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Example research essay topic: Baby Suggs Paul D - 1,077 words

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... ownership took place, her bond with her children was complete. The escape from slavery did nothing more than intensify this bond. For the first time she felt she could love her children unreservedly and had a vision of true freedom: "Look like I loved em more after I got here. Or maybe I couldn't love 'em in Kentucky because they wasn't mine to love... A place where you could love anything you choose -- not to need permission for desire -- well now that was freedom" (Page 162).

Gender issues are also dominant in the story. Three of the four main characters are female, and it not only tells the story of an ex-slave but of a woman's life. Slavery is the cause of Sethe being in the situation she is. The bulk of the story deals with the relationship between a single mother (Sethe), her daughter (Denver) and a female stranger (Beloved). Sethe's relationship to Paul D is a source of contrast on the three women.

Sethe and Paul D could symbolize the joint potential of a people united no longer held apart from slavery and a possible solution to heal everyone's pain. The freedom to love one another. The Afro-American spirituality reflected in the novel by Baby Suggs's character indicates the responsibility African-American women have in empowering and morally developing and sustaining the community. Such activities are showed by Baby Suggs who preaches in the clearing: "A wide-open place cut deep in the woods nobody knew for what" (Page 87). Here she urges the community to love themselves as proof of their love of god and delivers a very powerful monologue: " 'Here', she said, 'in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass.

Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They do not love your eyes; they'd just as soon pick em out.

No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flat it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty.

Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face, 'cause they don't love that either. You got to love it, you!

And no, they ain't in love with your mouth... This is flesh that needs to be loved" (Page 88). Baby Suggs clearly questions the racial inferiority implied by slavery and stresses a better life on earth, which must come from the community and a re-evaluation of the physical black self. To love one self and one another. This sermon of love challenges the perversion of Christianity which had been used to further exploit the blacks and justify slavery. Self-acceptance and love are perhaps the most important points of the novel.

For people whose negative up bringing and indoctrination has associated blackness with every form of evil and ugliness, self-love is difficult to achieve. Appreciation of one self and moral reconstruction can be achieved only with a rejection of all that had destroyed black identity in slavery. The author is attempting to show the roots of this negativity in order to overcome it. The story revolves around the scars and the psychological state of African-Americans during and after slavery. Beloved materializes when Seth's plantation past re-emerges with a visit from a fellow ex-slave, Paul D. He offers her love and the possibility of a new life.

This triggers Beloved incarnation who is extremely jealous to be recognized as the proof of her mother's deed. The signs indicating that the young woman was Seth's child materializing in flesh and blood were many, such as her name 'Beloved' and her weak neck: "Her neck, its circumference no wider than a parlor-service saucer, kept bending and her chin brushed the bit of lace edging her dress" (Page 50). The sudden emergency Sethe experienced as she noticed Beloved, remind the reader of Sethe giving birth. Beloved's struggle to reclaim connection with her mother, could symbolize their struggle for freedom by reclaiming their past.

In order to never forget their enslaved history and confrontation could be the catalyst to growth: "She had an emergency that unmanageable. She never made the outhouse. Right in front of its door she had to lift her skirts, and the water she voided was endless... No, more like flooding the boat when Denver was born" (Page 51). Denver had never left 124 Bluestone Road and never encountered white people until forced to seek help from her community where she recognizes the danger that Beloved poses to Sethe.

She begins to grow by attending to her mother and Beloved as if they were her children. Later when in the house of Bodwin a pro anti-slavery activist she sees a small statue of a black boy kneeling and with his mouth wide open to be used as a money box: "Painted across the pedestal he knelt on were the words 'At Yo Service' " (Page 255). Here she realizes that help from this man who owns this ornament is helping to perpetuate racism and that her emancipation is only possible with the help of the black community. Although this novel is full of symbolism and metaphors, the ghost of Sethe's dead baby could reflect the author's beliefs in the paranormal. Anyone who enters the house on Bluestone Road actually witnesses the presence of this ghost which may symbolize slavery's "re memories" that haunt Sethe and her people throughout the story. All of the characters try to repress their memories, which need to be faced and exorcised as you would a ghost.

The end of this novel emphasizes the importance of the community and the individual's search for self which characterizes the survival struggle of Black Americans. Sethe is destroyed by her memories and her isolation with the ghost of Beloved, (representing the memories of slavery) until the community intervenes and saves her. The black community and their cohesiveness and harmony is an essential factor to further the healing of 244 years of slavery and another 133 years of political abuse. The author has successfully developed a novel which represents the hopes, aspirations, and historical memories of black America in 273 pages.

Special attention has been placed on black women, which struggle under a double burden: that of racial prejudice and that of a male-centered society. Bibliography:


Free research essays on topics related to: paul d, baby suggs, black community, wide open, love one

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