when really it was probably for Beloved's own good. It is sad to think that something as horrible as slavery can cause chaos between families and fighting between a mother and her own daughter.
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5 comments:
Definitely by the end of the story it is quite evident that Beloved is a controlling and using character. She takes everything she can from her mother, Sethe, from food to clothing (literally, she takes the clothes off Sethe's back). Because of what Beloved has done to Denver and Sethe, Lady Jones and her church congregation must step in a help out due to the parasitic lifestyle Beloved maintains off her sister and mother. When Beloved was born, Sethe killed her to protect her, however, by the end of the story, Sethe is the one that needs to be protected from her daughter. It's almost as if the roles have been reversed. The mother-daughter relationship has been awkwardly changed and now Beloved is the mother figure, while Sethe is the daughter figure, but in contrast to a normal mother's instincts, Beloved refuses to care for her "daughter" and just continues to leech off her family.
There was no instance where I liked the incarnated Beloved. She was immature, a burden, mean, controlling, a liar, a cheat, and in the end, she beat her own mother. She was the epitome of revenge for what Sethe did. I am also not very happy with Sethe's actions because she tried to kill her own children (I won't get into that discussion as I have already in a previous post.) So in the end there was a character I hated beating up on a character I didn't like. But as Sether became weaker and weaker I started to like her more and more and I felt sorry for her. She hadn't chaged at all and I didn't like how she let Beloved treat her like that. It just goes to show you how the human mind is compassionate and will often times side with the underdog.
I never really liked Beloved. She always seemed out of place and up to no good in my mind. She needed constant attention from the first time she appeared. She always seemed to come to torment her mother and her family and to cause trouble. She wanted revenge and that is the only reason she came back to life. She sucks the life out of everyone she is around and she rejects anyone who isnt in her family because her main goal is to torment what would have been her family if she died.
Beloved always creeped me out. Part of it was probably because I was aware from the beginning that she was an unnatural being. But another part of it was that she acted so selfishly, with one motive in mind (her mother), and every single action she made was based on that one motive. It's unsettling to read of someone who is so fixated on something and will do anything to get what they want. That and Beloved's intentions towards her mother were unclear. Did she intend to simply be close to her mother? Did she intend to get revenge on her mother? Actually, I think beloved and Sethe are extremely similar in their intense love. Sethe loved her children so much that she killed (or attempted) to kill them. Beloved loved her mother so much that she wanted to be her mother and almost killed her mother with her childish demands.
I agree with you all in that I disliked Beloved as well. But once I started thinking about it, Beloved seems like a character who should be pitied and obtain our affection and compassion as readers. Yes, Beloved was manipulative and immature, but considering she was the incarnation of a perpetual two-year-old, it isn't all that strange. We wouldn't hate a two-year-old for raising hell when she got upset or convincing someone to mollify her childish demands, but once that small child is put in a young adult's body, we lose all compassion and react to her childish antics as if she was actually a young adult. I'm not trying to defend her because, trust me, I didn't like her either. I just found it interesting that we lose our perspective on the situation and don't pity her once the dead two-year-old appears to be a young adult.
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