I am so glad that we read Beloved. This is the second time reading it for me and although I would not have done that by own choice I am glad I did because I actually enjoyed it this time. I think that by discussin the moral rights and wrongs about Sethe's actions is wasting time. If we spend all of our time focusing on that we miss that bigger picture. There are so many levels and so many issues to discuss that we should not just stop there, on the very surface of the book to analyze it. The fact is, Sethe did kill her baby, so let's move on. Did anyone wonder about the last chapter? I think that is one of the most interesting parts, especially now for the second time I have mor einsights into the meaning.

It's Friday night and I suddenly looked at the clock and remembered that I forgot my post! Well, I want to continue our class discussion about Sethe. I really feel that the reason Morrison selected such a violent death for Beloved was to show just how terrible slavery is. I think for us to focus on the issue of whether or not it was murder or whether Sethe was wrong or right in doing this is missing the point. And as for the comment on it relating Beloved's death to abortion...I'm sorry, I can see the relationship, but I really don't think it related to the book at all. And I really don't think English class is the place to discuss abortion. But that aside, overall I really enjoyed Beloved, despite the difficulties in reading it.

so,once again i am late in my posting...i've read everyone's responses this week and can see that i missed a lively discussion thursday. (bummer!) this book seems to be full of heavy subjects that one could feel very strongly about. myself included. i am really enjoying the "challenge" of this book (yes, i'm still reading it....). i will go ahead and turn in the quiz when i'm finished---not for credit but to show that i've done the work. :-) i will comment further on the book when i'm finished as well. i would like to say that i'm quite looking forward to being done moving (this sunday it will all be over!!!) and even more importantly to starting "we were the mulvaneys". sorry that this isn't more critical in nature. thanks for your patience and understanding...

While reading this book, I found myslef lost many times, and having to pause to understand and process what was going on. I think this made it more difficult for me to enjoy the book, I was a little too worried about trying to pick out things that might be on the test and details I might not otherwise notice. However the take-home test made it easier, because I could take my time and go through the book and answer the questions in as much detail as I felt I needed to. Although I thought what Sethe did was wrong, I can understand to the best of my ablilty why she did it and maybe some of what was going on in her head at the time. I was a little dissapointed that our enitre class time was spent dwelling on this particular detail in the book. I believe it was VERY important, but I think there were other aspects of the book that I thought maybe should have been looked at as well. Overall, I didn't really enjoy the book, but I think it takes an interesting look at topics that are very important to our society then and now. Although I wouldn't reccomend it to a friend, I think it should continue to be taught and read.

After the discussion we had in class on Thursday I had a new appreaction for Beloved, but i still thought the book was terriable in general. The story line was anything but profound and deep. Sethe commits a murder plain and simple, but it doesn not end there due to her ignorance and misplaced trust in religion she now thinks her dead daughter is haunting her. The writing style was very complex which is hard to understand because, the story was so plain. I am not a literay expert so I might be the only one who does not like the story. I guess Oprah and I are just going to have to disagree on this book.

I am speechless about this book. I just do not know where to start! I am amazed at the level of detail put into this book. In some parts of the book I was confused. Just like I said on last weeks message board, that just when I thought that I was understanding the text/story of the book Tony Morrison threw something else at me. I searched and searched for the way that the diamond/crystal earrings dissappeared. I thought that I had read it somewhere. In the search of this answer I almost reread the entire first half of the book. I still had no clue and left my answer as it was. There is no way to be able to completely read and understand what Tony Morrison wrote, but I also thought that is what she wanted. She wanted it to be one of those books that brought up a subject that there was no right answer to. I do not necessarily like her style of writting in this book. But she is a very good author and it takes much talent to be able to write like that.

WOW! I don't even know where to start, and I don't think arguing over Sethe's actions will ever get us anywhere or help us better understand the book. One thing I wanted to comment on was how much information was jam-packed in this book. One of the quiz questions dealt with the crystal earrings. I remembered that Mrs. Garner gave them to her as a wedding present and that she no longer had them, but I could not remember what exactly happened to them. Scouring the book for the answer proved to be very difficult, unlike the Bean Trees that had labeled chapters (however, I miraculously found it). I think all the information Morrison was throwing at us made the book a difficult read. I enjoyed the parts of the book I understood though, but there were not many of those.

