Section II of Beloved...

In Section II, we finally get an up close and personal shift in the narration. The first person transition allows, in my opinion, a more in-depth perspective of what's happening in the story. Mainly because it is devoid of bias or any other point of views. It is definitely refreshing to see the already well-developed characters through a different perspective or opinion. I think that Beloved does this so we can understand the sort of confusing and often brash actions the characters make. Particularly, we see this with Sethe. A brutal woman who murdered her children in order to "save them" from enslavement is often seen as inexcusable and disgusting. However, with the first person, it gives way to an explanation almost as to why or how this happened. Even with the first person point of view, the actions and everything that happened with the previous narration still doesn't make it okay. But is interesting to see how the layout of not only the story but the characters change as well.

Beloved II

In the second section of Beloved the first-person narration that is used definitely adds to my understanding of the inner thoughts of the characters in the novel. Third-person narration can create false perspectives of people and it is interesting when I could finally see how the characters “talked” and viewed situations. Sethe’s haunted past was definitely not a surprise but was interesting learning more about it and she revealed a lot about her character through her monologues. The quote “Should have known better. Did know better. Whatever is goin on outside my door ain’t for me. The world is in this room. This here’s all there is and all there needs to be” (215). This quote is extremely personal and internal within her head and there is no other way to represent this without first-person narration. The narration shift that takes place gives the reader more insight into the lives of the characters we have already learned so much about but from a whole different angle.

Beloved Section II

I personally find it easier to follow first person narratives more because I can pretend I'm the character and try to sympathize with them to have a deeper connection with the story. With Sethe, however, it was going to be difficult to really feel what she was feeling that would ultimately drive her to do the heinous thing that she did. On page 238 I noticed the constant repetition of questions and statements beginning with "Maybe". "Maybe she lasted...Maybe Halle was trying to get to me...Maybe what sounded like shots really was...Maybe." This sense of uncertainty reminded me of what it feels like to have to make these tough decisions that will change your whole life and the tremendous amount of stress it can bring. It's not uncommon for this feeling of mental helplessness to drive people to do the utterly worst things possible.

Beloved Section II

In Section II of the novel, we are finally given some first person narration from the main characters, giving us insight on their thoughts. The narration I found myself most drawn to was Denver's. Prior to her chapter in the novel, I envisioned her as a child who has been through a lot, but ultimately was just selfish and bratty. Through her first person narration, I now see the scared, isolated little girl that she really is. Living with Sethe has been no easy task for her, as she constantly lives in fear that she will face the fate of her sister one day. She even says that she is afraid to fall asleep while her mother is braiding her hair, but "I know if I do I won't wake up." (244) Her fear of her mother is also shown in her protectiveness of Beloved, and explains why she clings to her so much. I think Morrison's change in perspectives in this section is most effective in Denver's section especially, because I feel as if we knew the least about her prior to this.

Section II Narration

Narration from Sethe is almost what I was expecting with her haunted past and ways of mentally dodging her "rememories." She is harshly lying to herself about the negatives in her world by focusing on what could be positive in it. Beloved's mere existence has brought Sethe to the conclusion that she shouldn't feel bad about a number of negatives she had brought upon not only Beloved, but Baby Suggs, the town, her other children, and most of all herself. No woman or man could go on the way Sethe does on a day to day basis after going through the horrid things she has gone through without lying to herself about the outcome and the meaning. She is a master of repression and denial as well as a visionary for making her world seem better than it is. Tools necessary for someone with her past and no one to lean on.

Beloved Section 2

Sethe's monologue in section two reveals a lot about her character. We have only been able to get glimpses of her past up until her section. Sethe thinks back to when she killed Beloved. Now that she has her back, Sethe wants to tell Beloved everything. She wants to explain to her why she killed her. "When I explain it she'll understand, because she understands everything already". This thinking leads her to remember her mother and how she was lynched. She wonders if her mother attempted to run away and leave her behind but the thought of that is too much for her. Sethe wants to believe that her mother loved her as much as she lover her children which further illustrates the theme of loving too much. Sethe loved her children too much so she tried to kill them and now that Beloved is back she is going to tell her everything even though she does not have to and hold on to her tighter.

Section Two Point of Veiw

Sethe is such a strong character and I think Morrison really has her set up this in Section One. But now that we're getting into her head I think that her confidence is really just a front of denial. Sethe is using the realization Beloved is her daughter to disregard all of the real world stuff going on around her. "The world is in this room. This here's all there and all there needs to be." (215) Sethe is under the delusion that what she believes is the reincarnation of her dead baby is the cure for: her sons leaving, because if she can come back surely they will too; Baby Suggs death, because she can lay down her worries now like Baby always told her to; and that the repulsion of her peers to her house no longer matters because the outside world is nothing like what she has here on the floor in front of her.

