Denver -- Death almost doesn't exist. It is not the death itself, but the symbolism of the person leaving (meaning they've stopped loving/being able to love her) that matters. For Denver, who has grown up through adolescence with a sibling who is literally a ghost, "leaving" is worse than death. Her worst experiences have been learning that her brothers are absent and that Baby Suggs is "gone" (145). To her, Paul D taking her mother away would be worse than killing her mother. She requires proximity, a display of love. Without it, she doesn't exist. She labels death a "skipped meal compared to" the feeling that she is "dissolving into nothing" because she "has no world" if she has to "put up with another leaving, another trick" (145).
Beloved -- Beloved's view of death matches Denver's. Beloved is incapable of seeing death as finality (she came back to life!), but the fact that murder symbolizes a pushing away out of life, out of proximity, is what matters. Even though she knows she is literally "beloved," and so the love is not the issue (her mother killed her out of love, not out of hate, and it seems she recognizes this), perhaps she (and Denver?) might almost be more content with slave life with her mother's full attention and proximity than freedom without it. (The issue is that neither of them understand that slavery means no control over this proximity, over this ability to communicate and love.)
Sethe -- Death is safety, because it is a state past exploitation. She is content (well...what is the right word...forced? willing? determined?) to try to kill her offspring ("the parts of her that were precious and fine and beautiful" (192)) to put them somewhere "where they'd be safe" (193) because she "couldn't let...any of em live under schoolteacher" (192). But, at the same time, she is unsurprised that the past (represented by Beloved's ghost) can come back to haunt, that Beloved could have come back from the dead. If she truly believes that her children would be safer in death than in life, but she believes that communication between the living and the dead is possible, what is there to keep her from thinking that her children might be equally injured in death than in life? (see Schoolteacher: further discussion)
Schoolteacher -- Death is unprofitable, so it should be avoided at all costs. Since it is impossible to exploit someone in death, people are something "you were paid to bring back alive" (174).
As we said in class today, Sethe understands this perspective, which strangely legitimizes the murder. If Sethe is willing to trade even mortal injury for exploitation, she apparently values her children's ability for self-respect above their well-being. Is she successful in allowing them to maintain self-respect? To be unexploited? She certainly thinks "it worked" (194). But her children (except Beloved), and seemingly everyone else, value the community's respect as well as their own self-respect...which is the source of some of the mother/daughter tension between Denver and Sethe. So, in a sense, this scene is so tough because Sethe exploits her own children, but for their own sake, so that they will not be exploited in a way she doesn't want them to be.
Baby Suggs -- Death is a hateful manifestation of the suffering of slave life that she has resigned herself to and come to expect after having a seventh child taken away from her (163). As a slave mother, she did not expect that her family members (especially Halle) would stay alive: "she had been prepared for [the news of Halle's death] better than she had for his life" (163). Of all the characters, she is perhaps the most veteraned at death (if that's possible), having had to deal with many in her life. So when she encounters Sethe's situation, she reacts with a how-can-I-salvage-this-situation attitude rather than an oh-my-goodness-this-is-horrendous one. At the same time, I believe she cracks under the pressure of this situation because she never expected that someone would willingly inflict death on someone else they loved. Previously, it was only something to be avoided, because it was part of the injustice inflicted by an unjust system, just like taking children away from their mother.
Stamp Paid -- Death is something to be saved from. He thinks he "saved" Denver from death, so therefore death is bad and should never be desired (208). In this way, his viewpoint is like that of the slave catchers. But, through working toward an understanding of postmortem Baby Suggs, he is also the first outside of 124 who begins to try to understand Sethe's perspective that death might be a better option than life in some cases, even if he's not willing to understand that perspective (212).
Paul D -- Death is something that can be obtained by completely ridding oneself of life. Paul D tries to beat the life out of Life, so that he can live in chain-gang Georgia without having to suffer the "flirt" of Life. However, his idea of death also incorporates safety ("only when [Life] was dead would they be safe" (128)), but he is referring to mental, not physical, safety (from "caring and looking forward, remembering and looking back" (128)). Like Sethe, Paul D believes that death is something that doesn't have to last forever. To him, life can come back, after it has "rolled over dead" (129) if enough hope is present.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
All the Lonely People vs. Run, Mourner, Run
Since we're reading The Symposium in Philosophy, which is all about love, I've been thinking a lot recently about definitions of love. So it's interesting that my daily considerations of a new definition of love in Philosophy so nicely coincided with two different (but both relatable/realistic) depictions of love in these two short stories. I thought I'd try to break down the psychology of each in the context/language that we might use in Philosophy class. For some reason, the definition that Phaedrus presents of love in the context of two unequals, the lover and the beloved, works really well to understand what's going on in each of these short stories.
