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Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a novel of historical fiction, therefore, following Wharton’s logic, there is an illuminating incident. To truly understand what Wharton means by “illuminating incident”, one must define it in the context of the novel itself. The definition that seems to fit best, in this case, is the following: an illuminating incident is an ultimate realization or act that causes a character to think or behave differently. It can also cause characters around them to think and behave differently in response to them. The illuminating incident then gives the author a chance to reveal a deeper meaning or undercurrent within the novel.
In Beloved, this incident is the moment that Sethe slits Beloved’s throat when Schoolteacher arrives to take her, and her children, back to Sweet Home. This event triggers most of the novel’s plot, making it both illuminating and inciting. However, there are three important aspects that surround this event. First,
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Paul D swings a table around, rids the house of the ghost, and determines himself apart of the home. However, his character change in relation to the illuminating incident does not occur for some time. It is when Stamp Paid urges him to confront Sethe regarding the incident that he learns of it, and his reaction is extremely important to the development of his character and his relationship with Sethe. He was considering having a child with her, but then he learns that her “love is too thick”, that “this here Sethe was new….didn’t know where the world stopped and she began” (164). In short, Paul D becomes entirely separated from his previous emotions of closeness with her, once he begins to separate the “Sweet Home Sethe” and this new, post-incident Sethe. It is even more important that a main character such as Paul D outright acknowledges the change in Sethe. This makes the themes that emerge after the incident occurs even more
Beloved is a novel set in Ohio during 1873, several years after the Civil War. The book centers on characters that struggle to keep their painful recollections of the past at bay. The whole story revolves around issues of race, gender, family relationships and the supernatural, covering two generations and three decades up to the 19th century. Concentrating on events arising from the Fugitive Slave Act of 1856, it describes the consequences of an escape from slavery for Sethe, her children and Paul D. The narrative begins 18 years after Sethe's break for freedom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children...by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims". The novel is divided into three parts. Each part opens with statements to indicate the progress of the haunting--from the poltergeist to the materialized spirit to the final freeing of both the spirit and Sethe. These parts reflect the progressive of a betrayed child and her desperate mother. Overall symbolizing the gradual acceptance of freedom and the enormous work and continuous struggle that would persist for the next 100 years. Events that occurred prior and during the 18 years of Sethe's freedom are slowly revealed and pieced together throughout the novel. Painfully, Sethe is in need of rebuilding her identity and remembering the past and her origins: "Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places, are still there.
Paul’s character relates to the central idea because he is an example of a person who was not accepted by others and fell down on a dark path of no
The play, These Shining Lives by Melanie Marnich can be summed up just as the main character, Catherine entails. It is “not a fairy tale, though it starts like one, and it is not a tragedy, though it ends like one” (Scene 1, p. 9). Truly, this is an accurate depiction of what the author intended to convey to her audience. It is remarkable how the author was able to twist and spins the words to form the messages she desired. Be that as it may, not everything is splayed across the ink bound pages as precisely as the stars littering the night sky.
In the novel Beloved, Toni Morrison focuses on the concept of loss and renewal in Paul D’s experience in Alfred Georgia. Paul D goes through a painful transition into the reality of slavery. In Sweet Home, Master Garner treated him like a real man. However, while in captivity in Georgia he was no longer a man, but a slave. Toni Morrison makes Paul D experience many losses such as, losing his pride and humanity. However, she does not let him suffer for long. She renews him with his survival. Morrison suggest that one goes through obstacles to get through them, not to bring them down. Morrison uses the elements of irony, symbolism, and imagery to deal with the concept of loss and renewal.
family and force's Paul to leave the town and create a new image for himself.
