Salon #3: This is the second salon discussing Toni Morrison's Beloved. 

General comments:

1. Be sure to go back to Salon #2 and read the other students comments and react back to them if you want.  I will add my reactions as well.  In this way each Salon can serve as a separate discussion which can stay alive for a few weeks.   We may all want at times to go back to earlier salons as they become relevant to new discussions.  I will make some clarifications on the questions from Salon 2 at the beginning of this lecture.

2. One of our students told me that Beloved will be opening as a film next month starring Oprah Winfrey as Sethe and Danny Glover as Paul D.  So while that film will not be required viewing, it should be interesting for some of us to see.  (I did not picture Sethe as Oprah!)

3. The first paper will be due on Wednesday, Oct. 14th.  I will get the paper topic out to you by next week (by Sept. 23rd).  This will give you three weeks.  As I mentioned, the paper will need to be turned in as a hard copy.   This is because there are so many of you that it would be too difficult to handle all your papers on line and too labor intensive for me to download them all.  So you will need to drop off your paper by October 14th (this is a week later than I had earlier said to make sure that you all have sufficient time) or send it by snail mail or by FAX.   All the requirements for the paper will be given through the "paper" window on the SOC311 Homepage.

4. The next reading assignment will be to move to Michael Lewis's The Culture of Inequality.  The first set of questions on this book will be coming out in Salon 4 next week on Sept. 30th.  For Salon 5 for October 7th, we will continue with the Lewis book, but also consider its content in relation to the film: "Death of a Salesman."  The video of this film is on reserve in our Media Center.  It is on 24 hour reserve.  You can take it out and view it right in the video center, or you can take it home for overnight.  You might also be able to rent it from a video store.  The version we are viewing is one in which Dustin Hoffman plays Willy Loman, and John Malkovich plays his son.  You might want to read the play itself which was written in 1949 by the famous playwright, Arthur Miller.  You could find this play in most collections of Arthur Miller's plays.  The movie is a film of the play as it was presented on the stage. You may want to read into the Lewis book before viewing the film as Lewis refers in many places to the play's main character, Willy Loman.   So you will need to have seen the film in order to write the paper due on October 14th.

Second mini-lecture on Beloved.  You should complete reading the book and answer the questions below at that time.

Let's first clarify some issues from Salon 2.  Beloved in the daughter of Sethe's that she "murdered" rather than having her be dragged back into slavery by Schoolmaster and his supporters.  This is described on pp. 148-151.   Recall that Schoolmaster was the very cruel slave master at Sweet Home, the plantation which Sethe had escaped from, who came to Ohio to recapture Sethe and her children to bring them back into slavery.  Sethe only manages to murder "Beloved" before she is arrested.  Her two sons run away and her baby Denver survives.  Note as well that Schoolmaster is accompanied by his nephew who is the "hated" boy who had "nursed" from Sethe in the barn at Sweet Home when she was still a slave.  Let me add that this book is based on a true story of a former slave who had escaped to the North and had murdered her children rather than having them recaptured and brought back into slavery.

We only know that the murdered daughter was named Beloved because of the scene at the very beginning of the book (p.5) when Sethe is having "ten minutes" of sex with the stonecutter in exchange for the having him engrave the seven letters: B-E-L-O-V-E-D on her daughter's tombstone (she asks herself for another 10 minutes, could she have gotten "Dearly" as well engraved on the stone?)

The Sixty Million or More refers to the estimated number of Africans who were lost in the Middle Passage--that is the journey of the captured Africans from their villages in Africa to their ocean passage to the New World where they were bought as slaves and taken to plantations and farms.  It is estimated that they would pack 800 Africans on a slave ship with the hopes of delivering 400 of them (the other half dying on route).  Note that this passage is also the journey between being an African and being an African-American.

Let me add here that Denver, her daughter, is in some ways a "middle passage" character since she was born on route to freedom.   However, she doesn't seem to have been fully delivered.  Recall how she repeatedly wants to hear the story of her birth.  She can't start off fresh, can't let go of her past, but also can't really claim it. She needs to create her own identity which is murky--she is dreamy, submissive, fearful of the world.  (She was born on the "run" from slavery and delivered by a white girl, Amy Denver.)  So Denver seems to represent the transition between slavery and freedom. 

How do Paul D's and Sethe's experiences vary?  Hardships for Paul D. seem to have been more extreme (chain gang), and his treatment at Sweet Home more physically arduous than Sethe's.  But the slavery experience seems to have been less damaging to his sense of identity (his pride) than to Sethe's.  His identity seems to be tied up more with his own attributes (strength, manhood, ability to survive) while Sethe's is much more heavily invested in her role as a mother.  Slavery is so cruel because it ignores the strength of mother-child bonds (which is why the killing of Beloved is so very tragic).

What can we conclude about the "meaning" of slavery from this novel?

It was an institution that did not allow for any traditional sense of the family or of permanent relations of husband and wife or parents and children.  It also ignored probably the strongest of all family ties, the mother-child bond.   Recall Baby Suggs comment: all she could remember of her first born was that she loved the burned bottom of bread.  Baby Suggs recalls that you could only love your children "a little bit," so when you lost a child, you could have a little love for the next one. 

In terms of inequality, slavery is how people behave when they are given power over other people--this is extreme inequality.

Under slavery, slaves have no rights to individuality, to identity---

Note that not even a child under slavery had any rights.  If we think about what sort of rights does a child have anyway, we tend to think that a child's rights are to his/her potential, his/her future.  Thus in a way killing Beloved was not a crime, cause Beloved had no future were she brought back to slavery,  while if she died in Cincinnatti, she would die a potential individual.  So Sethe's killing of her daughter represents the collective anguishing response of all mothers who were cut off from their children.

Note these memorable comments on slavery: "People are moved like checkers"

Or the freedom given under slavery was "less than a chicken sitting in the sun on a tub."

Questions for Salon #3.

1. Was Sethe's murder of Beloved a sinful act or a loving act? (Defend your answer)

2.  This book is very much about memory.  Sethe's work seems to be "remembering."  Beloved seems to be largely "memory."   How does this "memory" activity relate to the quest for equality and for freedom?

3. This book is also about the price of being enslaved.   As this quote states:  whites could take your whole self for anything that came to mind--they could "dirty you up so bad you forgot who you were and couldn't think it up."  What does this mean in terms of inequality?

4. Finally, the story Morrison tells takes place nearly 100 years after the Declaration of Independence was written in which "all men are created equal."  How can one square the values that established the US with the institution of slavery?  How could the "founding fathers" have experienced (as many of them did) slavery in their own homes and environments in which the slaves had no freedom and no basis for equality with them and yet recognized how unequally they were being treated by the British?

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Salon #3 Responses  

 

Fri Sep 18 08:29:50 PDT 1998

Garrett garrett@... responded:

Testing

Sat Sep 19 22:28:31 PDT 1998

Mary Meredith pbjs@lasercom.net responded:

First of all, I would like to respond to the last salon (#2). About the comments from Prof Baker about the book "hurting a little"...it did more than that. It hurt alot...I found it very difficult to comprehend some of the situations and found that I had to re-read alot of the chapters to get a full grasp of the content because my emotions were so affected. Such emotions of horror, compassion, sadness, grief...were raised, not because the book gave new information, but the life-like word pictures gave me the sense of being there and made it more "personal" to me. I also think it is very interesting that Morrison made the dedication to those lost in the middle passage. This adds it's own symbolism...just as the book is full of it! I enjoyed the Biblical reference from the book of Matthew from Carol and understand the Christian faith gave much strength and comfort to many who were enslaved. Jill made a statement..."Brother, sister, husband, wife, aunt, uncle, and even friendship wasn't something the slaves could count on being there for long." It is those relationships where we find love, support and fullfillment...what a crime that these peoples were robbed of these basic human needs. It is, afterall, these such relationships that Sethe and Denver so desperately needed to be fulfilled in Beloved. Salon #3 Questions: 1. I believe, wholeheartedly, that Sethe's motive in taking Beloved's life was an act of love. I also know that even with the best of motives, our actions can be wrong. Murder for any reason, in my opinion, is wrong because I understand life to be God-given. On page 260 it is said of Edward Bodwin, ( the brother in the two white people that aided blacks escaping slavery), that "he had one clear directive: human life is holy, all of it." Because I have not "walked in Sethe's shoes", I cannot judge her actions...I can only feel sadness that she felt there was no other choice. 2. Sethe had much unresolved conflict within herself about taking Beloved's life (in an attempt to give her freedom) and that is evident by her life's work being centered around "remembering". Sethe was determined to make peace with Beloved and convince her that she loved her by giving her anything that she wanted. In her own way, Sethe tried to make things more "equal" or fair for Beloved than her experiences had afforded her. (Isn't is natural for a loving parent to want a better life for his/her children?) 3. The comment in the mini-lecture about slavery being an "extreme equality"is so appropriate because inequality in the form of slavery parallels the atrocities of the Holocaust, yet has not always been treated as so historically. (Of course, then we're talking about American history about an American atrocity and not American history about a then-enemy, Germany, and what they did wrong.) The fact that white people had all-authority and power over the black slaves, free or not, made the black people's lives so powerless. The only choices or small tokens of "freedom" were those that were "given" or "allowed" by the white people. When Mr. Garner was alive on Sweet Home, life was "more fair" for the slaves because of the "freedoms" he gave them. But even that was not freedom. On page 220 the statement was made..."Everything rested on Garner being alive. Without his life each of theirs fell to pieces. Now ain't that slavery or what is it?" Now ain't that the most extreme form of inequality or what is it? 4. I made a comment in the first salon about our "founding fathers"...that "I would like to believe that at least some of the drafters were visionaries of their time who had the foresight to see that 'all men being created equal' included all men and women. I understand that there were Christian men in this group who did not believe in slavery. Yet, there were those in this group who participated in the institution of slavery and that is very hypocritical to me. The rationale that blacks were sub-human, inferior to whites, and so on, were convenient ways to justify slavery for many in the white culture. This rationale is inconsistent with Biblical teaching because the seperation in life forms is not by the color of skin, but by the type of species....human or animal. I believe that we are created in the image of God...and that God is not color conscious. The good, old, "double-standard" was no stranger to this time period and practiced liberally by the white culture, as a whole, in some degree or another. How can one call for equality from one group and deny it to another? It happened.