Traditionally, the "lover" instigates the relationship with the "beloved," who is the person with less power and acts in response to the lover's attentions. The lover should the older of the two, with more experience, and wants to teach the beloved something about how to be virtuous and how to love...because love is about striving to improve another person for their own good (thus the lover must be more experienced than the beloved so that this can be possible). And in Greek society, male-male relationships in this way were quite common: at least among the upper classes, these lover-beloved relationships formed schooling for youths after the equivalent of elementary school.
--------------------------------------------------
McPherson: All the Lonely People
Dennis holds an image of love as a relationship between two unequals. But he turns this idea somewhat on its head: he imagines that those being sought after (which he terms "the hunted," and would potentially parallel "the beloved") as the more powerful in the relationship than those he terms "hunters," who seemingly spend all their time sniveling after the attentions of the hunted. (As an aside, McPherson's terminology also turns biology on its head :D). Dennis wants to be one of the hunted. But perhaps Dennis' definition only concerns sex.
Taking a step back, we see that Dennis sees others suffering and has the uncommunicated capacity to feel pity (or disgust) for other people's social positions in society (like Alfred, Gloria, and even Gerald, perhaps) much more than many of the other people in the short story seem to. If Dennis had the hope that he could try to improve these people's virtue or cared for these people, he would have all the qualities necessary to be a fantastic lover, once he had gotten a little older.
Dennis's problem with himself is that, though he seems to have the capacity for love on a nonsexual level, he doesn't recognize this nonsexual capacity for love as a legitimate means for love. He wants himself to fill the role of the beloved, and initially refuses the attentions of those who hunt him. He is looking to be hunted by a different kind of hunter.
So perhaps this is the a coming of age story, in which Gerald fills the role of Dennis's potential role model, and in which Dennis begins to question his choice of role model. Perhaps Dennis is realizing that love is much more than sex; that, perhaps, love can be something other than sex, or that the true definition of love doesn't have to have anything to do with traditional, societal definitions of love. In fact, according to Plato, it shouldn't: the masses let their apetites and emotions rule over reason. This would make for a very loose reading of the closing line, "I began to wonder about the way I am." But then again, Dennis never says much about what he thinks about himself...he only says what he thinks about others...and it is from this that we gain knowledge about what he thinks about himself...and here he is questioning that...and I am reading into the heavy implications that Dennis's closing questioning has something to do with his sexuality.
--------------------------------------------------
Kenan: Run, Mourner, Run
Dean is clearly in the position of the beloved, a gay man like Dennis (well--Dennis is beginning to consider a possibility). But unlike Dennis, he is willing to accept the affections showered upon him by male lovers. In fact, he goes overboard: he plays their affections to his advantage. He is corrupted by being a beloved. Perhaps it is not his fault: the issue could be that he has never experienced a lover that really loved him in the sense that they wanted to help him improve as a person, and instead he has only encountered people who want sex. Or, perhaps, Dennis doesn't have the innate capacity for improvement.
So he has the opposite problem of Dennis. Dean has a plethora of sex, but what he really needs (wants?) is a relationship that provides him with something more than sex. In this context, it makes sense that he takes Terrell's offer to blackmail Raymond. Terrell speaks as a lover to Dean as the beloved, and Dean does not refuse the offer, because Terrell is doing something that can allow Dean to improve as an individual (well....okay....Dean's judgment is a little off on this one.....).
With this view of events, Dean's problem is that the very person he's blackmailing is the first person who loves him as a person. Dean says, "Don't nobody give a shit about me. My mama, maybe." And Ray responds, "Well, I wouldn't put it exactly like that." It is immediately after recalling this encounter that Dean wonders, for the first time, if he had "thought of...how he was to betray this mesmerizing man." Once the events actually take place, Dean realizes his mistake: the beloved can never be more powerful than the lover, because it is the lover who is in charge of the affections to which the beloved responds.
Dean becomes engaged, perhaps overengaged, in self-reflection. If we set the short stories side by side, Dean's thoughts are taking place at the time equivalent to what might be Dennis's thoughts about a week after his story is complete. As Dean thinks through, he is interestingly contemplating what he might have done as a person, what personal defects (never sexual) might have prevented him from gaining the fulfillment of a permanent lover who wants something more than sex. Like Dennis, perhaps, he has now recognized in the present (perhaps after his experience with Raymond?) that what goes into love is much more than sex.
Unfortunately, Dean's story closes with little hope. Dean doesn't seem to have too many qualities of a lover -- and he can't really develop them, because he has never been the beloved of a long-term lover who wants to improve him as an individual. Likewise, it's going to be pretty difficult for him to gain a lover. And while he might be the beloved of his mother, he is unable to pay back her affections...and he doesn't do the little she asks of him (to come inside for dinner), because he's lost in thought about the past. In many ways, this is the most depressing of the novels we have read thus far -- there is literally no way that Dean can improve his situation.
