{"id":162,"date":"2019-09-24T21:49:22","date_gmt":"2019-09-25T01:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/?p=162"},"modified":"2019-09-24T21:49:22","modified_gmt":"2019-09-25T01:49:22","slug":"beloved-as-a-symbol-of-punishment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/2019\/09\/24\/beloved-as-a-symbol-of-punishment\/","title":{"rendered":"Beloved as a Symbol of Punishment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After reading this section of the book I have no doubt in my mind that the theory we discussed in class about Beloved being there to punish Sethe is completely true. The scene that comes to mind is the one in the Clearing, where Sethe asks Baby Suggs (or rather, the ghost of her) to massage her neck. This turns dark quickly as the soothing presence turns violent and begins suffocating and strangling Sethe. When this is discussed later between Denver and Beloved, Denver confirms that she saw Beloved try to strangle Sethe. So far Denver has always been the one who saw Beloved for what she really is, the ghost of her dead older sister. So I have reason to believe that she is right when she says she saw Beloved try to strangle Sethe. With that established, it is pretty obvious that she is trying to punish Sethe for some previous wrongdoing.<\/p>\n<p>What that wrongdoing is I am not sure yet. The obvious speculation is that Sethe somehow caused her daughter&#8217;s death, and Beloved is there to haunt Sethe and make her never forget what happened in the past. I&#8217;m very interested to find out what exactly Sethe did to Beloved that would make her want to come back to haunt her, or even strangle her. All of this being said, I find the characterization of Beloved to be very interesting. In most stories, the return of the ghost of a dead family member or friend is typically seen as a happy event. To be able to see a specter of a lost family member is usually a blessing for someone in mourning. But in\u00a0<em>Beloved<\/em>, the appearance of Sethe&#8217;s dead daughter has only wrought mystery and stress. To me Beloved&#8217;s scenes are always very eerie, and honestly creep me out the more we learn about her as a character. Especially when you consider what happens between her and Paul D, which I have no idea why that happened or what it represents. Either way it is obvious to me that Beloved&#8217;s appearance at 124 is not a happy one, and she really does represent a figure of punishment, notably for Sethe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After reading this section of the book I have no doubt in my mind that the theory we discussed in class about Beloved being there&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/2019\/09\/24\/beloved-as-a-symbol-of-punishment\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Beloved as a Symbol of Punishment<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4517,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162","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\/162","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\/4517"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst390cnr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}