Sat Sep 19 22:31:11 PDT 1998

Mary Meredith pbjs@lasercom.net responded:

First of all, I would like to respond to the last salon (#2). About the comments from Prof Baker about the book "hurting a little"...it did more than that. It hurt alot...I found it very difficult to comprehend some of the situations and found that I had to re-read alot of the chapters to get a full grasp of the content because my emotions were so affected. Such emotions of horror, compassion, sadness, grief...were raised, not because the book gave new information, but the life-like word pictures gave me the sense of being there and made it more "personal" to me. I also think it is very interesting that Morrison made the dedication to those lost in the middle passage. This adds it's own symbolism...just as the book is full of it! I enjoyed the Biblical reference from the book of Matthew from Carol and understand the Christian faith gave much strength and comfort to many who were enslaved. Jill made a statement..."Brother, sister, husband, wife, aunt, uncle, and even friendship wasn't something the slaves could count on being there for long." It is those relationships where we find love, support and fullfillment...what a crime that these peoples were robbed of these basic human needs. It is, afterall, these such relationships that Sethe and Denver so desperately needed to be fulfilled in Beloved. Salon #3 Questions: 1. I believe, wholeheartedly, that Sethe's motive in taking Beloved's life was an act of love. I also know that even with the best of motives, our actions can be wrong. Murder for any reason, in my opinion, is wrong because I understand life to be God-given. On page 260 it is said of Edward Bodwin, ( the brother in the two white people that aided blacks escaping slavery), that "he had one clear directive: human life is holy, all of it." Because I have not "walked in Sethe's shoes", I cannot judge her actions...I can only feel sadness that she felt there was no other choice. 2. Sethe had much unresolved conflict within herself about taking Beloved's life (in an attempt to give her freedom) and that is evident by her life's work being centered around "remembering". Sethe was determined to make peace with Beloved and convince her that she loved her by giving her anything that she wanted. In her own way, Sethe tried to make things more "equal" or fair for Beloved than her experiences had afforded her. (Isn't is natural for a loving parent to want a better life for his/her children?) 3. The comment in the mini-lecture about slavery being an "extreme equality"is so appropriate because inequality in the form of slavery parallels the atrocities of the Holocaust, yet has not always been treated as so historically. (Of course, then we're talking about American history about an American atrocity and not American history about a then-enemy, Germany, and what they did wrong.) The fact that white people had all-authority and power over the black slaves, free or not, made the black people's lives so powerless. The only choices or small tokens of "freedom" were those that were "given" or "allowed" by the white people. When Mr. Garner was alive on Sweet Home, life was "more fair" for the slaves because of the "freedoms" he gave them. But even that was not freedom. On page 220 the statement was made..."Everything rested on Garner being alive. Without his life each of theirs fell to pieces. Now ain't that slavery or what is it?" Now ain't that the most extreme form of inequality or what is it? 4. I made a comment in the first salon about our "founding fathers"...that "I would like to believe that at least some of the drafters were visionaries of their time who had the foresight to see that 'all men being created equal' included all men and women. I understand that there were Christian men in this group who did not believe in slavery. Yet, there were those in this group who participated in the institution of slavery and that is very hypocritical to me. The rationale that blacks were sub-human, inferior to whites, and so on, were convenient ways to justify slavery for many in the white culture. This rationale is inconsistent with Biblical teaching because the seperation in life forms is not by the color of skin, but by the type of species....human or animal. I believe that we are created in the image of God...and that God is not color conscious. The good, old, "double-standard" was no stranger to this time period and practiced liberally by the white culture, as a whole, in some degree or another. How can one call for equality from one group and deny it to another? It happened.

Sun Sep 20 15:40:28 PDT 1998

Katherine Kelleher kelle018@csusm.edu responded:

1) Sethe's murder of Beloved was both a loving and sinful act. Sethe's torment caused her to slay her daughter to save her from the atrocities she had witnessed. Yet murder is murder, and the reason Sethe was haunted by Beloved and suffered physical deterioration and sorrow was because of the burden of guilt that she bore. 2) Memory activity relates to the quest for equality and freedom as a thought process for deliverance. Denver represents the desire for earthly deliverance from slavery to freedom. While Sethe's action of slaying her daughter represents the hopefulness that freedom can be achieved through death. Beloved is memory itself. Memory depicts a continual search for answers. Is freedom ever attained in this life? If not, can freedom and equality be anticipated for the soul and spirit, henceforth? Memory can serve as a catalyst for looking forward. 3) Inequality in slavery is abuse of power at it's worst. Rights for those in slavery were virtually abolished. Independence, individuality, and liberty were not attainable. Mothers were forced to bear children they did not want. Children were ignored because they were a reminder to the mother that she was dirty; that she brought an innocent child into existence only to endure cruelty. Permanency of loving relationships could not be established. Under these conditions, when a mother is forced to to to protect a child rather than love him, the child's emotions turn to anger and numbness. The world is seen as malevolent. Thus, inequality in slavery permits the powerful unjustified authority to abuse, and causes extreme humiliation and suffering within the victims. 4) It is not possible to square the values presented in the "Declaration of Independence" with an inclusion of slavery. The "Founding Fathers" obviously considered themselves more equal to the British people in color and inherent rights, but superior to African-Americans. However, did the "founding fathers" all own slaves? We can only hope that the most inspired in writing the "Declaration of Independence" did not. Otherwise, the only term that comes to mind is hypocrisy.

Sun Sep 20 21:51:12 PDT 1998

Jill Gustus gustu001@mailhost1.csusm.edu responded:

1. I believe what sethe did was both a loving and a sinful act. When sethe killed her child, she did it with loving intentions. She thought the child would be better off than living in the world she lived in. She didn't want her child to live the life that she did. She had good reasons for killing her child but it still was a sinful act. You can tell that she knows that because of the guilt she feels and that she has to explain why she did it when beloved comes back to her. 2. Sethe uses memory to try to cope with life in the past, present and future. She also uses it as a reminder of her quest for freedom and equality, which is what most slaves lived for. But Sethe has a lot to deal with, her past as a slave and the fact that she killed her daughter for freedom. Then there is that fact that Denver is a constant reminder of to sethe of her fight for freedom, since denver was born on the way to it. I believe that sethe has gone through too much(slavery and killing her own child)that the price she paid in fighting for equality and freedom was more that she could handle. And therefore, she got stuck in living the past, trying to make sense of it all, but most of all trying to make peace. 3. What it means in the terms of inequality was that the white people could and did whatever they saw fit. The slaves were forced to breast feed other children, families were ripped apart, and women slaves bore children just for the reason of creating more slaves. What the white people did to the slaves was so horrible that the slaves would forget who they were and then would be so messed up that they wouldn't ever remember. This was the price the slaves paid for what the white people did to them. This was inequality. 4. Even though, the founding fathers saw how unequally the blacks were being treated by the British, they still went on with slavery, why? Having slaves at that time was the "norm" and socially correct. They saw blacks to be of a lower standard. They were hypocritics. If they wanted slavery to end then, no one will know. But with the values established in the US by them, we could only be thankful for their forsight. Too bad they couldn't end practice their own values.

Sun Sep 20 23:09:25 PDT 1998

Andrew Fritzinger latigo@pe.net responded:

1.) Sethe's murdering of Beloved I think could be either sinful or loving. The act could be loving in that she didn't want the baby to suffer under slavery, particularly the harshness of Schoolmaster. This could be the case because Sethe constantly lives with genuine regret for what she did to the child and even experiences a strange return of Beloved. It could also be sinful in that she selfishly did not want anyone to raise Beloved but herself. It is possible that Sethe wanted to be the only influence on the child and would not tolerate anybody else having this kind of impact on her child. 2.) Sethe's constant reflection back on to the days of slavery reflect badly on their quest for freedom and inequality. The reason I feel this way is because the emancipated slaves languished in poverty and were still discriminated against,this resulted in a lack of financial opportunity, (basically no work available) so they were often left with nothing to occupy there time except the memories of the past.3.) The Inequality demonstrated in this quote shows that the white-men did not see the slaves as human beings, because of this they had no remorse or moral feelings against unrestrained abuse or overwork. The inequality demonstrated here is when a person catagorizes another as lower than human. 4.) The paradox of signing the Declaration of independence with slavery goes back to the thought that I mentioned in question 3, the whites did not see the slaves as humans and thus did not hold them to the same standard. Also the Declaration was a political document designed to secure independence from the British, slavery and inequality in the U.S. itself took a backseat during this time.

