I am reading Beloved right now and I have to wonder…do others think Sethe is justified in her actions? I know that is an impossible headspace to put yourself in but I would like to hear others thoughts.
I personally am not sure that she is justified however given the obscene trauma Sethe has been through I can see why she would want to remove all possibility of that happening to her children as well. I also think there is something really inertesting that comes from the mother/daughter dyad and somehing even more interesting from the triad between Sethe, Denver, and Beloved. Furthermore, I believe there is something to be said about the willingness Sethe has to go to such exreme lengths to break the cycle of maternal trauma in her family…even if she creates another trauma in the process.
I read it a long time ago, but iirc I didn’t ask myself who was justified and who wasn’t. i read more in a mindset of “this happened and I’m being told about it”.
I don’t think the point of Beloved is to ask whether Sethe is justified, but whether it’s understandable that she >!kills her own child.!< In fact, I think the point might be to force readers to ask themselves whether they can still have compassion for a person who does that, if that person’s circumstances are desperate enough.
That is basically the question I was getting at
I think that focusing on whether Sethe was justified or not takes attention away from considering the evil that put both of them in that position in the first place.
I remember this question on a take home exam from school. It’s really directed at how you perceive and experience the book from your own standpoint.
What I remember about this book is what I assume was an intentional detail: the house numbers correspond to the children… 1 (brother) 2 (brother) and 4 (Denver). The crawling-already baby (3) is missing.
That is super interesting!