Another thing I was thinking about was how most of Sethe’s life she lived at Sweet Home. We know from Baby Suggs, Paul D, and Sethe how respectful Mr. and Mrs. Garner had been to their workers. Still, that not making slavery right, they did however treat them better than most slave owners. With that in mind, I cannot imagine the life a slave where he/she was never once was treated with some sort of respect or decency. Maybe Sethe had it easy for a woman in slavery... can you imagine?

Finally, I would just like to say that my favorite character in this novel was Sixo. He would walk 30 miles just to see a woman he loved. And once he saw her, he’d have to start walking back. Whatta devoted guy!

Beloved was an amazing book. Even though I am not very interested in the topic of slavery, it made me think about several related issues, like abortion, and youthanasia. In my opinion, Sethe's act was one of panic and insanity. I believe that she killed the baby in the manner that she did because she wanted to hurry up and do it before schoolteacher and his posse could round them up and take them back to slavery, so she saw a saw and did what she instinctively thought she should do in a paniced insane instance. It was obviously a moment in which Sethe was not of sound mind to any extent. Her nursing Denver with blood still on her from killing Beloved is an example of how out of her mind Sethe was at that moment.

Although, I can reason this action to make some sort of sense, I still do not agree with it. John Stuart Mill distinguishes when certain people should be allowed to interfere with other people doing things by setting a difference between certain kinds of acts. Self-regarding acts are those that only affect the doer of the act. Other-regarding acts are those that affect other people. He would say that under no circumstances would Sethe be right to kill Beloved, or anybody for that matter because that is an other-regarding. However, if Sethe wanted to commit suicide, that is ok because that act only affects her(this is debatable, but is not the issue). So, Mill would say Sethe was wrong. I agree with Mill based on these distinctions, because Beloved never had a chance, and things do change over time. The children would eventually have gained their freedom after the civil war, and they still would have experienced life. It is wrong to opt somebody else out of a situation(in this case their life), one should only be able to make that choice for themself.

  I enjoyed the Beloved and our discussion of it. I think that the online quiz was very helpful and gave me a better understanding of the book.
However, I was a little disappionted in the conversation, and the fact that Paul D was not mentioned. He is the character who has been through the most. From the prison camp in Alfred Georgia, up to Rochester New York, and down to Cinncinnati Ohio, he has been through it all.
  I think that if you put him in Sethe's postion, the day she violently murdered Beloved, he would have acted differently. This says something about the characters. Paul D who has seen more and been through more would not have committed the crime Sethe did. This makes me believe that what Sethe did was an act of insanity and selfishness.

Did anyone else notice the difference in opinions between genders on Thursday's class? Even after it was brought up, that men maybe could not relate as well to Sethes's situation and therefor saw this as a more black and white situation of her actions being wrong, no male raised their hand to argue that her actions may have been justified. Just the same, no females raised their hand and were addament about not doing the same as Sethe. I am interested to see if my little hypothesis is wrong.
In addition, I wanted to point out (what I thought to be) one of the most powerful quotes in the book. So powerful I got down out of bed and grabbed a pencil to underline it. It may also shed light on why Sethe did what she did.
"...learning that nobody stopped playing checkers just because the pieces included her children."
I thought Beloved was an excellant book.

After our rather colorful discussion yesterday about Beloved, and given that i really didn't like the book that much it is time to move on; so how about We Were the Mulvaneys? I have advanced fairly far in the novel finding it easy to read and quite interesting so far. There is just one thing i would like to pose to this discussion board; the book starts off by the youngest boy, Judd, retelling the history of his family. But as the book moves on, the njob of narrator is switched between him and an omnicient point of view. There is something to this and i can't figure out what it is. I have posed this question mainly b/c i don't want to discuss beloved too much more b/c i find it unable to relate too. But i do like the way We Were the Mulvaneys has started and am looking forward to the culmanation of events the narrator sents up in the begining.

Edited by author 04-12-2002 03:53 PM
I thought Beloved was an amazing book. I have also read Song of Solomon and personally believe that Morrison's style of writing is spectacular. I wish I could write like her. I know that there was a lot of discussion on whether the act performed by Sethe was right or wrong. I think that Morrison wanted to upset the reader but I think that in a different way then many of the individuals in the class were becoming upset. Beloved is a book about slavery and how awful it really was. I personally feel that Sethe killing Beloved was put into the book so that the reader could say, wow slavery was so horrible, someone would rather kill a child instead of sending them back into slavery. Morrison makes a very strong statement by saying this. I think that was the most signifcant point of the act.