Mon Sep 21 15:21:23 PDT 1998

Dan Brown brown060@csusm.edu responded:

I believe that the act of kkilling your daughter in the case of Sethe and her situation was an act of love. This question asks us to deal directly with our personal and religuos beliefs. I don't think even an athiest can stand up and defend this act as just love. This act is directly linked to the belief that there is an afterlife that is better. Her life as a slave was terrible and the knowledge that her daughter was going to that "better place" has to be her only motive. Even though any thought of faith was many times ripped out of their lives I think that Faith was the only thing that allowed Sethe to do such a terrible act. I believe that this happened more often then we think. Around the world the act of killing first borns or daughters is "acceptable" for the survival of the family. So to ask us if this was a sin, I think one has to have a firm belief in the christian religion. To ask if this an act of love I think that the person has to have just a bit of empathy for that era and what being a slave was like. I do not believe anyone of us can really criticize Sethe for doing such a thing because none of us can truely empathize with her situation.2 The quest for equality and freedom was so difficult and even impossible that I think the memory of beloved was a way for Sethe to live through her slain daugther as a fre person. When beloved first came to them she had soft hands and feet and her skin was smooth. This memory and many others through the book allowed Sethe to dream what freedom was like if not equality. 3 In terms of inequality the quote given shows that slaves were not viewed as human rather as animals. Farm animals in my experience do not have rights equal to humans, they are there to serve and produce. If they did not produce they were eliminated. I believe that this is part of the reasons that slave lost thier identity.they were viewed as farm animals. Thier identity was torn from them and they were not given the chance to develop one of thier own. Even after they had achieved freedom the past had messed up thier mind so much that developing a image of self was impossible. Inequality was the norm for slaves and I think that they never really saw a possiblity of being equal but only free in the physical sense. 4) I think that this question deals directly with part of my answer to question 3. Slaves were not seen as human and definately not as equals in any sense. People today cannot truely empathize with the past. We do not have the ability to detach ourselves that well. We have to look at the past as though we were socialized in that society. I do not believe that most of the people in this discussion would feel even close to the same if they were born into the plantation society and grew up in it. Slavery was the norm not the terrible act that we see today. Slaves were not seen as men or even really as human and when the declaration was written slaves did not even enter the founding fathers mind as equals and I would say neither did women. That was later clarified by the Supreme Court. The British were treating the colonies unfairly primarily in financial ways so the thought process of the declaration I think was not quite as visionary as many believe. Slavery is a terrrible part of our history but I think that it is difficult to analyze it properly and be born into our society today. Slavery and the declaration I think were to seperate issues and the principals of each did not intermingle in the context that we view them today.

Mon Sep 21 19:10:28 PDT 1998

veronica castelo caste001@mailhost1.csusm.edu responded:

1.) I will have to agree that the murder of Beloved was taken out as an act of love. When Sethe decided to murder her infant, she was doing it to prevent her daughter from living and experiencing all that she had once had gone through as a child, as well as an adult. Sethe did not want Beloved to be raped, beaten, and enslaved, she did not want the Schoolmaster and his companions to prohibit Beloved from living the life that she so much deserved. Sethe was not thinking about hurting Beloved when she killed her, rather, she was hoping to prevent her daughter from living a lifestyle that so many would prefer death over. In addition, despite thoughts of regret and guilt, Sethe knew that her daughter would be better off resting with their God up in the heavens rather than living her life experiencing constant pain, humiliation, and restraint. 2.)The "memory" activity that Sethe constantly re-experiences is a something that keeps her focused on her ife as a slave, and the "freedom" that she desperately attempted to give her children. She tries to help Beloved, Denver, and herself understand that her only motive for slaying Beloved was to get her to live a free and equal life. Through murder, Sethe was allowing her daughter to be free, providing her the opportunity to live without slavery and all of the hardships and cruelty that it entailed. She revisites her past in order to justify that what she did to Beloved was the only thing that she could do to "save" her,the act of murder was conducted solely in best interest of her child. When Sethe revisites her past as a pregnant woman trying to escape the hardships of slavery, she is doing it to remind herself, as well as Denver, that she was trying to escape slavery in order to provide her unborn with a life unlike her own. Denver is a constant reminder of the journey from slavery to "freedom", and revisiting these memories helps her to remember that she tried so very hard to provide her children with the best life that she could provide. 3.)This quote simply states that the white people could do anything and everything to the slaves, and get away with it. They would steal the milk from a nurturing mother, engage in intercourse without mutual consent (simply for the purposes of procreation and at times pleasure), humiliate, and violently assult them . All of these actions (and many more) took away from the slaves their persona, it robbed them of feeling human and loved. They were treated like animals, and in the process encountered such severe forms of discrimination and inequality that they forgot who they were. It was as though most the slaves were treated so brutally that they did not care what happened next. They had experienced everything, and there was nothing else that could break them, they were already hurt and broken, they could no longer experiences feelings of emotion, feelings that are very human. 4.)The fact that the white man thought of his slaves as a sort of animal, being unequal and not human, tells the story as to why the "founding fathers", including many other white men white men, did not see slavery as being cruel. The British were white men, and thought of as "human" if you will. The US wanted to protect themselves from becoming "enslaved", empowered, and taken under by British law, hence the Declaration of Independance. Unfortunately, our "founding fathers" were not thinking as "fathers" when they excluded slaves from living the lives that they so easily took for granted. The fact that the founding fathers saw the black man as sub-human kept him from feeling any emotion, regret, or guilt when it came down to humiliating and degradation these innocent people. For so long, and even today, society has constructed a double-standard; be it related to men and women, black or white, children and adults. The US had used this double-standard and abused their power by enslaving its American residents simply because they had a darker skin tone.

Mon Sep 21 20:29:26 PDT 1998

carol schirm schir001@mailhost1.csusm.edu responded:

1. Sethe's murder of Beloved was a sad act. It is one thing for an oppressor to deny a future for a child, another for its own kind. Hope was what powered the transition from slavery to freedom. Belief in a time that was safe and contained choices was the fuel. To have been tortured past that hope and belief to where no options existed for Sethe was very, very sad. Some acts carry their own plunishment, for Sethe the plunishment (regardless of whether it was right or wrong) was the loss of her child and the haunting of her memory. 2. Sethe seems to be forever on the threshold of freedom, but unable to go past it. To be truely free she needed to see herself equal to others around her. Instead she withdrew feeling the guilt of what she endured while captive, what she did to stay free and keep her family free. Beloved pulls Sethe into the past, not allowing her to cross the treshold. In the end, Beloved even beats Sethe futher demoralizing her. 3. In Feire "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" published in South America, it is the demoralizing of the oppressed that teaches them to remain in their humbling circumstances. The systematic stripping of those things that make us most like people is used to create a feeling of worthlessness and despondency. In terms of inequality--people start to believe a lie, that they are unequal and deserve the treatment they get. 4. The issue of slavery was always controversial, but this was a fleggling nation dependent on cheap labor for survival. Economics, above all, dictated that captured people (not only from Africa, but Ireland as well) should be used as a resource instead of seen as the people they were.

Mon Sep 21 21:19:54 PDT 1998

Elise Baer baer002@mailhost1.csusm.edu responded:

1. The act commited by Sethe in "Beloved" was an act of desperation that resulted in the murder of her daughter. Since Sethe believed in 'heaven' she felt a sense of completion giving her daughter 'everlasting' freedom in a 'sanctuary' with God. There is no excuse for murder, but here the motive was love and not hate because her motivation came from her heart. 2. Morrison uses 'memory' to delve into the past whereby Sethe 'created' "Beloved" then felt lifelong guilt for destroying the daughter she loved, so she beats herself up mentally with memories' of the past of which she cannot alter. 3. In regards to inequality, a slave was 'held in bondage' they were not thought of as human beings at all. They really had no chance because this was reality. I guess the underlying theme was 'let it happen' because the whites were the ruling majority. This was an inequality that was planted, nurtured, and flourished among the 'whites' so a slave would be born, grow old, and die a slave. 4. The passage "all men are created eqaul" should be true to its meaning and I hope that the founding fathers meant to abide by this but apparently this was not a reality for them.

Mon Sep 21 21:19:59 PDT 1998

Elise Baer baer002@mailhost1.csusm.edu responded:

1. The act commited by Sethe in "Beloved" was an act of desperation that resulted in the murder of her daughter. Since Sethe believed in 'heaven' she felt a sense of completion giving her daughter 'everlasting' freedom in a 'sanctuary' with God. There is no excuse for murder, but here the motive was love and not hate because her motivation came from her heart. 2. Morrison uses 'memory' to delve into the past whereby Sethe 'created' "Beloved" then felt lifelong guilt for destroying the daughter she loved, so she beats herself up mentally with memories' of the past of which she cannot alter. 3. In regards to inequality, a slave was 'held in bondage' they were not thought of as human beings at all. They really had no chance because this was reality. I guess the underlying theme was 'let it happen' because the whites were the ruling majority. This was an inequality that was planted, nurtured, and flourished among the 'whites' so a slave would be born, grow old, and die a slave. 4. The passage "all men are created eqaul" should be true to its meaning and I hope that the founding fathers meant to abide by this but apparently this was not a reality for them.

Mon Sep 21 21:20:06 PDT 1998

Elise Baer baer002@mailhost1.csusm.edu responded:

1. The act commited by Sethe in "Beloved" was an act of desperation that resulted in the murder of her daughter. Since Sethe believed in 'heaven' she felt a sense of completion giving her daughter 'everlasting' freedom in a 'sanctuary' with God. There is no excuse for murder, but here the motive was love and not hate because her motivation came from her heart. 2. Morrison uses 'memory' to delve into the past whereby Sethe 'created' "Beloved" then felt lifelong guilt for destroying the daughter she loved, so she beats herself up mentally with memories' of the past of which she cannot alter. 3. In regards to inequality, a slave was 'held in bondage' they were not thought of as human beings at all. They really had no chance because this was reality. I guess the underlying theme was 'let it happen' because the whites were the ruling majority. This was an inequality that was planted, nurtured, and flourished among the 'whites' so a slave would be born, grow old, and die a slave. 4. The passage "all men are created eqaul" should be true to its meaning and I hope that the founding fathers meant to abide by this but apparently this was not a reality for them.

