The Scars of Sethe and Paul D in Beloved
Scars are undoubtably an incredible means of storytelling in Beloved. No matter how a person changes or what happens to them, these marks are another bit of tangible history, following each of them wherever they may go. These physical characteristics are what one can believe in, more than what is said or written. When written and oral language can many times not be trusted, physical characteristics provide another more certain form of communication--one that cannot be biased or altered.
People not only know the identity of someone by knowing their scars, but each scar tells a story of what a person has gone through. Sethe's back and the scars caused by her beating are important in the story in terms of telling a story of what she's been through, providing a way in which she and some of the other characters may connect. For example, Paul D learns more about Sethe and is able to connect with her through her scars. When Sethe first attempts to explain to Paul D what had happened to her on pages 16-7, he has trouble understanding the true...
"IN the folk-tale told about the husband who comes home after years of absence, so changed by time and Fortune's hard usage that he must adduce proof after proof of his identity before his wife will admit his claim, the first Sign to be exhibited is the scar. This he reveals first to an aged dame, his old nurse, perhaps the only woman then alive in the world who was familiar with its appearance and history. For naturally the first token must not be of a kind so intimate and convincing as to make the wife's unreadiness to respond to it appear capricious and unreasonable. To this extent Homer has adopted the ancient tale"(questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5372374).
Firstly, at the end of this story, the narrator’s illusions are the most powerful pieces of evidence for his madness. It is his two illusions that betrays him and imposed him to confess the crime. His first illusion is the beating of the old man’s heart which actually did not exist. Initialy, exactly as he portrayed "My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears, it continued and became more distinct", the ringing he heard haunted him ceaselessly. Then he "found that the noise was not within his ear", and thought the fancy in his ear was the beating of old man’s heart. Because of the increasing noise, he thought the officers must hear it, too. However, in fact, everything he heard is absurd and illusive. And it proves that the narrator is really insane. Next, his second illusion is the officers’ "hypocritical smiles" which pushed him to completely be out of control. Losting of his mind, he called the officer "Villains". Apparently, he was confused and falsely thought "they were making a mockery of his horror" which irritated him intensively. Consequently, he told all the truth and "admitted the deed" in order to get rid of the growing noise. Therefore, the above two pieces of evidence both reveal the truth that the narrator is absolutely insane in contrary to what the narrator tried to tell us.
Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell Tale Heart" is a short story about how a murderer's conscience overtakes him and whether the narrator is insane or if he suffers from over acuteness of the senses. Poe suggests the narrator is insane by the narrator's claims of sanity, the narrator's actions bring out the narrative irony of the story, and the narrator is insane according to the definition of insanity as it applies to "The Tell Tale Heart".
As much as society does not want to admit, violence serves as a form of entertainment. In media today, violence typically has no meaning. Literature, movies, and music, saturated with violence, enter the homes of millions everyday. On the other hand, in Beloved, a novel by Toni Morrison, violence contributes greatly to the overall work. The story takes place during the age of the enslavement of African-Americans for rural labor in plantations. Sethe, the proud and noble protagonist, has suffered a great deal at the hand of schoolteacher. The unfortunate and seemingly inevitable events that occur in her life, fraught with violence and heartache, tug at the reader’s heart-strings. The wrongdoings Sethe endures are significant to the meaning of the novel.
The scars on Sethe’s back serve as another testament to her disfiguring and dehumanizing years as a slave. Like the ghost, the scars also work as a metaphor for the way that past tragedies affect us psychologically, “haunting” or “scarring” us for life. More specifically, the tree shape formed by the scars might symbolize Sethe’s incomplete family tree. It could also symbolize the burden of existence itself, through an allusion to the “tree of knowledge” from which Adam and Eve ate, initiating their mortality and suffering. Sethe’s “tree” may also offer insight into the empowering abilities of interpretation. In the same way that the white men are able to justify and increase their power over the slaves by “studying” and interpreting them according to their own whims, Amy’s interpretation of Sethe’s mass of ugly scars as a “chokecherry tree” transforms a story of pain and oppression into one of survival.
