Beloved Motifs

      Today in class, we assembled into groups of eight. We all shared our motifs, since we were all individual experts on our own. I learned a lot more about Beloved and its subtle symbols today. We all took turns sharing and I talked about "water." First up was "body parts." They show that the slaves were treated inhumanely. For example, Paul D had an iron bit in his mouth to prevent him from speaking. In the Clearing, where Grandma Baby Suggs preached, she said to love your body (Ch.9). She pierced this into their minds because white men never allowed them to. Sethe's scars show her harsh past & "rememories." They're on her back, meaning her past and what's behind her. Also Beloved had perfect, new feet because she never experienced slavery but Sethe, who did, had ugly feet. These things show the harsh reality of slavery.
      Next was "bodily fluids." Beloved's blood symbolized the blood of Christ; Denver "swallowed her blood right along with [her] mother's milk" (242). And when they ate, they licked the sweat off their faces to add salt to the food. Sweat means hard work. Sethe always provided for her children, with blood, sweat and tears, literally. Milk represents Sethe's love for her kids because she always had enough and it was her way of nurturing them . She was literally draining herself for her children. When Beloved appears near the steps of 124, Sethe has to use the restroom. This is like her water breaking when Beloved  was "born."
      Next was "food." Food is communion (a great rule from How to Read Literature Like a Professor). Stamp Paid collects berries and feeds baby Denver, so Baby Suggs has a party. The berries tasted "so good and happy that to eat them was like being in church. Just one of the berries and you felt anointed" (160). This eating was like a religious preparation for something. And "....Sethe was licked, tasted, eaten by Beloved's eyes" (68).
   

Water in Beloved

      Hello there, blog. Today in class, we got into our jigsaw groups of four. My group chose "water" as our motif because we saw some connections. On page 60, there's a quote about how Beloved came to 124 Bluestone Road. “A fully dressed woman walked out of the water. She barely gained the dry bank of the stream before she sat down and leaned against a mulberry tree…..Nobody saw her emerge or came accidentally by” (60). This is when Beloved came out of the water. Beloved was killed by her mother, Sethe, to save her from a life of slavery. She engraves "Beloved" on her tombstone. This unknown woman, Beloved, is reborn out of the water on the night Paul D, Sethe and Denver come back from the carnival. Water equals baptism ( from How to Read Literature Like a Professor). Believers in Christ are also reborn when they are  baptized. Becasue she was just born (again), she's baby-like. On page sixty, it says, “Exhausted again, she sat down on the first handy place- a stump not far from the steps of 124. By then  keeping her eyes open was less of an effort. Her neck, it’s circumference no wider than a parlor-service saucer, kept bending and her chin brushed the bit of lace edging her dress” (60).  And "she had new skin, lineless and smooth, including the knuckles of her hands” (61). You can tell that she is being described as a newborn. Something weird I noticed while reading Beloved the first time was that Sethe had to use the restroom all of a sudden, "for some reason she could not immediately account for, the moment she got close enough to the face [Beloved’s], Sethe’s bladder filled to capacity” (61). I wondered why Morrison put that in, it seemed unnecesary. But in fact, it's part of the symbolism. It symbolizes the breaking of water before a baby is born. Sethe's urine was “ like flooding the boat when Denver was born. So much water Amy said, ‘Hold on, Lu. You are going to sink us you keep that up.’ But there was no stopping water breaking from a breaking womb and there was no stopping now” (61). Beloved was very thirsty when she arrived. "Four times Denver filled it [cup] and four times the woman drank as though she had crossed a desert" (62). On slave ships, the "pre-slaves" being shipped to America were crammed and weren't given water or food. Beloved was a pre-slave, in a way, because she died before she got to become one. She represents the thirsty passengers of the slave ships. Now that's one complex symbol!

