One of the most commonly recurring phrases in our reading for Thursday from Beloved was "she is mine," or some variation of it. This was used primarily about Beloved the character, but also in reference to Sethe. At first, I found this phrase confusing and did not understand why it was used so many times. However, during the section from Paul D's perspective, there was a passage that sort of clarified it for me. The passage is about family and the way that he views people's families because he wasn't raised in one. It says, "he made them identify over and over who each [person] was, what relation, who in fact, belonged to who." (258) The way that Paul D talks about belonging here made the repetition in the earlier chapters of the phrase "she is mine" make more sense to me. These characters need to affirm that they belong to each other, and therefore that they belong to the family. When Sethe asserts that Beloved is hers, she is reaff...
Their Eyes Were Watching God is absolutely full of detail. It has so much information about the places it discusses, and the cultures and people that they represent, which all ties back to Hurston's anthropological work. She is an expert in this exact kind of detail, and you can tell through her writing. She is specific and intentional in her presentation of people and the places that they live, as well as the things that happen there. In Chapter 18, Janie and Tea Cake experience an extremely strong and devastating hurricane. They ignore several signs that it could be damaging and end up having to go through the storm to get to safety when it eventually does get bad. It is a very intense incident, and the way that the storm is discussed is almost supernatural. The natural forces around Janie and Tea Cake are described as "cosmic," called "beast[s]" and "monster[s]." The lake and hurricane "roar" and "rag[e]." One sentence desc...
Jason is bullied pretty ruthlessly in this book. It's so intense that it sort of defined the whole book for me even though the Chapter "Maggot" about the bullying was the 9th chapter of only 13. I think that it works this way not just because of the intensity of what Jason experienced, but also because of the way that it is built up through all of his social interactions in all 8 chapters that come before "Maggot". In the first chapters especially, Jason is constantly talking about his fear of judgment from his peers, and how it is inevitable if he does certain things. On just page 6 he says if people knew about his poetry they would "gouge [him] to death behind the tennis courts with blunt woodwork tools and spray the Sex Pistols logo oh [his] gravestone." He's constantly censoring himself, concealing the things that he is interested in, concealing his poetry, even trying to conceal his friendship with Dean Moran even though Dean is basically ...
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