Mon Sep 21 21:20:32 PDT 1998

Elise Baer baer002@mailhost1.csusm.edu responded:

1. The act commited by Sethe in "Beloved" was an act of desperation that resulted in the murder of her daughter. Since Sethe believed in 'heaven' she felt a sense of completion giving her daughter 'everlasting' freedom in a 'sanctuary' with God. There is no excuse for murder, but here the motive was love and not hate because her motivation came from her heart. 2. Morrison uses 'memory' to delve into the past whereby Sethe 'created' "Beloved" then felt lifelong guilt for destroying the daughter she loved, so she beats herself up mentally with memories' of the past of which she cannot alter. 3. In regards to inequality, a slave was 'held in bondage' they were not thought of as human beings at all. They really had no chance because this was reality. I guess the underlying theme was 'let it happen' because the whites were the ruling majority. This was an inequality that was planted, nurtured, and flourished among the 'whites' so a slave would be born, grow old, and die a slave. 4. The passage "all men are created eqaul" should be true to its meaning and I hope that the founding fathers meant to abide by this but apparently this was not a reality for them.

Mon Sep 21 21:20:48 PDT 1998

Elise Baer baer002@mailhost1.csusm.edu responded:

1. The act commited by Sethe in "Beloved" was an act of desperation that resulted in the murder of her daughter. Since Sethe believed in 'heaven' she felt a sense of completion giving her daughter 'everlasting' freedom in a 'sanctuary' with God. There is no excuse for murder, but here the motive was love and not hate because her motivation came from her heart. 2. Morrison uses 'memory' to delve into the past whereby Sethe 'created' "Beloved" then felt lifelong guilt for destroying the daughter she loved, so she beats herself up mentally with memories' of the past of which she cannot alter. 3. In regards to inequality, a slave was 'held in bondage' they were not thought of as human beings at all. They really had no chance because this was reality. I guess the underlying theme was 'let it happen' because the whites were the ruling majority. This was an inequality that was planted, nurtured, and flourished among the 'whites' so a slave would be born, grow old, and die a slave. 4. The passage "all men are created eqaul" should be true to its meaning and I hope that the founding fathers meant to abide by this but apparently this was not a reality for them.

Mon Sep 21 21:20:51 PDT 1998

Elise Baer baer002@mailhost1.csusm.edu responded:

1. The act commited by Sethe in "Beloved" was an act of desperation that resulted in the murder of her daughter. Since Sethe believed in 'heaven' she felt a sense of completion giving her daughter 'everlasting' freedom in a 'sanctuary' with God. There is no excuse for murder, but here the motive was love and not hate because her motivation came from her heart. 2. Morrison uses 'memory' to delve into the past whereby Sethe 'created' "Beloved" then felt lifelong guilt for destroying the daughter she loved, so she beats herself up mentally with memories' of the past of which she cannot alter. 3. In regards to inequality, a slave was 'held in bondage' they were not thought of as human beings at all. They really had no chance because this was reality. I guess the underlying theme was 'let it happen' because the whites were the ruling majority. This was an inequality that was planted, nurtured, and flourished among the 'whites' so a slave would be born, grow old, and die a slave. 4. The passage "all men are created eqaul" should be true to its meaning and I hope that the founding fathers meant to abide by this but apparently this was not a reality for them.

Mon Sep 21 21:21:12 PDT 1998

Elise Baer baer002@mailhost1.csusm.edu responded:

1. The act commited by Sethe in "Beloved" was an act of desperation that resulted in the murder of her daughter. Since Sethe believed in 'heaven' she felt a sense of completion giving her daughter 'everlasting' freedom in a 'sanctuary' with God. There is no excuse for murder, but here the motive was love and not hate because her motivation came from her heart. 2. Morrison uses 'memory' to delve into the past whereby Sethe 'created' "Beloved" then felt lifelong guilt for destroying the daughter she loved, so she beats herself up mentally with memories' of the past of which she cannot alter. 3. In regards to inequality, a slave was 'held in bondage' they were not thought of as human beings at all. They really had no chance because this was reality. I guess the underlying theme was 'let it happen' because the whites were the ruling majority. This was an inequality that was planted, nurtured, and flourished among the 'whites' so a slave would be born, grow old, and die a slave. 4. The passage "all men are created eqaul" should be true to its meaning and I hope that the founding fathers meant to abide by this but apparently this was not a reality for them.

Mon Sep 21 21:33:25 PDT 1998

Sarah Dyroff Dyrof001 responded:

1. Sethe did not commit a sinful act. Murder itself is a sin, but Beloved lies in the grey area that is not defined. Sethe had so much love and compassion for her child that she could not bear the thought of one of her own becoming one of the living dead in slavery. She felt the pain and misery for Beloved, as most mother's do, before the act of violence even occurred to her child. She knew what a hostile and cold life her child would soon enter, so Sethe chose to remove the inevitable distruction of the life of her child to protect her. This may seem horrible in another's eyes, but Sethe had been pushed beyond her limits, and knew this true for every slave. Sethe saw this as the last loving, protective, thing she could do for her child. 2. Beloved represents the only way a slave could be really free. Only after death could a slave have total assurance that no one would be there to torture, hummilate and destroy their sense of self worth. Equality and freedom is not something that would be their's here on this earth at that time. At least Sethe had one good and bad memory to hold onto in her constant battle for freedom. 3. When someone has the power over you to make you submit to their wims or desires it destorys your inner soul, this is where your love for life and inner peace are found. Slaves had no chance to ever feel at peace. You totally lost your sense of self and happiness. The part of you that makes you who you are is lost forever due to someone else who could care less about you. 4. As sad as it is, slaves were not seen as valuable humans. They were valuable only as far as someone needed them, not for who they were, how they thought, what they loved, what dreams they had. No compassion was given them simply because they were not seen as the founding father's saw themselves. It's compariable to a total separation of opinions. When one side cannot see the other, ever, then there is no battle to be won. There will never be a truce, no meeting point. Slaves were not viewed as someone's mother, father, child, etc. They did not matter to anyone in the eyes of the constitution. It was not written for them, they were not even a consideration. This concept does seem so strange, especially with the strong emphasis put on the belief in the Bible. "Do unto others" did not even apply to them. How sad it is that one can only see sorrow for themselves, but not their neighbor. The founding father's could never see this.

Tue Sep 22 14:25:55 PDT 1998

shannon nemzer nemze001@mailhost1.csusm.edu responded:

1) It is my feeling that Sethe's murder of her daughter, Beloved, is both a loving and sinful act. I believe she did it out of love, probably believing that she would be hurting herself more than she would be hurting her daughter, because Sethe would be the one to remember over and over again. Her act of murder is considered sinful in the eyes those not knowing the cicumstances or Sethe's thoughts at the time. Although I don't believe this was her original intent, but by killing one innocent child she saved the lives of four. 2) I think that all the memory activity in the book is a part of the motivation and strength that keeps these people moving towards eqality and freedom. It serves as a frame of reference for them when they wonder why they go on living. 3) In terms of inequality the fact that whites continually tried to denegrate, shackle, and beat out any form of personal or collective identity these people had, shows in reality the fear the whites had of these people who were at the very least equal to if not superior. If blacks were truly inferior and subhuman than they wouldn't have had to have been forbidden to learn to read and write, marry, or work for pay. Essentially whites had to deny them the basic rights they took for granted in order to call them "inferior." Had they been given the same chances and opportunities and freedoms whites had always experienced, they would rise above their "white-given" place in the world, as they have and will continue to do. 4) The whole issue reguarding the founding fathers of our country and the institution of slavery all comes down to semantics. They could say it all depends on how you view the words "all men." Operationalizing didn't seem to be in the Declaration of Independence, and there they had their loop hole.

Tue Sep 22 21:42:04 PDT 1998

Louise Basford jlbasford@earthlink.net responded:

I was so excited to see that Beloved was coming out to the theaters, it is such a touching book, I think the movie will be more interesting. It will be on my movie list, that's for sure! Anyway back to Salon # 3 questions 1) The murder of Seth's Beloved was nothing more than the fear and the love for her own child. Sethe had feared that her child would have to go through the horrifying times she did, the thought of that broke her heart. So there was no other alternative, Sethe had to murder her Beloved. Sethe felt that she had the ability to "save" her child from becoming a slave and death seemed to be the only solution, perhaps the right solution. Sethe felt that murdering her Beloved would perhaps send her to a better place. Therefore, Sethe murdered Beloved out of love, an act she will never forget. 2) This "memory" activity relates to the quest for equality and for freedom by Sethe remembering how horrible her life was, how she had murdered Beloved out of love. Sethe wanted Beloved to remember the good things of life. She wanted Beloved to see how good her life could be, how she could have happy memories. Perhaps Sethe wants her to think this is how life could/should be. An example of this is because of Paul D, taking them to the fair, to have a good time. Times like this he would want them to remember, to be a memory they will always be able to smile back on. They would then always remember that one good time they had together, a memory that Paul D hoped would last a life time. 3) "Whites could take your whole self for anything that came to mind--they could, 'dirty you up, so bad you forgot who you were & couldn't think it up.'" What does this mean in terms of inequality. In terms of inequality this means that the whites treated the slaves literally like dirt. The whites owned the slaves, told them what to do, where to go, what to clean and they would tell them who they were and how to act. Equality has not happen in this world, I don't think it ever has happened, not that I've seen. I have seen a lot of attempts but that is all? No man was or is ever treated equally. Maybe amoungst his own surroundings, but in general there was no equlaity. The only people who ever believed in equality was The Garners, who were the only ones who beleived in Sethe's family, their will to survive, to keep strong. Paul D was a believer also. 4) Slighty hypocritical don't you think. For the founding fathers to preach to us and to say that all men are created equal? Where do they get their ideas from, or does one idea see what the other idea is thinking and perhaps change there feable little mind. To think that the Founding Fathers would state that all men are created equal, when they probably go home to a cooked meal or clean house, done by their very own slaves. Can they really just sit there and lie, while the evidence is staring them in the face? It looks like it! What is their definition of a man? Did they stoop that low and not see that the slaves are human, they are also part of the fraze, "All men are created equal." How could they have conveninetly forget about these men, woena nd children, or did they choose to forget. Perhaps we see that no matter the color of your skin, the color of your hair, your heigth and weight, you as an individual that perhaps one day we will all be created equal and with respect.