Bilblical Allusions in Beloved

        Yesterday, we had some Beloved poster presentations. The most one that stood out to me was the one dealing with biblical allusions. I noticed them throughout the novel, not to mention the epigraph in the beginning, "I will call them my people, which were not my people, and her beloved, which was not her beloved"(Romans 9:25). Anyway, I really liked the depth of analyzing this group did. It seems like Beloved is a Jesus figure!!! She's a really complicated symbol. When you think about it, Denver drank her blood (kinda weird). In church, Christians drink wine to symbolize the blood of Jesus who died on the cross to save humanity. When Sethe, Paul D and Denver return from the carnival, they saw that a "fully dresses woman walked out of water"(60). Beloved dies once but is reborn that night, when she comes out of the water. Sounds like baptism! This resembles the rebirth of those who are baptized, "born-again" Christians. Grandma Baby Suggs represents John the Baptist because she used to preach in the Clearing, analogous to when he preached in the woods. Sethe represents Mary, the mother of Jesus. She cuts Beloved's throat and sees her die, to save her from the harsh life ahead of her. Mary witnesses the crucifixion of Jesus to save the world from their sins. And four men on horses arrived at 124- "schoolteacher, one nephew, one slave-catcher and a sheriff.... (174)." The four horsemen represent the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse mentioned in the Book of Revelation. One named Death, one Famine, War, and Pestilence.Wow. I can't believe how subtle Morrison is with these symbols. They're not too obvious because she wants you to connect the dots. I never even realized it!!!! Thanks Biblical Allusions group!

What's a Rememory?

      In Beloved, Toni Morrison uses her own word, "rememory", several times, as well as "disremember." I understand why "disremember" is used. The characters have undergone so many traumatic events in the past that they don't ever want to be reminded of again: Sethe's milk being stolen by schoolteacher's nephews, the killing of her own daughter, Beloved, Baby Suggs's death,  Paul D being shackled to ten other slaves and so much more. They seek to disremember and rather go on with the future, to leave the past behind. But "rememory" is harder to analyze. I think a rememory is a memory that is repeatedly remembered. When you think about the prefix "re-", you think of something happening over and over again. This implies that the memories of Sethe continue to be brought up several times. She "remorizes" traumatic things that occurred in her life because she can't get over her haunting past. She's gone through so many hardships in her life, such as trying to escape from Sweet Home as a slave, almost dying had Amy Denver never found her, not knowing what happened to her husband, Halle, and having the tough duty of killing her 2 year old to free her from a life of slavery. The "re" puts emphasis on the word memory, implying that it's a memory of an event or thing that is revisited due to its importance or awfulness.

I Love Beloved!

      Hello. I think Beloved by Toni Morrison is amazing on so many levels. It's so complex and I can tell, it's bursting with symbolism. I mean bursting. I read it the first time and didn't quite understand everything very well. But, I reviewed it very thoroughly and clarified whatever wasn't clear to me. I love the structure of the book: non -chronologically. It's written as someone remembers memories. When something is mentioned, something related from the past is brought up. It's confusing because everything is out of order but it's so much more interesting this way.
      I admire Morison's writing style. So complex, interesting, makes you want to read more. The book starts off with the present and as you read on, you realize why things are the way they are; you learn more about the pasts of characters, which explains their present situation. You learn  about Sethe's and Paul D's lives in strange order. The story starts off at 124 Bluestone Road, Cincinnati. You have no clue why, but you know. But then as you continue, it reveals its reason. Sethe, Paul D, Paul A, Sixo, Halle, and the Thirty Mile Woman all planned to escape from Sweet Home. Sethe runs away, pregnant, and a white woman, Amy Denver, finds her in bad condition. She helps her and spots a boat, where she gives birth.
      Symbolism. I know it's there. There are some strange moments that I don't get but noticed that I noticed them. For example, when Beloved looks out into darkness, says she sees her face and smiles. Or when she says she came from the darkness and lived on a bridge. Strange. Beloved is such a complex character. I was confused about her identity for awhile. I didn't realize that it was a manifestation of the 2 year old baby ghost Sethe killed; I thought she was a random woman that appeared on the doorstep of 124 or that she was a physical representation of Sethe's guilt or past. But she just turned out to be her baby's ghost. No big deal, right?! The characters don't notice all the weird things about her: her baby-like features, her raspy voice, or the fact that she knew about Sethe's diamond earrings. Only Paul D finds her suspicious. I like magical realism. It connects to moment in history (in this case, during the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, when slaves were being emancipated but still treated poorly) but has some magical characteristics (a ghost, Beloved, coming to life). Reality and magical happenings co- exist. I can't wait to explore the symbolism in class because what's the point of reading a spectacular book if you don't fully get the idea, the big picture? I can see how Beloved represents the baby ghost; she acts like a baby, talks like one, doesn't know how to tie her shoes and she "walked out of water"(60). I think this is a symbol for the womb, she is reborn and walks out wet, how a newborn is. Morrison is a genius. Well, I shall return.

