Reflection

White Guilt: The Blog

(Because it isn't racist if it discriminates white people, apparently)

“It was the jungle that whitefolks planted in them. And it grew. It spread. In, through and after life, it spread, until it invaded the whites who made it.” (p. 234) When Stamp Paid says “jungle,” he means savagery. Slavery made black people so resentful, they eventually did become “savage” with hate. This, in consequence, made all white people who were involved with slavery “savage” through brutal retaliating against the angry black people in savage ways. I have not thought of slavery this way before and, I believe it adds an interesting perspective on it. I knew that slavery was wrong, but I had not thought of slave owners as “savage” before.

I have not learned anything else new though.

   

There's your picture. Happy now Lorde?

Closed reading (pg.76)

When Sethe was young, her mother’s friend Nan told her this story about when Sethe’s mother and she were on the same boat to America. They were both often raped by the sailors during the voyage. Sethe’s mother then “threw them all away(76)” except Sethe. This passage is critical to my lens since it’s, obviously, about women getting raped. What stands out the most, though, is that how Sethe’s mother could not love any child that she produced due to the sailors and would get rid of them.

One quote that stuck out was  “She threw them all away but you.” She got rid of all the children given to her by the sailors. How did she get rid of them? Did she kill them? Did she throw them overboard? She did say “the one she got from the crew she threw away on the island.” What did she do to that baby on the island? This quote sticks out since it says a lot about how Sethe’s mother dealt with being raped. She dealt with it negatively, by killing the babies--which is what the quote implies--that were given to her due to being raped. The final quote sticks out was when Nan tells young Sethe she was given “the name of the black man.” This implies that Sethe’s mother slept with a black man and was given Sethe by him, so she decided to keep her. She kept her because she wanted to sleep with that black man. Therefore, she kept Sethe since she was not given to her by being raped. She kept the Sethe because she was not forced upon her like the other babies given to her by the men who raped her.

These quotes connect to my lens by showing how all the sailors would overpower the African women on the ship and rape them. They say that women are easily able to be used for sex. She refuses to nurse and care for any children she produces due to her being raped. Had she received the children willingly, she would have likely kept them, but because she was violently raped, she did not feel obligated to care for those children. Since Sethe’s mother was black, the sailors did not find it necessary to treat her with respect as they would a white woman.   

march 26

CRITICAL LENS CLOSE READING

PROMPT

    Near the beginning of the book, (pg. 19), Sethe describes how a group of men "stole her milk." They raped her and then sucked her breast dry, quite literally robbing her of her milk. This damaged her emotionally since she knew that her baby would starve since she couldn't feed her now. When she told on the men, they then proceeded to beat her with a whip. Ever since then she has had a large scar on her back that she describes as a tree.
    This scene relates to the rest of the book by showing that Sethe prioritizes her children above all else. She is more concerned over the fact that she did not feed her baby than how she got raped and beaten with a whip. This connects to my critical lens by illustrating that Sethe is being kept from doing her motherly duties. Yes, this also happened because she is a black slave that's seen as inferior to Caucasians, but it mainly happened because she was a woman. Women, at the time and still seen as somewhat today, were more seen as objects of sex and weaker than men. With that in mind, they became targets of rape more often than men are.

march 26 - lens rational

I chose the feminist lens on because it would be the path of least resistance for this project and nothing else. Honestly I really hate modern feminist (or feminazis as I like to call them). They demand to be treated like royalty, even though they are usually treated better in society anyway. I am not opposed to the idea of being seen as equal to women, but I refuse to be seen as beneath them. Anyway, since the main character of beloved is a woman in the mid 19th century, it should be obvious when certain scenes are influenced by her gender.
I’m hoping to get through the project without popping a blood vessel.