Tue Sep 22 21:53:51 PDT 1998

Anthony Simpson hombredelsol@earthlink.net responded:

1. I believe Sethe's murder was a loving act. It was an effort to protect Beloved from a cruel and horrible life. Sethe did not want her children to grow up as property to be taken, sold or beaten at will. Sethe valued her child's freedom and quality of life more than the life itself. 2. Sethe's rememory seems to be the act of regaining who she was before she murdered Beloved and even before Schoolteacher came to Sweet Home. In the scene where Sethe is walking home from the restaurant after she realizes who Beloved is, Sethe feels complete with her girls and herself. Beloved's memory is an attempt to gain what she never had in the form of knowledge of her mother and affection from Sethe. 3. Slavery required you to be whatever the master demanded. The slaves of Sweet Home were labelled men but only on the plantation itself this changed when Schoolteacher arrived and agian when Paul D was sold. 4. The founders' vision of equality was obviously limited only to white males. Whether the founders intentionally ommitted all others or simply accepted the social distinction drawn between black and white is debatable. It is hard to believe that the fathers could not recognize the humanity within the slaves they knew. Society created many laws and norms to reinforce the inequality in the slave system such as outlawing slave education and the destruction of the slaves' families and institutions. The founders being raised within this social system were controlled by these constructs and being the advantaged members of this society chose to enforce these norms.

Tue Sep 22 22:02:05 PDT 1998

Jeff Basford jlbasford@earthlink.net responded:

1. Sethe knew all too well what Beloved would have to suffer if she were taken to back Sweet Home by Schoolteacher, she killed Beloved to save her from him. However, after the murder had been done, while she was walking to the cart out front of the house, she appeared a bit too proud. "Was her head a bit too high? Her back a little too straight? Probably?" What was she proud of? Was she proud that she had saved her daughter from slavery? Or, was she proud that she had taken her from Schoolteacher?

2. The murder of Beloved freed Sethe's memory, had she been enslaved by Schoolteacher Sethe probably would have forgotten her just as Baby Suggs had forgotten her children, remembering only that her first child liked the bottom of burned bread. The memory would have been too unbearable. Sethe’s memory is a part of her freedom, a memory of her child was more than she would have had if she would have remained a slave, where "people are moved like checker pieces."

3. The physical punishment imposed upon slaves was far from the worst that they had to suffer. The destruction of family ties, and of the self is what leaves the worst impression on Paul D. and Sethe. The price of slavery for Sethe and Paul D. is never completely paid, they are never really free from their enslavement, for they can never regain what they have lost.

4. Though you cannot square the values held by those who took part in the creation and prolonging of slavery, you can at least attempt to understand why they did not perceive the injustices that occurred. I do not believe that slave holders viewed slaves as human. "You just can't mishandle creatures and expect success." "Unlike a snake or a bear, a dead n... could not be skinned for profit and was not worth his own dead weight in coin." Therefore "all men are created equal" did not apply to slaves.

Tue Sep 22 23:22:37 PDT 1998

Rita Danskin lakegrove@aol.com responded:

1) Sethe's murder of Beloved was a loving act. After having been raped and abused, she saw no other way out for her baby. What she did know for a fact, was that "the other side," was better than here. She wanted to join her baby but knew that Denver and her two sons needed her. The chapter that starts on page 200 is Sethe's loving tribute to her baby. 2) I think the vivid memory of Beloved was Sethe's way of justifying to herself that what she did was right and when Beloved came to 124 dressed in her finery, it was clear that Sethe had been right - life had been better for her Beloved. The manner in which memory relates to the quest for equality and freedom is similar to that of the Native Americans and the Holocaust survivors. Throughout their stories, there is always talk of remembrance because if the past is forgotten, two things may happen: first, history may repeat itself; and second, the people who died are forgotten and their lives were in vain. 3) The quote means that the slaveholders demoralized the slaves so thoroughly, socially, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually, that there was no way they could think clearly. They lost themselves - they felt barely human. When you don't even feel human, it's impossible to feel equal. 4) No one could possibly justify slavery under the Declaration of Independence--unless you believed that slaves were not men and so not created equal. If I could ask one question of our founding fathers (particularly Thomas Jefferson), it would be this: "How could you point an accusatory finger at the King for transporting slaves from Africa while owning hundreds of slaves yourself until the day you died?" As Howard Zinn in the People's History of the U.S. quotes about this period of history, "Tyranny is tyranny let it come from whom it may." (75)

Tue Sep 22 23:31:29 PDT 1998

Britton Hill hillsrus@ix.netcom.com responded:

1. There is no doubt that Sethe loved her children. One could argue that she had pure motives for killing her children. By killing them she could keep them from a life of misery under slavery. One could also argue that she did it out of selfish motives, if she could not have her children then no one else could either. I would venture to say that it was a little of both. Whether this act was "sinful" is hard to say. On one hand she was trying to keep them from a life of misery, but on the other she was denying them life all together. 2. I think the remembering of the past helped Sethe in both her quest for equality and freedom. She needed to recognize two things about her past. One, her past had made her who she was, but it no longer had any bearing on who she could become. She could in this sense be free. Second, the recalling of the past could help her see that the lies that she had been told about herself (that she was less of a human being)and had believed about herself were not true. 3. The Inequality here is that whites failed to recognize slaves as human beings who had similar thoughts and desires and the same need of self identity as they did. Instead they were treated as if an animal or a posession. 4.I don't think that the founding fathers had afro-americans in mind when they wrote "all men are created equal." They were trying to get the point across to england that white american males deserved the same "rights" as those in England. The thought probably did not occur to most that this phrase could or should be applied to afro-americans because at the time blacks were not seen as having the capacity to active citizens.

Wed Sep 23 07:05:57 PDT 1998

Christina Glady glady001@mailhost1.csusm.edu responded:

1. Sethe murdering her daughter was both a sinful and a loving act. If you look at it is a religious way then it was sinful. The 10 commandments say Thou shall not kill and she killed. I do not think that it was sinful. I think that she did it out of love. It would be hard for a mother to kill her child, but it would also be hard for a mother seeing her child go through such torcher. Being a slave you were not treated well. Most of the time you were physically, emotionally, and sexually abused. Sethe had been through a lot and did not want to see her daughter go through the same pain and toucher that he went through. In killing her daughter she was saving her from the hardships that she endured. Who knows maybe if she was kept alive as a slave then she would have been killed by her master. Sethe killed her daughter because she loved her a lot. 2. The memories are really hurting them and enabling them to achieve equality and freedom. The memories seem to always be there and they are constantly dealing with those memories. They are constantly looking at the past and the constant looking back in enabling them to look forward to their future. They spend so much time dwelling on the past and they can not think of anything else. If they could focus on something like freedom then they would be set free a lot sooner. The memories are keeping them trapped in the life of slavery. With a change of focus they would be able to get more in life and maybe even go free. 3. When you look at equality you could not imagine it for the slaves that is because they were not equal. The quote “dirty you up so bad you forgot who you were and couldn’t think it up.” directly relates to inequality. The slaves were underneath the white men and were treated poorly by the white men. If the white men did not like what you were doing then they could beat you. Sometimes they beat you up so bad that you would be extremely hurt and maybe even knocked unconscious. You would then lose all of your dignity. You once believed that you were a great person, but after a lot of abuse, emotionally and physically, you often forgot who you were. Many times you even forgot that you were worthy. Many times you also gave up your identity in order to achieve something. They often lost their identity as they traveled over here, but the abuse left them hurt and forgetting their life before slavery. 4. I do not know how our founding fathers could have written the Declaration of Independence if they did not follow it. I think that it is awful. In the Declaration of Independence they put in all of those things saying how the British need to treat their people better and we were engaging in slavery. I think that they had a double standard and it was unfair. Here they are writing that all people are created equally and should be treated equally, but they were treating the world as if they were superior. I find the whole thing to be ironic and disgusting.

Wed Sep 23 12:44:35 PDT 1998

Anne Chambers chamb12@mailhost1.csusm.edu responded:

1. Sethe's act of murdering Beloved was a sinful act according to Christian doctrine. Even though slavery was a horrendous way of life, Sethe needed to have hope in her heart for a better life for Beloved and Denver and for herself. If we look back to WWII in the Nazi concentration camps, we see Jews holding on to the hope that they will be freed and that their children would also be set free. They had their children stolen from them as many slaves had. "All I can remember of her is yow she loved the burned bottom of bread." (p.5) Baby Suggs went through as many hardships as Sethe. But she never killed any of her eight children. In fact, it was her own son who bought her freedom. 2. "You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place-the picture of it-stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened." (p.36) This passage signifies Sethe's constant reminder of hew life. She is telling Denver that she can never forget was has happened even if she tries or dies. This "rememory" haunts her in her quest to be truly free. However, the act of remembering aids people to become free. By remembering the past they don't fall into complacency and allow the same things to happen again and again. We learn from past experiences. Denver would sneak away to Lady Jones's house to learn. Later when things were falling apart, she had to remember how to get back to Lady Jones's house to sek help for the troubles at 124 Bluestone. She knew there was a better life beyond 124 Bluestone. Sethe remembered her 28 days of freedom and knew that life was better at 124 Bluestone, with all its haunts, than back at Sweet Home. 3. The price of being enslaved is that you become a non-person. "Unlike a snake or a bear, a dead nigger could not be skinned for profit and was not worth his own dead weight in coin." (p. 148) This passage tells me that a dead animal was worth more than a dead slave. Slaves were not considered human-beings. They were property only. By breaking you down and taking from you everything precious and sacred, you become void of everything. You have nothing to hold onto and remember so your mind becomes theirs. Cults today enslave people. The rob you of your worldly posessions, your family and friends, and even your thoughts are not allowed to be self-oriented in any way shape or form. This makes the person unequal to the leaders. They are subserviant even though they are told everyone is equal. Slaves were told they were nothing over and over again by the whites. this breaks down the very marrow of one's soul. 4. The "founding fathers" were self-centered. They wrote the Declaration of Independence to save their business interests. The idea of taxation without representation came from the fact that they were being taxed by the King of England on the profits of their businesses without being able to say where the taxes should be spent. This fact angered the wealthy white men. The words "all men are created equal" did not apply to slaves because they were not considered men or women. Again remember, a slave was a piece of property, not a human being. these white men wrote the Declaration of Independence without a thought to slaves. One can not be equal outside of their species. If slaves were considered property and not human beings, they would have had no more consideration from the authors of the Declaration of Independence than a horse or its barn.