I really didn't like the book Beloved. I liked the beginning but the last 70 pages or so were so hard for me to get through. I didn't really like the style of Toni Morisson's writting, although I do agree that it is very unique and interesting. Slavery is a very difficult topic for the world of diversity much less for a class of mostly white teenagers. I live in Cincinnati now and I've never felt scared wherever I've been. Some places have a lot of tension but I think that would be in any major city.

  After class on Thursday it is apparent how truly controversial the book "Beloved" is. I don't bleieve that Sethe's actions can be justified by anyone, but it is made apparent that she wanted to protect her child and she felt that she could best protect Beloved from saving her from the horrible grips of slavery.
   As for the Abortion issue, no one should ever say that something is right or wrong because everyone has their own opinions. My personal opinion is that Abortion is a choice that every female should have. It should not be critized by men because being pregnant and going through child birth is something they will never experience. When I think about abortion the scenario that comes to mind is if a woman is raped and becomes impregnated by the rapist, and she doesn't want to carry the child that has been conceived from such a degrading horrible act then as a woman she has the right to choose abortion. Another example is when a woman has experienced a Tubal pregannacy a woman must have an abortion or she will die. Yet another example, when incest has occured and the female wants to get an abortion to save the baby from birth defects that can be experienced from incestual ralations. I know that many people believe that there is a low percentage of incest incidents but it is not as low as everyone believes. There are so many reasons that abortion is viewed as necessary, therefore people especially men should not be so quick to pass judgement.

Well it seems that we've come to a topic that is quite diverse amongst everyone. I must say that I do not believe that Sethe's actions are applicable to be compared to that of an abortion. What Sethe did WAS murder. That child was old enough to begin to acquire some motor skills as well as a premature intellect. So I don't really see the sense in comparing it to that of an act of aborting a child. This is mainly due to how I define abortion. But like Christina said in class Toni Morrison involved this scene to make her audience consider her motive and her emotions at this time. We must all remember that this IS a fictional story so a situation like this may not have ever happened. I don't believe Sethe was ever crazy. I mean I've taken a lot of consideration into what could have possibly been going through her mind and I think that due to the situation the power of her emotions drowned out her sense of reality. She was making a decision off impulse. Sethe probably didn't put much thought into killing her child and I'm assuming that she sure as hell hadn't prearranged a plot to wipe out her entire family. Why didn't she do it earlier? Well i think that Sethe's ignorance about where she was and how far away from danger she was gave her this artificial hope that no harm would ever come her way again. We must remember that before she left Sweet Home she had no idea where she was going. I just feel that Sethe's actions were a measure of the calibur of her love for her children rather than a brutal act of violence.

I personally don't believe that I have any right to try to justify Sethe's actions. Killing Beloved was the one thing that she would regret for the rest of her life. It haunted her. Sethe had to wonder what might have happened to Beloved if she had grown up in a world of slavery. Would Beloved have been saved from a life of slavery? I'm not going to sit here and say whether I agree or disagree with Sethe's actions because I have nothing to compare it to. Nothing in our world today compares to the situation that Sethe found herself put in. It would be unfair and problematic to just assume that let's say Sethe's actions were wrong. We are then automatically shutting ourselves off from understanding Sethe as a character.

Scott: I appreciate hearing a male perspective on abortion, however I will refrain from giving my own here and now. I don't believe that abortion connects to this issue. If we try to connect the two, we'll only be trying to rationalize what Sethe did, and I don't think that we need to do that to understand the story this excellent novel is trying to portray.

Since everyone has been talking about how Sethe killed Beloved, I might as well throw in my two cents.

I hear a lot of people comparing what Sethe did to abortion, but I think what Sethe did took a lot more guts. If you made every mother who ever wanted an abortion saw off the head of her child, you would have a lot less abortions in the world. It is clear in my mind that Sethe thought that what she was doing was absolutly necessary.