Traditionally, the "lover" instigates the relationship with the "beloved," who is the person with less power and acts in response to the lover's attentions. The lover should the older of the two, with more experience, and wants to teach the beloved something about how to be virtuous and how to love...because love is about striving to improve another person for their own good (thus the lover must be more experienced than the beloved so that this can be possible). And in Greek society, male-male relationships in this way were quite common: at least among the upper classes, these lover-beloved relationships formed schooling for youths after the equivalent of elementary school.
--------------------------------------------------
McPherson: All the Lonely People
Dennis holds an image of love as a relationship between two unequals. But he turns this idea somewhat on its head: he imagines that those being sought after (which he terms "the hunted," and would potentially parallel "the beloved") as the more powerful in the relationship than those he terms "hunters," who seemingly spend all their time sniveling after the attentions of the hunted. (As an aside, McPherson's terminology also turns biology on its head :D). Dennis wants to be one of the hunted. But perhaps Dennis' definition only concerns sex.
Taking a step back, we see that Dennis sees others suffering and has the uncommunicated capacity to feel pity (or disgust) for other people's social positions in society (like Alfred, Gloria, and even Gerald, perhaps) much more than many of the other people in the short story seem to. If Dennis had the hope that he could try to improve these people's virtue or cared for these people, he would have all the qualities necessary to be a fantastic lover, once he had gotten a little older.
Dennis's problem with himself is that, though he seems to have the capacity for love on a nonsexual level, he doesn't recognize this nonsexual capacity for love as a legitimate means for love. He wants himself to fill the role of the beloved, and initially refuses the attentions of those who hunt him. He is looking to be hunted by a different kind of hunter.
So perhaps this is the a coming of age story, in which Gerald fills the role of Dennis's potential role model, and in which Dennis begins to question his choice of role model. Perhaps Dennis is realizing that love is much more than sex; that, perhaps, love can be something other than sex, or that the true definition of love doesn't have to have anything to do with traditional, societal definitions of love. In fact, according to Plato, it shouldn't: the masses let their apetites and emotions rule over reason. This would make for a very loose reading of the closing line, "I began to wonder about the way I am." But then again, Dennis never says much about what he thinks about himself...he only says what he thinks about others...and it is from this that we gain knowledge about what he thinks about himself...and here he is questioning that...and I am reading into the heavy implications that Dennis's closing questioning has something to do with his sexuality.
--------------------------------------------------
Kenan: Run, Mourner, Run
Dean is clearly in the position of the beloved, a gay man like Dennis (well--Dennis is beginning to consider a possibility). But unlike Dennis, he is willing to accept the affections showered upon him by male lovers. In fact, he goes overboard: he plays their affections to his advantage. He is corrupted by being a beloved. Perhaps it is not his fault: the issue could be that he has never experienced a lover that really loved him in the sense that they wanted to help him improve as a person, and instead he has only encountered people who want sex. Or, perhaps, Dennis doesn't have the innate capacity for improvement.
So he has the opposite problem of Dennis. Dean has a plethora of sex, but what he really needs (wants?) is a relationship that provides him with something more than sex. In this context, it makes sense that he takes Terrell's offer to blackmail Raymond. Terrell speaks as a lover to Dean as the beloved, and Dean does not refuse the offer, because Terrell is doing something that can allow Dean to improve as an individual (well....okay....Dean's judgment is a little off on this one.....).
With this view of events, Dean's problem is that the very person he's blackmailing is the first person who loves him as a person. Dean says, "Don't nobody give a shit about me. My mama, maybe." And Ray responds, "Well, I wouldn't put it exactly like that." It is immediately after recalling this encounter that Dean wonders, for the first time, if he had "thought of...how he was to betray this mesmerizing man." Once the events actually take place, Dean realizes his mistake: the beloved can never be more powerful than the lover, because it is the lover who is in charge of the affections to which the beloved responds.
Dean becomes engaged, perhaps overengaged, in self-reflection. If we set the short stories side by side, Dean's thoughts are taking place at the time equivalent to what might be Dennis's thoughts about a week after his story is complete. As Dean thinks through, he is interestingly contemplating what he might have done as a person, what personal defects (never sexual) might have prevented him from gaining the fulfillment of a permanent lover who wants something more than sex. Like Dennis, perhaps, he has now recognized in the present (perhaps after his experience with Raymond?) that what goes into love is much more than sex.
Unfortunately, Dean's story closes with little hope. Dean doesn't seem to have too many qualities of a lover -- and he can't really develop them, because he has never been the beloved of a long-term lover who wants to improve him as an individual. Likewise, it's going to be pretty difficult for him to gain a lover. And while he might be the beloved of his mother, he is unable to pay back her affections...and he doesn't do the little she asks of him (to come inside for dinner), because he's lost in thought about the past. In many ways, this is the most depressing of the novels we have read thus far -- there is literally no way that Dean can improve his situation.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)