Beloved Chapter 1 PDF

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Summary on Chapter 1 of Belvoed by Toni Morrison...

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Chapter 1: Tuesday, October 23, 2018

10:33 PM

• 124 was spiteful (first sentence) • Sethe and Denver (daughter): only 2 victims ○ "Grandmother, baby suggs was dead and the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were 13 years old" (pg. 3) • Baby suggs: in a sickbed ○ Lay still ○ "suspended between the nastiness of life and the meanness of the dead, she couldn't get interested in leaving life or living it… her past had been like her present - intolerable- and since she knew death was anything but forgetfulness, she used the little energy left her for pondering color" (pg. 4) • "but what she got… was the one word that mattered" (pg. 4) - Beloved • "We lucky this ghost is a baby" (pg. 4) • "…there was Sweet Home rolling, rolling, rolling out before her eyes, and although there was not a leaf on that farm that did not make her want to scream, it rolled itself out before her in shamless beauty. It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too." • Paul D: last of Sweet Home men ○ "peachstone skin; straigtbacked" • "If a Negro got leges he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up" • "it took her (sethe) a year oto choose… or trahsing on pallets eaten up with dreams of her. A year of yearning, when rape seemed the solitary gift of life." • "they were a twosome, saying "your daddy" and "Sweet Hom" in a way that made it

clear both belonged to them and not to her (Denver). That her own father's absense was not hers. Once the absence had belonged to Grandma bBaby… then it was her mother's absent husband. Now it was this haelnut stragner's absent friend (Paul D) " • "How come everybody run off from Sweet Home can't stop talking about it? Look like if it was so sweet you would have stayed… comes back whether we want it to or not. She shivered a little." • Tree: beat while she was pregnant and took her milk (pg 17) • To Denver, the baby ghost was the "only other company she had" after brothers ran away...