Possessive Love in Secrets and Lies and Beloved
The word “freedom” is subject to various degrees of interpretation in the sense that it can be used in more than one context. One definition of freedom is the idea of having your own sense of self without the control of others. On the other hand, a lack of freedom is the idea of feeling trapped and smothered in a situation one has no control over. Freedom can relate to school, relationships, or even within oneself. A lack of freedom can have nothing to do with other people but with the ball and chain that can be placed on by oneself. Of course the outside world will be involved, but the pain of feeling trapped comes from the frustration that fills one’s soul. A lack of freedom can result from a twisted circle of other events and other people. In the novel Beloved and the film Secrets and Lies, the enslavement that Roxanne and Denver feel result from their mothers’ possessive love. Sethe and Cynthia both have horrific pasts, leaving them in captivity and causing them to have unhealthy relationships with their daughters. Sethe and Cynthia love the only way the know how, possessively and dependently, causing Denver and Roxanne’s mental enslavement.
In the film Secrets and Lies, both Cynthia and her twenty-one year-old daughter Roxanne, live a life of captivity. Cynthia’s is due to her unexplained past, while Roxanne’s is in result of her overbearing mother. Cynthia’s lack of freedom does not result from another’s actions, but from her own past. The trauma and lack of love she has experienced, has been blocked out and instead of dealing with it, she lives off of the attention of others. When she meets her daughter Hortense, whom she had given up for adopt...
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...or a life as it is now under Beloved’s control, she chooses a life for herself. By having support for the first time, freeing both of her daughters, and restoring her sense of self, Sethe is on her way to a life of happiness and trust, rather than dependence on others.
Although their backgrounds are completely different, both Cynthia and Sethe battle the same demons. Their pasts have consumed them and dependence on others, or complete isolation is the only way they know how to deal with it. This causes the mental enslavement of Roxanne and Denver. In order to overcome their emotional scars, they must learn to stand on their own two feet. Only when they do this will they be able to release their daughters, and restore their own self worth and freedom for all.
Works Cited
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.
What is freedom? This question is easy enough to answer today. To many, the concept of freedom we have now is a quality of life free from the constraints of a person or a government. In America today, the thought of living a life in which one was “owned” by another person, seems incomprehensible. Until 1865 however, freedom was a concept that many African Americans only dreamed of. Throughout early American Literature freedom and the desire to be free has been written and spoken about by many. Insight into how an African-American slave views freedom and what sparks their desire to receive it can be found in any of the “Slave Narratives” of early American literature, from Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustav Vassa, the African published in 1789, to Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself which was published in 1845. Phillis Wheatley’s poetry and letters and Martin R. Delany’s speech Political Destiny of the Colored Race in the American Continent also contain examples of the African-American slaves’ concepts of freedom; all the similarities and differences among them.
The Harlem Renaissance was all about freedom of expression and the search for one's identity. Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God, shows these goals through the main character Janie and her neighbors. Janie freely expressed what she wanted and searched for her identity with her different husbands. Even though Janie was criticized by everyone except her friends, she continued to pursue. She lost everything, but ultimately found her identity. Hurston's writing is both a reflection and a departure from the idea of the Harlem Renaissance.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, freedom can be defined as the quality or state of being free: as liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another. During the 1800’s there were thousands of slaves in the southern region of the United States hoping to achieve a state of liberation. One of those slaves was a young woman by the name of Harriet Jacobs. She became the author of a slave narrative titled Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which describes her life as a slave under the pseudonym Linda Brent. I believe Harriet Jacobs used Linda Brent to tell her story not only to protect those who were involved, such as her children and her grandmother, but also because she was an escaped slave and had been under the constant threat of being tracked down and having her freedom taken away from her. Like the majority of those enslaved at that time, freedom meant everything to Harriet Jacobs. To Harriet Jacobs freedom meant having individual liberties, but more importantly having the somatic rights to choose what happens to her body and who has claim to it, if at all. Discovering exactly what these freedoms meant to her will mean taking a look into her story through Linda.