Wed Sep 23 14:09:45 PDT 1998

Ledia Flores lediaflor@hotmail.com responded:

1) I agree with those who think that Sethe's murder of beloved was both a sinful as well as a loving act. She was driven to commit murder which is a sinful act in itself by the love that she had for her children. Morrison says that Seth would have killed the other children if she had not been stopped. The fact that she had not been allowed to rationalize like a human being has everything to do with her actions at the time. Further, the murder was committed soon as she arrived there when memories of what she had just gone through were still fresh in her mind. This woman for the firt time was making decisions and acting upon them. For her to send her older children to Baby Suggs and not be able to go with them, was no easy task. And to give birth out in the middle of nowhere was enough to drive anyone over the edge, that is if we are talking about someone being able to rationalize things. 2) In the case of Seth, memory was not allowing her to enjoy physical freedom. She may had escaped from thSchoolteacher and be allowed to explore being a human being, and she may have wanted to be equal to those around her but she was not allowed. The fact that they ignored her caused her to feel isolated. That was their way of punishing her for the murder of Beloved. They did not put her in jail; they did even worse than that. They made sure to remind her every single day of how they felt about her. They did not consider her to be their equal; to them, she was less than human for having taken her own baby's life! 3) What I think when I read this quote, is that slaves having been subjected to such inhumane treatment their whole lives that either they lost their sense of human identity or did not recognize it. They were treated as subhumans, and viewed and treated more like a docile beasts who needed to be told what to do, how to behave, where to eat, and with no capability to make rational decisions. Basically, slaves were told that they need to have masters to take care of them because they couldn't care for themselves. The inequality of the two could not have been made more apparent. 4)I think that the "founding fathers" found it easier to claim that the British were not treating them equally for two reasons. First of all, because it is always easier to identify oneself with the victim than with the oppresor; and second, because the slaves were their livelihood. Slave owners would have lost everything if they would have allowed the slaves to go free. There was more behind it, the shared culture of society at the time was that there were it was o.k. to have social arrangement and racial ranking. After all, scientists and scholars of that era had come up (if not created) evidence to justify the view that the white race was superior, and that the black race couldn't take of itself and needed the white man to take it.

Wed Sep 23 20:47:29 PDT 1998

Kathy Johnson eric21@home.com responded:

1. It would be easy to say it was both a loving act and a sinful act, but that would be "straddling the fence". I believe it was more a loving act than a sinful act. Sethe killed her crawling already? baby girl to save her from going back into slavery, to be used and abused by the nephew and the schoolmaster. At Baby Sugg's house this child had already advanced to the crawling stage much faster than her older brothers - a sign of better opportunities already. In Sethe's mind, to send her back to slavery and hopelessness such as she had known, would be a much greater sin. Also, I believe it is better to take action, than to take no action and let events just happen - one doesn't learn that way and becomes a bystander rather than a participant in life. 2. Sethe's memory, anyone's memory for that matter, relates what has happened in the past to what is happening right now to what could happen in the future, and the possibility that the future could be made better than the past. Sethe's memories, particularly of the schoolmaster and his nephew, and the fate of some of the "Sweet Home" boys, served to motivate her to an 'all or nothing' degree to seek freedom and the opportunity for equality and dignity. 3. If one human being owns another human being and uses that person only as a piece of property, if that person is treated as if he or she had no feelings or mind, rights or dignity, and no hope of ever attaining any of those "inherent rights", there could be nothing more inequal. I also believe that type of an outlook on the part of the owner makes that individual inequal and enslaved in another way. 4. I've often wondered about those very questions - and I still have not come up with a good answer. I remember some of the reasons given in books as to why our founding fathers who established and fought for democracy also owned human beings as slaves. Some of the reasons were that the colonies - America - was a vast county even then and there were few colonists - not nearly the number needed to farm the plantations. So slaves were used. Why couldn't they have employed black people as indentured servants which was commonly done to poor settlers? Selected passages from the Bible (which has been used to support any and everything) were used to justify owning slaves. As was noted in Salon 1 when the Declaration of Independence was discussed, the phrase "All men are created equal" only referred to people who were white and men - not black or brown or red men, and certainly not women. Women along with slaves were not allowed to own property either. Another possible reason was "might is right" - he who has the power make the rules. The Declaration was a very important first step, advancement, in social thinking and developing a social conscience, a process that is still going on today.

Wed Sep 23 20:48:44 PDT 1998

Kathy Johnson eric21@home.com responded:

1. It would be easy to say it was both a loving act and a sinful act, but that would be "straddling the fence". I believe it was more a loving act than a sinful act. Sethe killed her crawling already? baby girl to save her from going back into slavery, to be used and abused by the nephew and the schoolmaster. At Baby Sugg's house this child had already advanced to the crawling stage much faster than her older brothers - a sign of better opportunities already. In Sethe's mind, to send her back to slavery and hopelessness such as she had known, would be a much greater sin. Also, I believe it is better to take action, than to take no action and let events just happen - one doesn't learn that way and becomes a bystander rather than a participant in life. 2. Sethe's memory, anyone's memory for that matter, relates what has happened in the past to what is happening right now to what could happen in the future, and the possibility that the future could be made better than the past. Sethe's memories, particularly of the schoolmaster and his nephew, and the fate of some of the "Sweet Home" boys, served to motivate her to an 'all or nothing' degree to seek freedom and the opportunity for equality and dignity. 3. If one human being owns another human being and uses that person only as a piece of property, if that person is treated as if he or she had no feelings or mind, rights or dignity, and no hope of ever attaining any of those "inherent rights", there could be nothing more inequal. I also believe that type of an outlook on the part of the owner makes that individual inequal and enslaved in another way. 4. I've often wondered about those very questions - and I still have not come up with a good answer. I remember some of the reasons given in books as to why our founding fathers who established and fought for democracy also owned human beings as slaves. Some of the reasons were that the colonies - America - was a vast county even then and there were few colonists - not nearly the number needed to farm the plantations. So slaves were used. Why couldn't they have employed black people as indentured servants which was commonly done to poor settlers? Selected passages from the Bible (which has been used to support any and everything) were used to justify owning slaves. As was noted in Salon 1 when the Declaration of Independence was discussed, the phrase "All men are created equal" only referred to people who were white and men - not black or brown or red men, and certainly not women. Women along with slaves were not allowed to own property either. Another possible reason was "might is right" - he who has the power make the rules. The Declaration was a very important first step, advancement, in social thinking and developing a social conscience, a process that is still going on today.

Wed Sep 23 21:40:39 PDT 1998

Beth Carson BCarson222@aol.com responded:

1. Parents will do anything to protect their children, Sethe murdered her own child to protect her from a lifetime of slavery. I am sure she did it with the intentions of a loving mother doing the only thing she felt she could to save her child. Though she did it with loving intentions, it still does not change the fact that murder is a sin, but from Sethe's point of view, it was done as a loving act. 2. I think all the time spent trying to remember the past was a way to deal with the past and move on to strive for equality and freedom. It was a way of holding on to bits and pieces of their lives as slaves, things that defined them as people and made them strong enough to move forward and keep searching for equality and freedom in the world. 3. Inequality of this magnitude stripped human beings of their own identity and the basic freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The price of being enslaved? I think your very soul, your personality, your family, your rights as a person...all were lost in slavery. 4. I think the majority of founding fathers were not really concerned with the lives of anyone other than themselves, they were only concerned with their own benefit from the Declaration of Independence. The slaves were simply property, I don't beleive they were really categorized as people, therefore any freedoms did not apply to them. Even with the unfair treatment from the British, it was not personally directed toward a specific person or class of persons as slavery was. It was not unfair treatment like being enslaved to be at the beck and call of every whim of your owner. It was not unfair treatment so horrible that one would murder their own child to protect them from it.

Wed Sep 23 22:08:39 PDT 1998

sheila morrison cdckidzmom@aol.com responded:

1) The question of whether or not the act of killing Beloved was a sinful or loving act depends on who's point of view one takes. It is obvious that Sethe felt there was no option other than killing her baby. She felt that whatever awaited Beloved in the hereafter had to be better than the life she and those around her had lived as slaves. So from a mother's point she acted out of love. However, Sethe's boys didn't seem to feel that she acted out of love, they were compelled to leave and never come back. I'm not so sure that Beloved felt it had been an act of love either, because she never seemed to be at peace nor did she let her mother find peace. Finally, from a religious standpoint she committed a horrible sin. Not to say any mother might not do the same. 2) Memory plays a large role in each of the main characters lives in this story, except that of Beloved's. The fact that Beloved is basically memory-less is one of the main characteristics that separate her from the others. Sethe and Paul D. seem to hold on to their memories for several reasons. To look at the past was all the motivation they needed to keep on striving for equality & freedom. It seemed as though if they forgot what it had been like when they were enslaved, they might wake up and be there again. There was also a need to pass on the stories and keep them alive so each generation would keep up the fight for equality. If one forgets what it is like to be a slave how will they know that they are truly free. 3) The price of being enslaved is loss of self-worth, dignity, and equality; not only for those who are enslaved but also for those who enslave them. When I looked up equality I found the term equilibrium ( balance). When one people enslave another there is no equilibrium. The balance is lost. People can be enslaved in many ways, economically, socially, racially, educationally, the list goes on. Each can be as devastating as the rest. 4) How did our fore fathers live with themselves? This is a good question. Human nature is a strange beast. I'm sure the founding fathers were able to justify their actions in much the same way that we do today when we see people who are hungry, homeless, jobless, etc.. We are just glad to get in our warm beds and make sure the rules work for us. So although my first instinct is to bash those who were seeking equality for themselves without regard for the slaves they kept, I need to take a good look at the state of inequality that exists here today in our good old United States of America and hope we are able to do a better job at insuring equality for all than they were.

