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.