Zora Neale Hurston was an American novelist, anthropologist, folklorist, and short story writer and is closely associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston grew up in one of America’s first all-black communities. Growing up in this unique community gave her a sense of independence, freedom and boldness that many African-Americans, especially females, did not have during this time. Growing up in that community distinguished her from other writers of her time, and it is clearly reflected in her work. Hurston wrote many short stories, plays, essays and four published novels. Of all of the works she published and accomplishments she had, she is best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. This novel tells the story of Janie Crawford a young African-American girl growing up in
Love is said to be one of the most desired things in life. People long for it, search for it, and crave it. It can come in the form of partners, friends, or just simply family. To some, love is something of a necessity in life, where some would rather turn a cold shoulder to it. Love can be the mixture of passion, need, lust, loyalty, and blood. Love can be extraordinary and breathtaking. Love being held so high can also be dangerous. Love can drive people to numerous mad things with it dangerously so full of craze and passion.
...t with the only energy and determination they had to reach freedom, the text of Beloved explains that “claiming ownership of [your] freed self was” not an obstacle for the feeble (Morrison 111-112). The way in which slaves were treated while confined within the land of their owners scarred them until death. Gender neutrality led to security issues and allowed for cooperation through physical sexual and emotional abuse. Animal inclinations were shown in all slaves such as Sethe when slaying her children. Identity crisis is also derived from the acts of owners in slavery and is a great obstruction to acceptance of freedom. Throughout all their hardships, slaves had the willpower to never stop attempting to love themselves and one another. Slaves only wanted freedom and acceptance once outside of bondage, however, they could not have either without having both.
When one hears the word freedom, one associates it with the words independence and liberty. It means that a person is able to exist freely without any limits, as it is their god-given right to do so. While this is true, the definition of freedom changes based on the context of the situation. During the time of slavery, freedom had a unique meaning to each person who was subjected to slavery. In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass explores what the unique and complex meaning of freedom based off his experiences and knowledge of slavery.
In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford, the protagonist, constantly faces the inner conflicts she has against herself. Throughout a lot of her life, Janie is controlled, whether it be by her Nanny or by her husbands, Logan Killicks and Joe Starks. Her outspoken attitude is quickly silenced and soon she becomes nothing more than a trophy, only meant to help her second husband, Joe Starks, achieve power. With time, she no longer attempts to stand up to Joe and make her own decisions. Janie changes a lot from the young girl laying underneath a cotton tree at the beginning of her story. Not only is she not herself, she finds herself aging and unhappy with her life. Joe’s death become the turning point it takes to lead to the resolution of her story which illustrates that others cannot determine who you are, it takes finding your own voice and gaining independence to become yourself and find those who accept you.
Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved, reveals the effects of human emotion and its power to cast an individual into a struggle against him or herself. In the beginning of the novel, the reader sees the main character, Sethe, as a woman who is resigned to her desolate life and isolates herself from all those around her. Yet, she was once a woman full of feeling: she had loved her husband Halle, loved her four young children, and loved the days of the Clearing. And thus, Sethe was jaded when she began her life at 124 Bluestone Road-- she had loved too much. After failing to 'save' her children from the schoolteacher, Sethe suffered forever with guilt and regret. Guilt for having killed her "crawling already?" baby daughter, and then regret for not having succeeded in her task. It later becomes apparent that Sethe's tragic past, her chokecherry tree, was the reason why she lived a life of isolation. Beloved, who shares with Seths that one fatal moment, reacts to it in a completely different way; because of her obsessive and vengeful love, she haunts Sethe's house and fights the forces of death, only to come back in an attempt to take her mother's life. Through her usage of symbolism, Morrison exposes the internal conflicts that encumber her characters. By contrasting those individuals, she shows tragedy in the human condition. Both Sethe and Beloved suffer the devastating emotional effects of that one fateful event: while the guilty mother who lived refuses to passionately love again, the daughter who was betrayed fights heaven and hell- in the name of love- just to live again.