Wed Sep 23 22:55:52 PDT 1998

Sally Fuentez fuent003@csusm.edu responded:

1. Sethe's murder of Beloved was an act of love. Sethe suggested to Baby Suggs to move the family, but Baby Suggs told her that their was no point to that..."Not a house in the country ain't packed to its rafters with some dead Negro's grief"(p. 5). Baby Suggs had experienced "sixty years a slave and ten years free: that there was no bad luck in the world but whitepeople"(p. 104). If Sethe decided not to take Beloved's life, Beloved may have been sold off to pay for her owner's debt. Sethe had been running all her life to escape the extreme oppression that she had experienced (sexual abuse, whippings, and permanent humiliation). There was no chance of justice other than to not enter a world where blacks had no rights. What parent in their right mind would want a life for their child like the live's that all blacks had come to know. The sinful act is the treatment that all White's gave to their slaves, therefore, driving Sethe to the extreme of giving Beloved freedom. 2. Sethe's work of "remembering" is her anger from all that she has had to endure, and Beloved's "memory" is trying to forget the injustice that they have had to experience. Sethe's work is to keep Denver, Beloved, Paul D. and herself from further injustice and to hope for peace, the eternal peace that she gave to her Beloved. 3. The slaves lived lives of constant pain, fear, sadness, and humiliation to a point where their souls were completly stripped from their bodies. Sethe went insane, causing her to take the life of Beloved in order to keep her from having to experience inequality. 4. The founding fathers did not recognize Blacks as being equal to them. They thought Blacks were somehow less than human because the color of their skin, and because they could oppress them in their demented minds it was justified to inslave them. It is ironic that after fighting to gain freedom from the British, they turned around and implemented unjust and painful acts on Blacks.

Wed Sep 23 22:56:10 PDT 1998

Sally Fuentez fuent003@csusm.edu responded:

1. Sethe's murder of Beloved was an act of love. Sethe suggested to Baby Suggs to move the family, but Baby Suggs told her that their was no point to that..."Not a house in the country ain't packed to its rafters with some dead Negro's grief"(p. 5). Baby Suggs had experienced "sixty years a slave and ten years free: that there was no bad luck in the world but whitepeople"(p. 104). If Sethe decided not to take Beloved's life, Beloved may have been sold off to pay for her owner's debt. Sethe had been running all her life to escape the extreme oppression that she had experienced (sexual abuse, whippings, and permanent humiliation). There was no chance of justice other than to not enter a world where blacks had no rights. What parent in their right mind would want a life for their child like the live's that all blacks had come to know. The sinful act is the treatment that all White's gave to their slaves, therefore, driving Sethe to the extreme of giving Beloved freedom. 2. Sethe's work of "remembering" is her anger from all that she has had to endure, and Beloved's "memory" is trying to forget the injustice that they have had to experience. Sethe's work is to keep Denver, Beloved, Paul D. and herself from further injustice and to hope for peace, the eternal peace that she gave to her Beloved. 3. The slaves lived lives of constant pain, fear, sadness, and humiliation to a point where their souls were completly stripped from their bodies. Sethe went insane, causing her to take the life of Beloved in order to keep her from having to experience inequality. 4. The founding fathers did not recognize Blacks as being equal to them. They thought Blacks were somehow less than human because the color of their skin, and because they could oppress them in their demented minds it was justified to inslave them. It is ironic that after fighting to gain freedom from the British, they turned around and implemented unjust and painful acts on Blacks.

Wed Sep 23 22:56:59 PDT 1998

Sally Fuentez fuent003@csusm.edu responded:

1. Sethe's murder of Beloved was an act of love. Sethe suggested to Baby Suggs to move the family, but Baby Suggs told her that their was no point to that..."Not a house in the country ain't packed to its rafters with some dead Negro's grief"(p. 5). Baby Suggs had experienced "sixty years a slave and ten years free: that there was no bad luck in the world but whitepeople"(p. 104). If Sethe decided not to take Beloved's life, Beloved may have been sold off to pay for her owner's debt. Sethe had been running all her life to escape the extreme oppression that she had experienced (sexual abuse, whippings, and permanent humiliation). There was no chance of justice other than to not enter a world where blacks had no rights. What parent in their right mind would want a life for their child like the live's that all blacks had come to know. The sinful act is the treatment that all White's gave to their slaves, therefore, driving Sethe to the extreme of giving Beloved freedom. 2. Sethe's work of "remembering" is her anger from all that she has had to endure, and Beloved's "memory" is trying to forget the injustice that they have had to experience. Sethe's work is to keep Denver, Beloved, Paul D. and herself from further injustice and to hope for peace, the eternal peace that she gave to her Beloved. 3. The slaves lived lives of constant pain, fear, sadness, and humiliation to a point where their souls were completly stripped from their bodies. Sethe went insane, causing her to take the life of Beloved in order to keep her from having to experience inequality. 4. The founding fathers did not recognize Blacks as being equal to them. They thought Blacks were somehow less than human because the color of their skin, and because they could oppress them in their demented minds it was justified to inslave them. It is ironic that after fighting to gain freedom from the British, they turned around and implemented unjust and painful acts on Blacks.

Thu Sep 24 01:07:29 PDT 1998

Sara Rivera sarariv@mailhost1.csusm.edu responded:

1. Sethe's actions were definetly out of love! We have all hear the saying "Cruel to be kind" and this is so in Sethe's case. Her motivation was not based on malice or sadism; but rather, a desperate attempt to save her children from the unspeakable horrors of slavery! We may not agree with Sethe's course of action, but at the same time we are not the ones qualified to sit in judgement of her actions. We can read about the horrors of slavery but the bottom line is that we haven't lived it! Our perspectives are limited. We can never truly comprehend the driving anguish of such a desperate act! 2. I believe that this "memory" activity was psychological survival of the self. Imagine, here you are stripped of any human dignity,familial ties, abused physically & psychologically, treated as an inferior life form and compared to animals (Sethe talks about such an incident and the emotional pain it causes). A complete attack on the human spirit! Their memory served to focus their sights on their dreams of freedom & equality. It helped them survive the hell they were in. In the same way that a lifesaver helps a drowning man. It gave them something to hang on to. 3. It meant that the whites had all the power and if you were a person of color - you had none! And, your reason for being was to serve the dominant group in anyway they saw fit. 4. According to the founding fathers people of color were sub humans, inferior, no better than animals. Therefore, they didn't have a conflict. They were superior! They even traced this argument back to the bible, which talks about the sons of caine being ordered by God to serve the sons of Seth, and that blacks were these doomed descendants. There was no moral conflict here; there was not inequality. According to their beliefs, this was God's decree! Also, there was a study done by a renown scientist of the time who found blacks to be closer to animals than human because they had small craniums and were feeble minded incapable of reasoning with animal characteristics. These were the beliefs of the day.

Thu Sep 24 10:37:56 PDT 1998

Julie Schmidt juls@ix.netcom.com responded:

1)My first thought when starting the book was that the act was sinful. After all, murder is definitely a sin, and it seems even more disturbing for one to murder her own innocent child. After salon#2 and continuing the reading, I began to think that it was an act of love, that there was no maliciousness involved, only the maternal instinct of Sethe trying to protect her child and wanting a better life free from slavery for her Beloved. 2) In a way, frequently recalling memories of someone who is deceased keeps them alive and with us. Maybe Sethe's memories keep Beloved alive and lessen any feelings of regret Sethe may have for murdering her. Also, within Sethe's memories Beloved can have a "perfect" life and can exist eternally, having a better life than that of her mother and siblings. This "memory" activity serves as motivation or a driving force for Sethe. After all, Beloved is forever free and equal, and so should the rest of the family be. Remembering the fate she decided for her Beloved, can only make Sethe want freedom and equality even more so that there will never have to be another tragic situation such as Beloved for herself, or any other person bound by slavery. 3)I think in terms of inequality this means bascially that slaves were at the disposal of their "masters". Slaves were treated as objects that could be bought, sold or traded without any concern for them as human beings. The slave-owners had an "anything and everything goes" kind of attitude. After all, slaves were considered property and the slave owners felt that they could treat their own property any way they wished and use them to serve whatever needs they had, regardless of how cruel or inhumane. As far as the statement, they could "dirty you up so bad you forgot who you were and couldn't think it up" I think this signifies that after being treated as property (having all of your rights as a human being denied) for so long some slaves actually began to believe that was all they were worth and lost any hope or visions they had of a brighter future their identity as an individual human being being replaced by that of being someone's property. 4) As we have mentioned many times before, the Declaration of Independence was written by white men for white men. Plain and simple. And as I mentioned above, slaves were not considered "men" but rather property and at times even thought of as animalistic. This is why the Declaration of Independence was not applicable to them, and also why the "founding fathers" could justify excluding them from it. I don't understand how the "founding fathers" could have slaves in their own homes and their environment and think nothing of it, but were outraged at the unequal treatment they themselves received from the British. Does the word hypocrisy come to mind?

