Beloved
Readers Response
The opening line to Beloved by Toni Morrison was a great attention grabber. "124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom" (Morrison 3). 124 was a clever nick-name for Sweet Home. The house was spiteful because it was haunted by the spirit of Sethe's one-year-old baby, who died 18 years ago. The house belongs to Sethe, an ex-slave who had run away from this place of her enslavement, 18 years ago. Besides Sethe and the ghost, there was only Sethe's youngest daughter, Denver. Sethe’s did have two sons, Howard and Buglar, but both of them ran away from the house after too much torment from the ghost. Sethe's mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, also lived with them until eighteen years ago, when she died. Sethe's husband, Halle, is assumed dead. He has not been seen since Seth fled from Sweet Home.
While reading the first couple of pages in the Novel, I was forced to re-read a couple of them because I had to adjust to Morrison’s writing style. She often goes back and forth from past to present and this was not clear to me at first. It serves as a great way to develop the story. She does not give you all the information until it is needed. Paul D’s Character came into the story as a past lover. I thought that Sethe and Paul D was an old couple but just at the right time Morrison gave you just enough to clarify your doubts. It was not told that right away the relationship between Paul D and Halle but Sethe was “Halle’s woman” (Morrison 10).
Morrison also uses a lot of details to get you into the right mood and to see exactly what she sees. Chapter 2 begins with Paul D and Sethe hurrying upstairs to have sex, but "it was over before they could get their clothes off” (Morrison 24). The way she describes the way Sethe felt after sex really made you feel exactly how Sethe was at the time
She had forgotten he had not taken off his shirt. Dog, she thought, and then remembered that she had not allowed him the time for taking it off. Nor herself time to take off...
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