Section II

Section II of Beloved paints a very different picture than the previous section because of the change in narration. The change in narration really provided an incredible amount of depth to the novel. I found that this change in perspective not only allowed the characters to become three dimensional, but my perception of them changed radically also. I found Denver’s perspective to be the most compelling and tragic, and subsequently, her fear of her own mother altered my perception of Sethe also. Denver says “I spent all of my outside self loving Ma’am so she wouldn’t kill me,” which led me to conclude that she didn’t truly love Sethe, she only did so she would survive. This added such a severe contrast to Sethe claiming that she killed her other daughter out of love; her remaining daughter doesn’t return this “love.” However, this makes me wonder if Denver’s consuming fear of her mother, her broken family and seemingly unpleasant reality and all the pain it brings is what Sethe wanted her daughter to not have to experience—did she spare her other daughter by ending her life?

Shift in Narration

In part one of Beloved, the narration is told is mostly 3rd person point of view, so we get to see into the minds of most of the main characters and hear their thoughts. Included in these characters is Sethe, who seems to show a very isolated or shy side in most of part one. The audience is never able to really know Sethe's thoughts, we only get to see her actions and details that the author gives us in part one. Because of this, the reader must come up with their own assumptions of how Sethe really feels during this part of the book. Now that the book is told in first person point of view, we are able to really see Sethe's inner feelings and we can see the compassionate and caring side of her. We see how much Sethe really cares for Beloved as if she were her own daughter. If the story were to still be told in third person narration, we would not be able to see this side of Sethe; the fact that part two of the book includes first person point of view gives us the opportunity to relate to the character of Sethe more and uncover new ideas as we read.

Beloved

The shift in narration from third person to first provided me with different insight into the character's lives and altered my perspective of each of them. The section that stuck out the most for me and gave me the most insight into a character's attitudes was section II. I had inferred things about Denver from what we had seen from the outside, but the look into her thoughts and stream of consciousness really gave me a better understanding of her character. For the first time in the novel, I really understood where Denver's strange habits and reclusive attitude came from. She even admits to her reclusive ways. "Not since Miss Lady Jones' house have I left 124 by myself. Never." (243) We also get to see how she spends every day in fear of her own mother and her pain of never really having a real family. She says, " I'm afraid of the thing that happened that made it all right for my mother to kill my sister could happen again." (242) This fear that she must experience every day made me understand just how destroyed their family is. Although the third person narration gives us different perspectives, viewing the character's thoughts opened up my eyes to a lot more.

Character contrasts through writing style

Within Section II of Beloved, the shift from third to first person is a major indicator of the importance of the following chapters. Because we continually have just brief glances into the psyche of Beloved throughout Section I, her part is possibly one of the most important chapters of the selection. Besides the importance of her saga, there are important contextual clues that can be interpreted through sentence structuring and styles contrasted between each character. Sethe's section is long and continuous, with barely any paragraph breaks, yet her sentences seem to be short terse snippets of what she's thinking. She seems to only be able to think of one thing per sentence, which is an interesting insight to possibly how she deals with her life. Denver's stream of consciousness is broken up into lengthy paragraphs, with slightly longer sentences. This section reveals Denver's own fright of her mother's love and how it actually broke the family up. A lot of Denver's paragraph seems to consist of half what she knows and interprets and feels and the other half is what Baby Suggs tells her about her Daddy. She lives vicariously through these little facts about him to construct an angel out of the pieces she knows about her father. Beloved's section has no punctuation, very short childlike sentences that can barely construct complex or even coherent ideas. She repeats phrases over and over and in all it seems to be the musing of a loony.

Beloved sct. II

The new, first-person approach definitely introduces a different element to the whole story. Now, we get to see each character's individual motives and reactions to the things we have already observed from the omniscient point of view. The story up until now has been told in a way that gave us choppy glimpses into Sethe's troubling past but now that we have finally heard it spelled out we get to see the specific characters' thoughts. Now that I've seen into Sethe's mind, I think she really is kind of crazy. No doubt it is the result of mistreatment and unimaginable emotional hardship. Sethe has lost touch with humanity and reality, in a sense "dying". She killed her daughter to avoid this "death" for her and to put her somewhere that she would be safe from these horrors. "How if I hadn't killed her she would have died and that is something that I could not bear to happen to her" (238). This line served as evidence to me that Sethe does not see things the way most people do. She seems to know only love and pain, and sits at opposite extremes on this scale.