Thu Sep 24 12:37:58 PDT 1998

Jim Currey curreys@mailhost2.csusm.edu responded:

1. We must remember that Sethe was planning on killing all of her children and herself. This is an act of love. This was a desperate act of trying to find freedom for her children and herself. She absolutely could not go back and face the horrors of slavery and she would not let her children endure the same hardships. This was a loving act, but the act of murder was a sin to her and something that she had great difficulty living with. 2.Sethe's "remembering" keeps her from forgetting her life as a slave. In a quest for freedom and equality she must never forget the past. Freedom for slaves only meant that they did not have an owner. They still lived in poverty and never could be equal to the white man. Rembering the past, Sethe knew what it was like not to be free. Equality would only come in death when God judges all as equals. Sethe murdered Beloved eighteen years before and her memory of that punished her. Beloved was on the "other side"and when she came back and Sethe realized it was her Beloved she was free from that pain. 3.There is no equality in slavery. Slaves were reduced to being property, not human. A man could do what he wanted with his property. I think that we would have to live in that era to understand the values or lack of values of many slave owners. We cannot comprehend that slaves were "just property" to these people. Nothing more, nothing less. 4.The institution of slavery was a way of life for the Southern plantation owners. The agricultural industry could not have prospered without this labor force. Since black slaves were not consided to have human status they were not considered in the phrase "all men are created equal". Many of our "founding fathers" looked away from the slavery issue and were only concerned with the self-rule issue. As I stated before we cannot understand their values by not living in their time. Perhaps some of them knew that slavery was going to be an issue in the future, but at that point in time only freedom from the British was important.

Thu Sep 24 15:50:00 PDT 1998

Mark Angelo Ware markaware@aol.com responded:

Sethe's murder of her daughter was yet another harsh realty of slavery. The emotional, physiological, and physical toll of slavery was great. I feel that one cannot even imagine. The affect and effects of slavery. It was so great for Sethe that she had to make a decision-one of life or death for a daughter whom I am sure she had an emotional bond for. This bond is evident in her defense of Beloved from the questioning of Paul D. This love and bond was so strong, that Sethe committed this sinful at out of her love for the child Most of the character in the text suffered some harsh treatment. I feel that memory was a device used to help heal and bring a since of peace to some of the atrocities that they suffered. Beloved, is a product of the imagination of the characters. They are using her, Beloved, as a healing device. Imaging the good that could have been if she were physically present. The relationships that would have developed, a since of family. It seemed that all of the characters had a hard time dealing with the memories of their past-those that could remember them. Even Beloved wanted Denver to fill in gaps with details of the things that happened in the past. Denver also wanted to experience the memories of her mother Sethe, who had a hard time talking about some of the bitter experiences that she endured. These memories played an important part in the quest for equality. Without the memories of the main characters this story would not exist. It is their memories of their attempts to get to a better place, which really show the readers how important "equality was to Sethe and Paul D. The objects of the action indicated by this quote were obviously black slaves. Blacks had no separate identities. The only existed in the mind of whites as people whole could be manipulated and striped of any elf worth and dignity that they had-all at the whim and feeling of the white mind set on any given day at anytime. What a way to live. To be treated as something less than a individual with a separated identity with feelings and a live soul with warm blood running through your veins Equality as a know it out's the founding fathers in a hypocritical light when you considered that most of them own plantations with slaves. It seemed that the acceptance of the slave trade was a way f life for most of main stream America during this period. The really did not see slaves as their equals-thus dispelling any notion of equality being granted to them. As far as their treatment by the British, this was viewed on another plateau. Their treatment by Britain was viewed more on a level of Socioeconomics of people within a same race, a same origin, anything that was considered European white. This discrepancy of treatment between the Britain and the Colonies did not included, as hypocritical as it seems to me, blacks. Again, the best way to describe the founding fathers declaration that all men are created equal and to condone slavery was hypocritical at "best."

Thu Sep 24 16:21:47 PDT 1998

Bobbi Joyce Jones jnzn@mailexcite.com responded:

1. According to a wider society perspective, Seth's murder of Beloved was indeed a sinful act. Consider the influence of the oppressor's religion during this time. Christian ethics would not defend the murder of anyone for the purpose of saving a life, outside of Jesus Christ. Interestingly enough I began to liken Beloved to Jesus Christ in that both of them experienced extreme persecution. Although the persecution Jesus experienced was more direct, Beloved's persecution from numerable outside sources (i.e. the 'times' in which she was born, the trials of her own family, the burdens that her mother Sethe was forced to accomodate) were very similar. Her reincarnation also reminds me of the story of Jesus Christ, in that she has returned to comfort and assure her mother, who has never really forgiven herself for Beloved's death. Was that not the purpose of Jesus, after he had risen from the dead. To reassure his followers and non-believers alike that he was the Son of God, that God's will would be done, and that he had a special place in heaven for those who continued to trust in him. Had his blood not been shed, this legacy would not have been fulfilled. So it is also in the case of Beloved. Had her death not occured, her mother's freedom might not have been gained (in the same way, or at the same time). The relationship between Denver (the delivered one) would not have happened,and the legacy of slavery would have been further sustained. Therefore the sacrifice of Beloved for the lives of the rest of the family was necessary and justified - regardless of the social perceptions applied to whether it was right or wrong, loving or sinful. It was simply necessary for the continuity of the family unit. 2. The 'memory' is a powerful force discussed in great detail in this novel. Memory has the power to motivate (as in the memory of the travesties of slavery and the prompting to many Africans/African-Americans to run for better chances at life). It also has the power to pacify and soothe (as in the memories of Denver and her delivery into the world by Amy, the unexpected saviour for her and Sethe). Yet still it has the power to wear down a tired soul (consider the conversations that Sethe has with herself regarding Beloved. The justifactions that occur when Sethe ponders over the death of Beloved are evident that her memory causes her great guilt as well). 3. This statement still holds true today. Whites have dirted up Blacks and other minorities "so bad, that [we forget] who [we] are . . . " Consider the educational curriculm. Our children are not told that they are decendents of a strong nation, one filled with many kings and queens. I did not learn until my first year of college (1991) that Cleopatra was not an Elizabeth Taylor look-alike. True, I knew that she came from Egypt but that knowledge was compromised with the European ideal of beauty that America wanted us to believe. Therefore I was not shown the beauty of Africa, but rather told of its 'primitiveness' and 'tribal' attributes where 'savages' ran wild. I was not shown of the strong, STABLE family units that our ancestors had. Rather, through the implementation of slavery I was encouraged to think that I had no real 'language,' that I was not 'beautiful' and that I was only worth my 'labor.' That I was only 1/32nd of a person, yet my 'animalistic' attributes were enough to entice my masters to rape me on a continuous basis...give me unwanted, unwarranted children to which he almost never laid claim (but sold for more money). I was nothing but a dollar sign who could be dispensable upon rejection of his ideals. I was given new language, new attire, new perspectives, new responsibilities in exchange for sexual abuse, physical abuse, and cultural abuse. To this day these attrocities have been so deeply rooted within my culture, that the process of undoing these self-internalizations remain difficult to overcome. Therefore this statement, in my opinion, refers to the fact that through brainwashing and abuse African-Americans have a history that they cannot quite grab. As if they came from nowhere (can you imagine how it feels to come from NOWHERE), and have nowhere to go. This is social confinement with no probabability for escape. They 'dirtied us up so bad' that we DON'T want to know where we come from. We don't want to be associated with the DARK continent, we want to be 'hyphenations' (AFRICAN-HYPHEN-AMERICANS) because it looks good. But it is not who we are. 4. Keep in the mind that the Declaration of Independence was made for humans, to which the Africans that were held in confinement did not apply. Rather, they represented 1/32nds of a persons. So it would take 32 Africans to equal one full-fledged American. That is how this ridiculous document was upheld. It is amazing to me how these founding fathers could satify their sexual appetites with our women, yet state that they were not really women. Does that mean that our Country was founding by men who had sex with Animals? Don't we look down upon that type of behavior (sex with dogs, horses, pigs, etc). Yet they refer to our women as beasts, and satify themselves just the same...and even go so far as to procreate with them. So what of these children, these non-Americans? It is different I suppose for a human to experience discrimination and mal-treatment, than it is for an animal. Look at the way animals are treated by some today. Lack of empathy and concern. Look at the number of abused animals that are dropped off at the animal shelters. This is not new. This is the way our founding fathers and their off-spring treated their 'animals' in the past. They locked up their animals, fed them in return for their profit capabilities, killed them (or maimed them) if they objected. Refused to educate and train them for fear of their uprisings or, better yet, their departures. The inconsistencies of the American government still continue to amaze me....as they continue to affect me. But that's another class....another response.

Thu Sep 24 22:00:35 PDT 1998

Debra Taft debnjeff@earthlink.net responded:

1. Sethe’s murder of Beloved was done with the best intentions. If I were in Sethe’s position I think I would be too selfish to be able to take my daughter’s life. Sethe killed Beloved to prevent her from living the same life of slavery that she did. By killing her daughter she is giving up and allowing the slave owners to win. Good intentions or not the thought of killing my own child is inconceivable. 2. Sethe relies on the memory of Beloved to cope with what she has done. Though Sethe believes she did the right thing, she is concerned that Beloved will not understand. Denver is a constant reminder that the next generation was born under a new found freedom for slaves. Sethe must have felt some level of guilt about Beloved. This new freedom could have been shared with Beloved as well as Denver. 3. In the days of slavery whites ruled over African Americans. It was more than just inequality between whites and blacks. Not only did blacks have less rights than whites, but they were considered animals (inferior to whites). The white man was allowed to own African Americans the same way they own a horse. If you think about it, even the horses were treated better than the slaves. 4. When our "founding fathers" said "all men are created equal" what they meant was all white men. Some eternal optimists like to believe they truly meant all men, but given the thought of the day I find that hard to believe. In the days of slavery blacks were looked at as different. They were not like "men" they were more like "animals." Even psychologist of the day gave them IQ Test to prove their inferiority to the rest of society. It was their lack of knowledge and the difference between whites and blacks that made them the target of slavery. So in the day when our "founding fathers" were fighting for equality, they were really fighting for equality of their "kind."