The Consequences Of Alienation In Toni Morrison's Sweet Home

Furthermore, Janie had also gained freedom from her late grandmother, Nanny, whom had raised Janie and forced her into a marriage with Logan. After Joe’s death Janie was able accept that “she hated her grandmother and had hidden it from herself all these years under a cloak of pity...She hated the old women who had twisted her so in the name of love” (Hurston 89). Nanny had expectations and plans for Janie’s life and with the death of Joe she was able to free herself from the idea of love that Nanny had implemented on her from such a young age. Nanny had manipulated Janie’s perception of love so that she would find it necessary to

Put me down easy, Janie, Ah’m a cracked plate” (Hurston 20). Nanny is successfully able to convince her granddaughter through her own traumatic experiences and make her feel “sympathy” as she tells Janie she doesn’t want her life to be spoiled like her own life was. At first, Janie refuses to marry Logan Killicks. Nanny being the older one, defends herself by saying “put me down easy” since she can no longer care for Janie and only her wish is for Janie to get married and be protected from the dangers she and her own daughter faced. By calling herself a “cracked plate” Nanny further elucidates that she went through many hardships in her own life and wants to do the right thing for her granddaughter by

Once Ellen’s grandmother wins custody of her, she is forced to leave the family she could actually see love from to her grandmother who hates her, although never truly stated, we believe the cause because of the similar features of Ellen’s and her father’s faces, Ellen then again sees herself as better as the care given of her. Her grandmother soon dies after becoming ill. Ellen has battled with who has the power in her life and her actions, when her grandmother becomes the caregiver of Ellen she tries to take the power from her. Ellen does get her wish when her grandmother dies and she takes the control again. Her father dies as well from his addiction. “When I was little, I would think of ways to kill my daddy.” (Gibbons 1.)

This even caused her to separate herself from the only world she knew her family. Ultimately resulting in her death. In Margaret Atwood’s short story, she asserts that being discriminated and isolated causes the narrator to have deep mental issues that lead to signs of depression through the protagonist’s unorthodox way of accepting her fate without any hesitation to prevent her life being taken away. In this story, the narrator has been lead to believe that she has no part in her community. Throughout her life, she has been isolated by her entire town even by those who she called family.

Sethe couldn’t imagine the living of her children that she endured instead she had to live with the memories of the killing of her children, the memories of how her children could have been living right now with the pain she is going through. not like mr. Bowdoin who put his good memory in the yard of 124 instead she decides to live with these memories to protect her memories and her kids. but the memories however never go away but they keep coming back to her in 124 and sweet’s home and thats the pain of her memories. when Sethe Reunites with Beloved she is unwilling and unable to have the thught of Beloved’s place in her home and her mind. and the help from Denver to help Sethe to take care of Beloved.

This theme is subtly shown throughout the story, but becomes more apparent after the main event, the slaughter. After Date Bed is presumed missing, Mud, despite the fact that she is not of She-S blood, shows concern for her friend and adopted family member throughout the story – “It is just as well that Mud’s thoughts can’t be heard because what she is thinking is, “I’m the one who loves her. None of you loves her as I do,” and the uselessness of her love arouses her to such a pitch of anguish that she thinks of returning to the plain and searching for Date Bed on her own” (Gowdy, 105). The other She-S’s feel the same way as well – She-Snorts states, “I would not go to The Safe Place…knowing that Date Bed might still be alive and lost” (Gowdy, 249). If the She-S’s didn’t care for their family as much, they would have abandoned all thought of Date Bed and wouldn’t bother searching for her.

Sethe and her daughter are isolated from the community due to Sethe’s killing of her youngest child, an action Sethe justifies as “put[ting] my babies where they’d be safe” but one which Paul D sees as a love “too thick” (Morrison 193). Her misjudgment fits Aristotle’s description of the fatal flaw. The trauma she experienced as a slave made her justifiably determined to not let her children return to slavery, but her panicked actions resulted in her isolation the community. As her isolation is caused by herself rather than an external force such as slavery, she is a fitting model for a Greek tragedy protagonist. Sethe’s “thick love” continues to linger after the killing, as she says she wanted to die alongside her youngest child after she killed her so she can continue to take care of her daughter, and states “[Beloved] is mine” after her realization that Beloved is her daughter (Morrison 241).

Even after her separation from her husband, Alhaji Teller lusts hopelessly after her but she refuses to give in preferring to maintain her dignity. In The Still Born (1984), Zaynab Alkali in treating the theme of husband infidelity, and abandonment, portrays it as a great challenge to female assertion and survival. Li takes advantage of that period of her life by acquiring more knowledge. This made her a better and more responsible person. Zaria resigns herself to her work finding solace and

The psychological recovery of the protagonist Sethe happens due to the ritual of healing in the form of her “rememory” and confrontation with the repressed past. Morrison depicts in the novel both the psychological and physical pain of Sethe to overcome the unspeakable horrors of slavery conceptualised in the form of the ghost of her dead daughter Beloved. She fails to confront her past shredded with the crime of killing her own daughter to save her from slavery and the memory frequently haunts her in the form of a ghost since “anything dead coming back to life hurts” (Morrison, Beloved

Rebekka’s sickness is fetching danger to the security of the “three unmastered women” and “belonging to no one, became wild game for anyone” (56). Lina feared that the death of their mistress will make them more vulnerable as “female and illegal, they would be interpolers, squatters, it they stayed on after Mistress died, subject to purchase, hire, assault, abduction, exile” (56). Even Rebekka also realised in her illnessthat “the smithy’s value was without price when he cured Sorrow of whatever has struck her down” and in her deathbed prayed God to enable Florens to find out the blackman so that “he could repeat that miracle(95).His seconding coming was

In my visual, I have incorporated black silhouettes of the characters in the poem as they are unknown and we are only being told that a mother is being destroyed by the birth of her three children. “Someone she loved once passed by- too late” this quote says how she has changed to someone who only lives because of her children. Her ex- boyfriend has been lost amongst her role as a mother and she has become some different until she meets a past lover. The theme ‘loss of identity’ is explored in this stanza because this unknown woman doesn’t know who she is anymore or how to think about being a

Although Hood has the grandmother constantly internalize her feelings towards the child’s late mother, Hood gives no indication that she ever communicated those feelings openly with the deceased woman or to the child and it is as if the grandmother would have the same bond form between herself and the two generations of women that she has formed with the dog she clearly loves, and in the same unspoken manner or if that simpatico of feeling does not result, then the fault must be in the stars and it is simply a matter of destiny that the child will follow her mother as the mother followed the grandmother each of them doomed to make life altering mistakes (71). The grandmother is capable of great courage and sacrifice, but neither of the other

On top of that, her brothers Eteokles and Polyneices killed each other in battle, over a land dispute. So, it is fair to say that she has suffered through tragic loss, and unfortunate events that have been far out of her control. Antigone is a character that is trying to find the good in a world that has constantly put her down. By burying one of her few remaining family members, she is attempting to have a positive, lasting effect on the world, something that no one in her family has been able to do. Although Antigone might not have handled her conversation with her sister Ismene well, she does have a reason to be angry because she offers her sister a chance to bury Polyneices with her, so that they can both right something that has been wronged (43-47).