Each of these flashbacks become background stories to why and how Sethe loses her mind. Each flashback represents a time in Sethe’s life where she went through a major change that affected her whole family. The flashback that sticks out the most is when Sethe and Paul D were back on the plantation in Sweet Home after their failed attempt to runaway up north. A this point in the film when the men are attacking Sethe and taking her milk, this can be considered her lowest point in the movie because all control she had on being able to nourish her children was taken away from her and she had no one to help her in her desperate time of
Sethe describes her actions to Paul D, arguing, “I took and put my babies where they’d be safe” (Morrison 164). Here Sethe reveals the extent to which she will go to protect her children from the horrors of slavery; she is willing to personally kill each of them if it means slavery will not have them. Her love for her family and personal experiences as a victim of slavery have caused her to go to cruel lengths to ensure her children’s safety. Sethe does not wish for her children a life under slavery’s influence, which she herself suffered from at the hands of the schoolteacher and his nephews. Although Sethe and Schoolteacher come from opposite spectrums of slavery as well as race, they both are willing to achieve their ends through brutal actions.
The next morning, Kat and Albert see Paul off on his train. He travels through the villages and cities, observing the scenery. When he arrives at his hometown, Paul is flooded with memories from his surroundings; he recognizes the landmarks of his home, such as the square watch-tower and the great mottled lime tree. He starts to feel like an outsider as if he didn’t belong in the civilized
Since Paul D relies on Mr. Garner to identify as a man, he does not have the self-worth to endure when Schoolteacher takes over Sweet Home. Paul D, in despair, tells Sethe how he "wasn’t allowed to be and stay" what he was while the chicken Mister was allowed to (Morrison 86). He even goes further and says that even if Mister was cooked, it would not make any difference and Mister would still be Mister.By comparing himself to a creature of smaller intelligence, Paul D paints a picture of how low schoolteacher regarded the Sweet Home Men. schoolteacher treated them worse than animals, leaving a kind of emptiness in Paul D. Because of this mishandling by schoolteacher, Paul D loses the individuality he thought he had with Mr. Garner. Paul D also goes farther and says that even death would not return his identity. Ultimately, this saying by Paul D shows that he thinks that he is so defiled that even God cannot help him. It could also mean that Paul D believes that he has lost himself so much, there is not even a small chance of him going to Heaven. Either way, Paul D holds the belief that he is beyond saving. After schoolteacher captures Paul D , he discusses with his nephew and the slave catcher how much he is worth. schoolteacher laments that “he would have to trade” him for $900 (Morrison 267). Paul D takes Schoolteacher’s statement to heart because he is used to being treated like other livestock by him. Because he has always let others determine his value, he does not have the self-regard to brush off
Paul cannot face the reality that his family must relocate in order to live, despite the fact that he has been faced with the same outcome day after day. Although Ellen constantly pleads for change, Paul cannot shake the illusion he is presented with, and proves that hope can be a dangerous mechanism for keeping one distant from reality. Additionally, the lamp at noon represents the fact that the land is slowly eroding away and that there is an extreme amount of dust in the air, causing it to be difficult to see during the middle of the day. Like the environment, Paul is blindly chasing his dream and is unable to see the reality in front of him. His wishes to be with the land strongly oppose those of Ellen’s, who wants to move away from the reality she is faced with. Ellen’s chronic unhappiness demonstrates that Paul’s devoted hope for the land to miraculously be fertile again and his blindness towards his barren reality has caused him to disregard her feelings. Paul’s pride in being a farmer leads to the tragedy of his child’s
Sethe is the most dramatically haunted in the book. She is the one who was beaten so badly her back is permanently scarred. She is the one who lived and escaped slavery. She is the one who murdered her child rather than return it to slavery. So she is the one whose past is so horrible that it is inescapable. How can a person escape the past when it is physically apart of them? Sethe has scars left from being whipped that she calls a "tree". She describes it as "A chokecherry tree. Trunk, branches, and even leaves. Tiny little chokecherry leaves. But that was eighteen years ago. Could have cherries too now for all I know" (16). It is apt that her past is represented on her back--something that is behind her, something she cannot see but knows that is there. Also it appeared eighteen years ago, but Sethe thinks that it may have grown cherries in those years. Therefore she knows that the past has attached itself to her but the haunting of it has not stopped growing. Paul D. enters Sethe's life and discover a haunting of Sethe almost immediately. He walks into 124 and notices the spirit of the murdered baby: "It was sad. Walking through it, a wave of grief soaked him so thoroughly he wanted to cry" (9). The haunting by Beloved in its spirit form is stopped by Paul D. He screams "God damn it! Hush up! Leave the place alone! Get the Hell out!" (18). But Sethe's infant daughter is her greatest haunt and it is when Beloved arrives in physical form that Sethe is forced to turn around and confront the past.