Ist Synthesis Essay

    I thought the first synthesis essay was a little hard. It was hard to start writing (but that paper you gave us on hooks helped) and hard to come up with what to say. It was about Christopher McCandless, if we thought he was ignorant or not. I disagreed with Shaun Callarman; I thought he was being too harsh and didn't think of the matter from Chris' point-of-view. Something that made it difficult was that we were given 8 sources. I didn't know where to start because there were too many resources to use.  I used three: Into the Wild, "Where I lived and What I Loved For" by Thoreau , "Nature" by Emerson and "Self-Reliance". I used the last two the most because they both had Transcendental ideas, which relates to Chris' way of thinking. It's weird because Emerson and Thoreau seem to think just like McCandless. Once you read these essays, you get a feel of why Chris did what he did. I thought the debate was fun! It started off a little quiet and dead because everyone's shy at first but then it got heated. Not to brag, but my team had some pretty awesome ideas :) Well anyway, I'm really glad we did that because it inspired me when writing my essay. It gave me a lot of great ideas.
      It took me a while to write this essay. I thought my intro was OK but it was hard to start the body. I didn't feel very comfortable with AXES. I used my Into the Wild book for some quotes (I flipped through every single page to read my annotations; they helped big time). I finally came up with three ideas and attempted to have AXES. I remembered to staple on the rubric and I turned it in early before the bell rang. While I was taking the Beloved quiz, I got it back. I got an 88 :) Not bad. Plus 10 extra credit points. Yay! I prefer Style-analysis over this. I'd rather analyze a document than write about my opinion on something. It's more fact-based and straight forward in my opinion. Well, I'll be reading Beloved over the break. I need to reread a lot of stuff because the questions were familiar to me and I remembered reading about them, but I just couldn't remember. Hopefully I'll do better on the second quiz after I study like crazy!     
Happy Thanksgiving Ms. Sobrero!

The Awakening

       Hello, blog. It's been a while. I really loved all the hidden symbolism behind The Awakening, by Kate Chopin. I never realized that the unnoticeable things, like the birds or the ocean, could represent such big, complex themes. I really enjoyed the things we've done with this book because if we didn't go over the symbols (water, birds, clothing, music, etc.), I would've missed out and never would've knew what the book was truly about. Chopin is a genius!
      I'm glad I was assigned  the "birds"group because everything pertaining to them made sense to me. I noticed that the first line of the book was about a green and yellow parrot, speaking "a little Spanish, and also a language which no one understood..." (1). Whenever I read small, meaningless-seeming details, I don't really analyze; I just keep reading. But that's not good! Anyway, I also loved what the clothing stood for: constriction in a society Edna feels doesn't suit her. Women of the era wore tight corsets (like cages, which connects to birds!), representing the constriction they feel in society. They were expected to be "mother-women" who obeyed their husbands and would give themselves up for their children; Edna wasn't like that, though. She wasn't a mother-woman and she didn't really love Mr. Pontellier. Therefore, she felt misplaced, like she didn't belong in the Creole South. At the end, Edna stood naked on the beach, before she "died" in the gulf---she felt free and stripped of society. She gazed at the Cavalry officer, reminded of the times in Kentucky when she was free, unmarried and could have a crush. So much symbolism!
      The day before the quiz, I was so nervous. I didn't know how detailed the questions were going to be or how easy they were to remember. I read it all, but it's easy to forget stuff. When we got the quiz, I panicked but  after a while, it started coming to me. I got 100! yay!!!!