In her novel Beloved, Toni Morrison explores the paradoxical nature of love both as a dangerous presence that promises suffering and a life-giving force that gives the strength to proceed; through the experiences of the run-away slave Sethe. The dangerous aspect of love is revealed through the comments of Paul D and Ella regarding the motherly love of Sethe towards her children. Sethe's deep attachment to her children is deemed dangerous due to their social environment which evidently promises that the loved one of a slave will be hurt. On the other hand, love is portrayed as a sustaining force that allows Sethe to move on with her life. All the devastating experiences Sethe endures do not matter due to the fact that she must live for her children. Although dangerous, Sethe's love finally emerges as the prevalent force that allows her to leave the past behind and move on with her life.
Sometimes it leaves red raw scars that will eventually fade into silver marks- blemishes that will never leave you. Someday the memories will be in loud colour but sometimes you might remember it in muted black and white –it doesn’t matter what shade the memories are; you will never forget.
The narrator had mixed emotions towards the old man. The narrator stated that he loved the old man and did not want his money (Poe, 1). He began to say that he had never been mean to the man up to the man’s death. Why would he want to kill his love one and receive no type of compensation for his death? He said, “I made up his mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever” (p. 1). As the narrator continued to prove the case that he was sane, he began to explain the nights leading up to him accomplishing his goal of getting rid of the vulture eye. Readers can interpret that the old man has a disease in order to have a discoloration in only one eye. Now, the time was coming for the narrator to strike his victim.
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most recognized prose poets, short story authors, and literary composers of all time. His works contain trending themes such as love, time, death and the concept of “oneness.” Poe often expressed these themes according to events that he had experienced, and some of his themes intertwined with others. Take for instance, his love for beauty and perfection played a major role in his concept of oneness, or state of absolute fulfillment. However in his short story, The Tell-Tale Heart, Poe effectively explores the power of guilt, and leads his readers through a cynical plot to murder while enduring the struggle to silence a beating conscience by treading the lines of genius versus insanity, moral reasoning versus indifferent resolution, and meticulousness versus obsession.
Edgar Allen Poe shows what really happens when someone experiences anxiety and terror that drives his or her mentally ill when given the obstacles inside his mind. The obstacles described inside Tell-Tale Heart bring the narrator to an ironic end. These hindrances slowly build up to a chilling end for the narrator. This end is drawn out with the beating of a heart that doesn’t go away and reminds the narrator that the old man is still haunting him. The narrator has an idea in his head that he is not crazy and in fact is too calm to be mad and has an ironic story behind it.
In the case of Poe’s narrator, he showed symptom of paranoia He believed that his old room mate’s eye was evil.” One of his eyes resemble...
In Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, Morrison uses universal themes and characters that anyone can relate to today. Set in the 1800s, Beloved is about the destructive effects of American slavery. Most destructive in the novel, however, is the impact of slavery on the human soul. Morrison’s Beloved highlights how slavery contributes to the destruction of one’s identity by examining the importance of community solidarity, as well as the powers and limits of language during the 1860s.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Tell Tale Heart.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7th ed.
The use of dialogue, monologue and the use of first person allow the readers to have an understanding of the narrator’s sense of concern, values and obsessions. By the readers able to understand the process and thought behind the narrator wanting to murder the old man who he visited several times can provide a sense of fear in society as individuals may question who they trust as any individual can contain the actions of homicide when placed under pressure. Poe incorporated numerous language devices to terrify the readers of what is out their by portraying the narrator being terribly anxious, overwhelmed with stress and have various mood shifts. (23)
It is said that pathography allows a person to heal because one consistently remembers new details when one writes about a particular experience. The remembering of these details are imperative to the healing process because it not only allows the person to get through the experience by re-telling it also allows one to get beyond the traumatic experience.