{"id":157,"date":"2019-09-23T12:10:49","date_gmt":"2019-09-23T16:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/?p=157"},"modified":"2019-09-23T12:10:49","modified_gmt":"2019-09-23T16:10:49","slug":"the-future-is-bright-but-the-past-is-darker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/2019\/09\/23\/the-future-is-bright-but-the-past-is-darker\/","title":{"rendered":"The Future is Bright, But the Past is Darker"},"content":{"rendered":"

The <\/span>Beloved<\/span><\/i> story is starting to pick up with the entrance of Beloved and the integration of Paul D within the 124 household. While this surely adds to an already complex story, I instead would like to focus on the idea of the future. Previously, we discussed how Toni Morrison appears to blend time; it is hard for the reader to identify what is now and what is the past. While this has worked to show Sethe\u2019s fear of the past, we see on page 71, for one of the first times, a shift towards the future on the topic of the eatings when Morrison narrates, \u201cshe wouldn\u2019t say another word. Until the next time when all three of them ran through the wind back into the house.\u201d Similarly, Sethe acknowledges her preoccupation with the future when she says \u201cI have other things to do: worry, for example, about tomorrow\u201d on page 83.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is no coincidence that this shift occurs in tandem with the introduction of Beloved and Paul D. While Sethe had been running her whole life, working to forget the past, this is the first time when things are starting to look good for the residents of the 124 house. Beloved seems to take the place of the dead baby (we also have not had any ghost interactions lately) and Paul D is working to integrate the \u201cfamily\u201d into society by bringing them to the carnival. For the first time since this book began, Sethe and Denver finally have direction and are excited for what the future holds. That is not to say that the past is gone, though. Morrison does say that Sethe\u2019s \u201cbrain was not interested in the future,\u201d but we are beginning to see a shift that might be cognisant of a shifting time. Post abolition but still with a long way to go, the future might have been bright for many African Americans, but a preoccupation with all that has been done and a dark past are hard to forget and move on from.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Beloved story is starting to pick up with the entrance of Beloved and the integration of Paul D within the 124 household. While this…<\/p>\n

Continue readingThe Future is Bright, But the Past is Darker<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3156,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3156"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}