According to Dictionary.com freedom means “the state of being uncontrolled by another, or at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint.” Freedom. What does freedom mean to you? Even though freedom means the state of being uncontrolled by another, or at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint, I believe that freedom means being able to accomplish what you desire and when you desire it without anyone saying anything, by reason of the comparison and contrast of our society and the society in the book Anthem by Ayn Rand, the negation of the word freedom, and synonyms of the word freedom. I believe that you should accept the consequences of the actions you take when you have your “freedom” as well.
Marie, who is a product of an abusive family, is influenced by her past, as she perceives the relationship between Callie and her son, Bo. Saunders writes, describing Marie’s childhood experiences, “At least she’d [Marie] never locked on of them [her children] in a closet while entertaining a literal gravedigger in the parlor” (174). Marie’s mother did not embody the traditional traits of a maternal fig...
It is strange that two of the most prominent artists of the Harlem Renaissance could ever disagree as much as or be as different as Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright. Despite the fact that they are the same color and lived during the same time period, they do not have much else in common. On the one hand is Hurston, a female writer who indulges in black art and culture and creates subtle messages throughout her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. On the other hand is Wright, who is a male writer who demonstrates that whites do not like black people, nor will they ever except for when they are in the condition “…America likes to see the Negro live: between laughter and tears.” Hurston was also a less political writer than Wright. When she did write politically, she was very subtle about stating her beliefs.
So often, the old adage, "History always repeats itself," rings true due to a failure to truly confront the past, especially when the memory of a period of time sparks profoundly negative emotions ranging from anguish to anger. However, danger lies in failing to recognize history or in the inability to reconcile the mistakes of the past. In her novel, Beloved, Toni Morrison explores the relationship between the past, present and future. Because the horrors of slavery cause so much pain for slaves who endured physical abuse as well as psychological and emotional hardships, former slaves may try to block out the pain, failing to reconcile with their past. However, when Sethe, one of the novel's central characters fails to confront her personal history she still appears plagued by guilt and pain, thus demonstrating its unavoidability. Only when she begins to make steps toward recovery, facing the horrors of her past and reconciling them does she attain any piece of mind. Morrison divides her novel into three parts in order to track and distinguish the three stages of Sethe approach with dealing with her personal history. Through the character development of Sethe, Morrison suggests that in order to live in the present and enjoy the future, it is essential to reconcile the traumas of the past.
In her novel Beloved, Toni Morrison explores the paradoxical nature of love both as a dangerous presence that promises suffering and a life-giving force that gives the strength to proceed; through the experiences of the run-away slave Sethe. The dangerous aspect of love is revealed through the comments of Paul D and Ella regarding the motherly love of Sethe towards her children. Sethe's deep attachment to her children is deemed dangerous due to their social environment which evidently promises that the loved one of a slave will be hurt. On the other hand, love is portrayed as a sustaining force that allows Sethe to move on with her life. All the devastating experiences Sethe endures do not matter due to the fact that she must live for her children. Although dangerous, Sethe's love finally emerges as the prevalent force that allows her to leave the past behind and move on with her life.
This shepherd boy had been clambering around the clefts and gullies of a rock face on Wadi Qumran, north of the Dead Sea hoping to find one of his lost lambs. Thinking that it could have taken refuge in a cave he threw stones at the opening. He heard a jar break, became fearful and ran to fetch his fellow tribesmen. What they discovered were written scrolls of ancient papyrus, stuffed in jars and wrapped in linen. The Bedouins thought that they could make money on the black market in Bethlehem so sold them for a few shekels. A bundle of four of these scrolls was purchased by “the Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, Yeshue Samuel who then stored them in St. Marks Monastery”. (Albright, 1954, 403)