Beloved Section II- Denver

In Section II of the novel, I found Denver’s narration interesting and revealing. After surviving her mother’s attempt to kill her in order to ‘keep her safe’, Denver understandably becomes extremely isolated, sensitive and much of her behavior is childish and immature.(for example the way she resents Paul D when he arrives to 124 and never leaving the house on her own except with her mother). In her narration, however, Denver comes across to me as quite perceptive and intelligent and her behavior is explained by her traumatic past, the fear that “the thing that happened that made it all right for my mother to kill my sister could happen again”(242). I feel greatly sympathetic to Denver’s situation; she is completely governed by fear of death by her mother and she admits that “I spent all of my outside self loving Ma’am so she wouldn’t kill me”(245). Also in Denver’s section, the reader receives insight into other important characters, namely Baby Suggs and Denver’s father, Halle.

Section II Beloved

Through the stream of consciousness technique, the thoughts of these characters are greatly clarified. As a result of this clarification, Morrison has drawn a fine line between the appearance of these characters, and their individual identites. It is this line which shifts the reader away from the previous 3rd person narration (which has apparently casted shadows on these characters' emotions.) In all three narrations, Sethe, Beloved and Denver, the reader is given a lens through each of the 3 women. Upon reading Section II of Beloved, it appears as if Denver is the most sympathetic character. The reader can infer from Sethe's and Beloved's narrations that their thoughts and actions are compromised: Sethe is desperate while Beloved is possesive. the extremes of these two women have placed Denver in a difficult situation, wherein she fears her mother and cannot fully understand her sister, "She said the ghost was after Ma'm and her too for not doing anything to stop it. I just had to watch out for it. . . And I do. Love her, (242)." Admittedly, Denver's naivity leads her to believe Beloved, on some level, is meant for her only, "She is mine (242)." However, the decline and shift in power between Sethe and Beloved later in the novel reveals Denver's opinions to likely be false. Given Denver's age, her naivity is excuseable. That being said, the narration's most important effect is its unveiling of Denver as the character least reactive to Beloved (at least the one with the most sensible reaction).

Beloved Section II

Within section II of Beloved, the reader is exposed to a radical perspective change into the first-person mind of Sethe, Denver and Beloved. With this perspective change, the reader is given some new insight into head of all three characters, but I found Denver's thoughts to be the most eyeopening. We begin to see that this entire time Denver has been fearful of her mother, and never truly accepted her back. Denver tells of how she is almost tortured by the thought that, "the thing that happened that made it all right for my mother to kill my sister could happen again" (205). We then see why Denver never leaves 124, because she feels like she must, "watch over the yard, so it can't happen again and my mother won't have to kill me too" (205). We are given this new perspective from Denver which paints Sethe in a very untrustworthy and dangerous light, one we have not been familiar with throughout the entirety of the novel up to this point.

Through Chapter 21's stream of consciousness approach, I began to better understand Denver's reasons for staying put in 124 all of this time despite hating it. Denver talks about how scared she is of her mother, how there might be "something else terrible enough to make her do it again." (242). Through this great, yet reasonable fear Denver is forced to stay in the house, as she fears her life will end if she does not abide by Sethe's rules: "So I never leave this house and I watch over the yard, so it can't happen again and my mother won't have to kill me too." (242). Because of this fear instilled in her by Sethe and her brothers, Denver has grown up as an isolated individual. When Paul D was staying at the house she became jealous of the attention he received, and was only able to find consolation when Beloved entered the picture. With Beloved, Denver has found someone who she can be with, someone to give her that friendship she so desperately desired her entire life. Denver feels an intimate connection with Beloved---one that is only heightened by the blood bond they share---and it seems she will do whatever it takes to make Beloved hers.

Beloved post

The shift to first person narration in Section II is the first time we are permitted a glimpse into Sethe’s thoughts and the emotions she hides behind her prideful facade. The revelation that Beloved is her daughter born-again brings forth this surge of emotions and we are able to see her guilt, her need for forgiveness, and her desire to nurture the child whose life she ended. The narrative shift allowed me to finally sympathize with Sethe, who never seemed to show any remorse for her actions. She says “when I put up that headstone I wanted to lay in there with you” (241) and the regret Sethe has for her actions is finally made known. Sethe sees it as a sign of mercy that Beloved has returned on “her own free will” and now that she is back, Sethe “won’t never let her go” (236). It seems that Beloved is not the only one reborn, but with her presence and forgiveness, Sethe is also allowed to move forward and live again.