The first and most emphases is the dark feeling of despair when he realizes that his father was coming to New York City. "It was to be worse than jail, even; the tepid waters of Cordelia Street were to close over him finally and forever". (Kennedy & Gioia, “Paul’s Case,” para. 57) From this statement, Paul finally accepts that is fate is to live on Cordelia Street and become what he despises the most; poor. Another important reason was that his craving for money and entrance into the upper class, "more than ever, money was everything, the wall that stood between all he loathed and all he wanted". (Kennedy & Gioia, “Paul’s Case,” para. 61) Other important issues that were mentioned but not truly discussed where his homosexual tendencies and his mother’s death early in his childhood The final and most important reason Paul commits suicide is because he feels alone in a hostile world that does not understand him and his love of beautiful things, color, art, and music. "It occurred to him that all the flowers he had seen in the glass cases that first night must have gone the same way, long before this. It was only one splendid breath they had, in spite of their brave mockery at the winter outside the glass; and it was a losing game in the end, it seemed, this revolt against the homilies by which the world is run". (Kennedy & Gioia, “Paul’s Case,” para. 64) From this statement alone, Paul feels
In the beginning of the story, Paul seems to be a typical teenage boy: in trouble for causing problems in the classroom. As the story progresses, the reader can infer that Paul is rather withdrawn. He would rather live in his fantasy world than face reality. Paul dreaded returning home after the Carnegie Hall performances. He loathed his "ugly sleeping chamber with the yellow walls," but most of all, he feared his father. This is the first sign that he has a troubled homelife. Next, the reader learns that Paul has no mother, and that his father holds a neighbor boy up to Paul as "a model" . The lack of affection that Paul received at home caused him to look elsewhere for the attention that he craved.
Paul D’s initial image of his identity is the product of living at Sweet Home under the care of the Garners; having been told and treated as a man, Paul D is hopeful about his life and who he truly is. In identifying himself as a man, he believed he would be able to provide and be in control of his own life and possibly take care others’ wellbeing, like a family. In finding what it means to be a man, freedom becomes essential. “ ‘Y’all got boys…Young boys, old boys, picky boys, stroppin boys. Now at Sweet Home, my niggers is men every one of em. Bought em thataway, raised em thataway. Men every one.’ ‘Beg to differ, Garner. Ain’t no nigger men.’” (Morrison 12) While Mr. Garner believes his slaves to be men, others do not and this will serve to destroy Paul D’s frame of thinking once Schoolteacher becomes his master after the Garner’s relinquish their property. Because of the uniqueness in authority at Sweet Home, Paul D knows how it feels to have a family, a support system, and to be treated as a human instead of a piece of property. While Paul D is not free at Sweet Home, this sense of an assumed identity keeps him hoping that one day t...
“I am full…of two boys with mossy teeth, one sucking on my breast the other holding me down, their book-reading teacher watching and writing it up” (Morrison 70). This chilling quote refers to the scene in which Sethe is essentially robbed of everything she owns. Ironically, the boys with the mossy teeth had the civility to dig a hole for Sethe’s stomach “as not to hurt the baby” (202). However, such a violent act could not occur without a reaction. This scene sets the rest of the story in motion.