Beloved #4

"Well," she said, "We'll take turns. Two skates on one;one skate on one; and shoe slide for the other." Nobody saw them falling. Holding hands, bracing each other, they swirled over the ice. Beloved wore the pair; Denver wore one, step-gliding over the treacherous ice. Sethe thought her two shoes would hold and anchor her. She was wrong. Two paces onto the creek, she lost her balance and landed on her behind. The girls, screaming with laughter, joined her on the ice. Sethe struggled to stand and discovered not only that could do a split, but that it hurt. Her bones surfaced in unexpected places and so did laughter. Making a circle or a line, the three of them could not stay upright for one whole minute, but nobody saw them falling. Each seemed to be helping the other two stay upright, yet every tremble doubled their delight. The live oak and soughing pine on the banks enclosed them and absorbed their laughter while they fought gravity for each other's hands. Their skirts flew like wings and their skin turned pewter in the cold and dying light. Nobody saw them falling. Page 205

"nobody saw them falling", they were letting it all go. they were enjoying each other. they did not let the cares of what others thought and felt about them hold them back any longer. the laughed instead of cried, not letting others see them crumble. they stood in the midst of the storm.

But when her laughter died, the tears did not and it was some time before Beloved or Denver knew the difference. When they did they touched her lightly on the shoulders. Page 206

This is Sethe's breakthrough. After holding it all in her grief and her pain she experienced joy. She experienced joy with the two kids she had left. Denver her living and Beloved her dead baby's ghost who'd come back in human form. She was able to really feel a joy that she had otherwise missed or that had been taken away from her. This is the one place throughout the whole book that Sethe really experiences joy without a quick lapse of disappointment to follow. She is able to forget all that she has been through all that has been said and done and live in happiness. This actually gives me as a reader a feeling of happiness for her.

Beloved #3

"Or maybe I couldn't love em proper in Kentucky because they wasn't mine to love." page 190

"Listening to the doves in Alfred, Georgia, and having neither the right nor the permission to enjoy it because in that place mist, doves, sunlight, copper dirt, moon-everything belonged to the men who had the guns." page 191

"He knew exactly what she meant: to get to a place where you could love anything you chose- not to need permission for desire-well now, that was freedom." page 191

"I stopped him," she said, staring at the place where the fence used to be. "I took and put my babies where they'd be safe." page  193

These quotes are the section of the book where Stamp Paid tells Paul D about the crime Sethe committed years before. Sethe and Paul D then go over the events of her crime. Sethe tells Paul D why she attempted to kill her sons and succeeded in killing her daughter. I pull from these quotes that Sethe committed this gruesome crime to save her children from a life of slavery. They were too young to be active slaves at Sweet Home and she wanted to save them before they were old enough to know and understand slavery. She wasn't crazy or acting out of pure evil. She was showing how strong her love for her family and children were. She wanted to save her children from the brutal experiences that she and other slaves on Sweet Home had experienced. Although I understand and get why Sethe did this. It's like the point that a lot of mothers strive to make. They'd kill anyone who'd brought harm to their family or children. Or they sometimes tell their children who are making an extremely bad decision and are continuing to do so against the mother's wishes or talks back to her. The mother has or may make statements like I brought you into this world and I can take you out." Me personally, I couldn't do that. I couldn't bring more pain to myself that way. That would be one form of taking my child's burden that I couldn't go through with. True enough this was a crime but it was a justified crime. Sethe ended and attempted to end the suffering that Howard, Buglar, and Beloved would otherwise endure as slaves. She did what all mothers say they would do but have never done when put to the task. She sacrificed her life, her possible freedom, and the life of her children to keep them free and innocent as a child should be.

Beloved #2

"Inside, two boys bled in the sawdust and dirt at the feet of a nigger woman holding a blood-soaked child to her chest with one hand and an infant by the heels in the other. 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 - in 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 arc of its mother's swing." Page 67

Before reading this book, I watched the movie Beloved, years before reading the book. Because of this I expected this portion of the book where it would go into detail about when Sethe kills her baby Beloved and attempts to kill her sons Howard and Buglar. Even though I expected it this scene snuck up on me with such shock and graphic detail. It was presented in somewhat of a creeping-tiptoeing matter. This part of the book isn't really talking about Sethe and then your attention is peaked even more when it mentions the barn or shed. As it gets closer and closer to its reveal you been to get the idea that this may be it, this ma be the scene but there's always a chance that you could be wrong.

Beloved #1

"There is also my husband squatting by the churn smearing the butter as well as its clabber all over his face because the milk they took is on his mind. And as far as he is concerned, the world may as well know it. And if he was that broken then, then he is also and certainly dead now." page 83

When reading this quote in the book I wondered what it meant. I knew that it was saying something. Something that could possibly be important to Halle’s (Sethe’s husband) role in the book. I read it again and the lines after to try and pick up what was being said. What Toni Morrison was trying to express what had happened to Halle and where he may be now? Having continued to read with more mentioning of Halle throughout the book I still have not found out what became of Halle. I assume he went crazy from seeing his wife being violated by white males in the barn but what else happened to him?