However, I do not agree with her. Sethe is making a critical decision about a life that is not hers. Obviously, I will never be placed in the same situation, but I just don't think I can ever condone what she did (not that it really matters whether I condone it or not). The bloody murder of her daughter, who never had the chance to decide for herself whether or not death was better than slavery, is inexcusible.

Another question that we must ask ourselves is "If Sethe felt so strongly about slavery that she considered herself to be saving her daughter by killing her, why didn't she ever killed herself before then?" Sethe had been a slave most of her life, yet never once did she attempt to commit suicide. How can she justify that death is better than slavery if she herself was willing to live the life of a slave as opposed to killing herself? I suppose if the character Sethe exsisted, she would probably bite my head off for asking a question such as this, but it is something that needs to be asked.

To Scott Bower: I find your opinions on abortion very interesting. I remember having a neutral opinion on abortion for a long time (this is due to the fact that males will never have the same aspect on abortion as females in generally) until I saw this one movie. I forget the title but one of the female characters was a drug addict and had just found out that she was pregnant. It was later revealed in the movie that she had had an abortion a few days ago. I remember the first thing I thought when I heard that was "She just killed that baby!" Since then, I have had the strict opinion that abortion is pretty much the same thing as murder, we have just given it a very technical term, and made it clean.

As I said above, if every abortion required that the mother or parent take a saw and cut off the baby's head, we would have a lot less abortions in this country.

However Scott, you have to remember, you will never be faced with that position in your life. Although I do not approve of abortion, you have to remember that you will never have a baby living inside of you (notice I specifically said "living") and you will never be faced with that situation in your life.

i know i already posted a message, but this one isnt really about the book. somone said that they werent going near the "abortion issue". i am willing to bring it up because whether people in the class think i am right or wrong doesnt matter, because i really think i am right. abortion is WRONG. even if you dont think it is murder, which it is because you are killing a baby knowingly, it is the most selfish act a women can do. people say "its my body or its a women's body and she can do what she wants" their are two things im going to say about that. first, its not their body, by having sex with a guy they are sharing that body God gave them with that guy they are having or had sex with. they are also definitly sharing that body with a baby, since they are pregnant. that is why abortion is soooo selfish, they are taking that body away from the baby, with whom the woman is sharing it. not only is she taking that body away from the child, but the child's life away. the second thing i am going to say about that argument ("its my body i can do what i want") is: is it not illegal to inject/snort/smoke/drop/roll (whatever else) illegal drugs into that body? if the argument "its my body i can do what i want" is a valid one, drugs would not be illegal to use. another argument people use is (sort of) "the place or situation i live in is not sutable for a child" well get out of that situation!!! if you are unable, put the baby up for adoption. but, about adoption, women say "i dont want to have to carry a child for nine months and then see it taken away" this, again is selfish. the argument they just made "the situation in which i live is not sutable for a child" was actually not selfish. it was taking the childs life into consideration. this last argument did not. I dont want to carry the baby I will get hurt. who cares about you. if the child is aborted you dont die. the thing you may have is regret, but at least you have an opportunity to alter or vendicate that choice and those feelings!!!! the most selfish reason many women go through with an abortion because of is, they dont want to have to change their lives: their parents will disown them, they ll have to drop out of school, the guy who got them pregnantleft (which is not even a man, in terms of a good man, if he did), or any such number of reasons. can anyone not see the selfishness in that!?!!!??? "i dont want to have to change my life, so ill kill a baby!!!" how is that even an option??? it is very sad that abortion has somhow been called "the better choice" because the baby wont be happy. who is anyone to decide that. babies just need to survive. when they become remotely self-sufficient, they will start to learn things, but until then, their main goal is to survive. they wont have other advantages that come with a happy childhood or happy new-bornhood, but at least they will be able to make the choice themselves one day, how they will live their lives. i dont think, as in most issues, that their are exceptions. rape and insest are a GRAY-AREA, not automatic abortions. serious thought has to be put in those situations, because it is still murder. but if you disagree with me, quetion me. dont get angry and be mad and say i hate that kid, just ask questions. ill be happy to answer back, or acceptt the criticism.

