Toni morrison beloved quotes

For the formerly enslaved men and women in Beloved , there is no place in America free from the misery and trauma of violence. This particular geography of trauma leaves little room for escape or personal agency. When Paul D arrives at , Sethe dares for a moment, to imagine a future. Go ahead and count on something? This quote is less important for what it says than what it causes.

Sethe, Denver, and Paul D are walking home from the carnival. It represents their belief in the possibility of a future relatively unburdened by the past. Beloved walks out of the Ohio River, fully dressed, and makes her way to the front of The text provides no explanation. Indeed, none is needed. The figure of Beloved is the past made flesh, come to torment the present.

The text makes this clear. Not just work, kill or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn't like yourself anymore. Dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn't think it up. The best thing [Sethe] was, was her children. Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing". And if it didn't stay behind, well, you might have to stomp it out.

Slave life; freed life-every day was a test and a trial. Nothing could be counted on in a world where even when you were a solution you were a problem". Homework Online Study Guides. Contents Welcome! The 'better life' she believed she and Denver were living was simply not that other one" Page "For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love.

The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit; everything, just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one" Page "But [Sethe's] brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day" Page Regarding Baby Suggs: "Because slave life had 'busted her legs, back, head, eyes, hands, kidneys, womb and tongue,' she had nothing left to make a living with but her heart-which she put to work at once" Page Regarding Baby Suggs: "She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine.

They despise it" Page "Freeing yourself is one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another" Page Beloved: "I want you to touch me on the inside part and call me my name" Page "What for? And when she stepped foot on free ground she could not believe that Halle knew what she didn't; that Halle, who had never drawn one free breath, knew that there was nothing like it in this world" Page "So Denver took her mother's milk right along with the blood of her sister" Page "I was big, Paul D, and deep and wide and when I stretched out my arms all my children could get in between.

To get to a place where you could love anything you chose-not to need permission for desire-well now, that was freedom" Page Sethe: "Love is or it ain't. This here's all there is and all there needs to be" Page "Once, long ago, she was soft, trusting. But she had come to believe every one of Baby Suggs' last words" Page "Schoolteacher beat [Sixo] anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers-not the defined" Page "All of it is now it is always now there will never be a time when I am not crouching and watching others who are crouching too I am always crouching" Page "You are my Beloved You are mine You are mine You are mine" Page "Everything rested on Garner being alive.

This ain't a battle; it's a rout" Page "That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing" Page "The future was sunset; the past something to leave behind. It was the jungle whitefolks planted in them. And it grew. It spread. In, through and after life, it spread, until it invaded the whites who had made it.

Touched them every one. Changed and altered them. Made them bloody, silly, worse than even they wanted to be, so scared were they of the jungle they had made. The screaming baboon lived under their own white skin; the red gums were their own. With the other he touches her face. You are. He lets me look good long as I feel bad. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love.

The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one. Fire and brimstone all right, but hidden in lacy groves. Listening to the doves in Alfred, Georgia, and having neither the right nor the permission to enjoy it because in that place mist, doves, sunlight, copper dirt, moon - everything belonged to the men who had the guns.

Little men, some of them, big men too, each one of whom he could snap like a twig if he wanted to. Men who knew that their manhood lay in their guns and were not even embarrassed by the knowledge that without fox would laugh at them. And these "men" who made even vixen laugh could, if you let them, stop you from hearing doves or loving moonlight.

So you protected yourself and loved small. Picked the tiniest stars out of the sky to own; lay down with head twisted in order to see the loved one over the rim of the trench before you slept. Stole shy glances at her between the trees at chain-up. Glass blades, salamanders, spiders, woodpeckers, beetles, a kingdom of ants. Anything bigger wouldn't do.

A woman, a child, a brother - a big love like that would split you wide open in Alfred, Georgia. He knew exactly what she meant: to get to a place where you could love anything you chose - not to need permission for desire - well now, THAT was freedom. Each one enters like a prima donna, convinced its performance is the reason the world has people in it.

Welcome back. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. He lets me look good long as I feel bad. Each one enters like a prima donna, convinced its performance is the reason the world has people in it. Listening to the doves in Alfred, Georgia, and having neither the right nor the permission to enjoy it because in that place mist, doves, sunlight, copper dirt, moon - everything belonged to the men who had the guns.

Toni morrison beloved quotes

Glass blades, salamanders, spiders, woodpeckers, beetles, a kingdom of ants. Anything bigger wouldn't do. A woman, a child, a brother - a big love like that would split you wide open in Alfred, Georgia. He knew exactly what she meant: to get to a place where you could love anything you chose - not to need permission for desire - well now, THAT was freedom.

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