Edited by author 04-12-2002 01:16 PM
I agree with what Matt Dunson wrote about how if he were put in Sethe's shoes, he would have done the same. But he wasn't and never will be and that is the point that Morrison was trying to make. No one except the people who were apart of slavery will ever understand how that felt and what extreme measures are taken during a time like that. I too, like Matt, would have done the same thing as Sethe, and take Beloved's life. But I am not and never will be in those shoes and I could never possibly understand what the slaves ever went through. Toni Morrison wrote this book in such a way to try and get the point accross that slavery is the most horrifying and brutal life to live and she used Sethe's murder of Beloved as an example of how terrible it actually got.
   I did not enjoy the way Morrison wrote and I wish she were more clear but in my mind it is a piece of art that will be cherished for the artwork within. Since I am a photo-illustration major I have been in several upon several art classes and various photo classes and when I view this book, I see it as art. That's the difference between The Bean Trees and this novel. The Bean Trees was a writing that was easy to understand and a really quick read. I would say that The Bean Trees wasn't a challenge but used a language that was really descriptive but still, easy. Beloved was complicated but a nice piece of work that communicated a powerful image of slavery.
  I could talk on and on about this book including the topics of what happend to her sons and how this compares to abortion but I won't go there today.

I agree with what a lot of people say about Sethe killing her baby and how it was wrong but how she did it for the reson to save her daughter from the suffering she would have endured if she had become a slave. I agree with what someone said about the hypocracy surrounding her actions, and how slave owners beat, raped, and killed their slaves constantly, and that when Sethe killed her child for the sake of preventing that from happening, the community was outraged. I also agree with what someone said that the baby never had a chance to chose for herself whether or not she wanted to live or die, and that Sethe did, and that was not fair. There are so many different viewpoints on this topic and so many people feel so strongly about this issue, that it is hard for me to really decide how I feel about it. I think because this is being looked at as a moral issue that it will forever be argued but I really enjoyed hearing everyone's oppinions on it yesterday.

i think they way the book way written was awsome. i think that, unlike The Been Trees, which i liked a lot, Toni Morrison didnt really leave us with any holes; or at least any non-intentional holes. i think she left us with some major things to think about, obviously, but she didnt develope anyone or any theme and just stop. i think the umportance of Paul D was huge. we didnt really talk about him, but he was in an even worse situation than Sethe, especially in Georgia! and his escape was even longer and just as hard. i wonder if people just skip over that because he was a man, and "should be able to take care of himself."?

I don't think that any one of us has any right to say whether or not Sethe made the right or wrong decision on killing Beloved. Not a single one of us has ever gone through even half of what Sethe went through, therefore we know nothing about how horrible slavery is. True, I believe that Beloved deserved a chance, but what if there was something that only Sethe knew would happen that would ruin Beloved's life? I think that in times like today, it's not right to pass judgement on someone, when we are so in the dark of the circumstances.

I think that the importance of Sethe's murder of crawling already? lies within the fact that she felt she had to make the choice. I don't think that Toni Morrison put that part in the book to debate whether she was right or not to commit the murder. However, I feel that that part was put in to show the extremities that Sethe faced, with putting her child into slavery or killing her. Obviously, slavery was so horrible for her, as she recalls throughout the book, that she feels it is necessary to not let her child go through it. I don't think this is a right or wrong issue here, but I can see how it could be viewed as that. But, I see this as an effect of slavery, what extremeties Sethe must go through as a result of her horrible, terrifying experience. As someone put earlier, you want yoru children to live a better life than you, and this is another evident reason that Sethe did what she did. If her children could not live a better life, away from the life of slavery she went through, then why live at all.

Let me just start off by saying there's no way I'm getting near the abortion issue. I knew that would be brought up, and where I can see why it would be brought up, I don't think it has much to do with the actual context of the book. That being said, I think the overall debate over whether or not what Sethe can fall under our judgement is a good one, but what I think is much more important than that is the way Toni Morrison has portrayed slavery. I mean every knows that savery was pretty bad, an altogether horrible thing. But "Beloved" gives us an idea of just how bad it really was. Whether what Sethe did was right or wrong isn't as important as the fact that she actually did it. That says alot more about slavery than anything I've ever read before.

Man, I don't want to say anything about Sethe killing Beloved for fear of pissing everyone off, but there doesn't seem to be much else worth discussing. That being said, I think everyone has some really great opinions on this. Someone said something about being born into a hopeless situation. My opinion is that I'd rather have that chance, no matter how slim it is, than not at all. I guess there's more to say, but I don't want an english class lynch mob coming after me or something, so I'm done. And contrary to popular belief, I, Greg Booth, have never been and will never be a slave.

I think that the runaway of Sethe's two boys, Buglar and Howard, should have been developed more throughout the book; I wanted to know more specifically what happened to them after they fled. I saw their runaway as being indicative of the slaves' state of futility in general. To the brothers, any sort of authority had become hostile and dangerous. The same cruel spirit which drove the slave owners to beat their parents had now inhabited their mother. Seeing that their parents were helpless to take a stand against their "masters" what hope did Buglar and Howard have against protecting themselves and Denver from their own mother???...Sethe fled from confrontation when she was faced with giving up her children to the schoolteacher. She knew that to resist him would be hopeless. The boys fled from Sethe for the same reason, she was authority and they could not feel protected from her.

I think the structure of Beloved is interesting because of the fact that it too stresses an important topic: the amount of time that Sethe was remotely happy. Sethe had 28 days of freedom before the Whites came back to get her. This is the same amount of chapters in the book. Morrison is showing that 28 days is such a small amount of time. It took us only a week to read those 28 chapters. Imagine how quickly those 28 days went by for Sethe. Also the book is divided into three sections, one symbolizing each of the three women. Each section starts off by describing the current mood of 124. Perhaps this is also supposed to parallel the moods of the three women.

     I agree that Beloved is about more than just whether Sethe was justified in killing her baby. However, I found the last comment of class very interesting. Someone paralleled Sethe's actions with abortion today. It is difficult to think about such a tragic act being performed in this modern day. I'm not sure if what Sethe did is the same as abortion or not. I see many important differences, such as the fact that for the most part women today are not slaves. Also, the option of adoption was not around in Sethe's day. However, at the same time the one fact that doesn't differ is that in each case the baby did not get the chance to choose whether it wanted to live or die.
     Something else that bothered me was the hypocrisy surrounding Sethe's actions. For years slave owners treated slaves as animals, beating and murdering them. But when Sethe killed her daughter everyone acted appauled by what happened. I just don't understand how the community could not care about thousands of people being tortured, but care about one child, who would end up like those thousands anyway.

  I do not think that Toni Morrison wanted the only focus of Beloved to be the dabating of wether or not Sethe was wrong or right for killing her child. I think the killing of the child was to bring out another important issue of the book, slavery. Toni Morrison may have wanted to have an event take place in the book so the reader can have an idea of the impacts and cruelty of slavery. What could possibly be a better way to show that something was so hurtful and monsterous to a person it lead them to kill their own child?

  I completely agree with the points that Matt made. I also feel that Sethe killing Beloved (despite the manner in which is was done) was her way or saving her from a life that in my opinion cannot even be called one, except for the fact of a lack of better words. During our discussion in class I kept paralleling it to current issues of debate such as abortion. Many in the class, mostly men, were inclined to argue for the opinion that what Sethe did was wrong on the basis that her child had no say in what was happening to her. In that same sense nor did Sethe as a slave. She had no impact on what occurred to her in her life, and as I saw it this was her way of taking control again. You always here the cliché that parents want their children to have it better than they had it, as proved to be true in Sethe's case. Is it wrong to take a child out of a hopeless existence? Is it wrong to provide an escape from a life of torment and pain? In my opinion, no. Sethe was justified in her actions completely. Perhaps we cannot understand her choice, seeing as we are so far removed from the issue of slavery in our current society, and perhaps we are not meant to.

To go along with the discussion in class, I am going to give my view of Sethe killing Beloved. I neither condone nor feel that the actions that Sethe took were wrong. However, I do understand how she could have done what she did. In her eyes, killing Beloved was the same as liberating her. Never would Beloved be raped, beaten, tortured, or treated like an animal. With the act of sawing her daughter’s head off, Sethe was cutting through the shackles that slavery would have placed on her daughter Beloved, no matter how horrific it may have been. While reading the book, I kept asking myself if I could have let one of my children live a life of slavery; a life of rape, torture, and subhuman conditions. It did not take me long to come up with the answer. I believe that put into Sethe’s shoes, I would have done the same thing. On the other hand, I am not in Sethe’s shoes and will never have to make a decision of that sort. For that, I am thankful and I believe that is the point that the author was trying to make.

Welcome to Week Three!