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Perspective

Throughout Beloved, Morrison uses perspective and contextual shifts to affect how the reader (and other characters) views certain characters. When I think about this, one major example jumps out at me because of its ability to incite an emotional response within the reader: Sethe’s case of infanticide. In this case, the reader gets to see the story as seen by different people: Sethe herself and Schoolteacher/the slavecatcher (also from the newspaper clipping). By providing multiple points of views, Morrison gives the reader the opportunity to see Sethe in different lights. Sethe’s actions can be viewed through a lens of preservation and love, when analyzing her situation with all of the context in mind. When viewing the scene as seen by the slave catcher and Schoolteacher, the reader can fully take in the callous and evil threats/way of life that comes with living under slavery. As a third person ‘fly on the wall’, oftentimes it can be hard to fully immerse yourself with a character’s
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Blog Post

Janie’s first experience with a relationship gave her a bleak outlook on the future of her love life. As a young girl, she was plucked out of believing a relationship should be about love, and forced into Nanny’s cynical, yet arguably realistic, ideal relationship with Logan Killicks. Being forced to do manual labor, being underappreciated, and not being attracted to Logan only further fueled Janie’s hopes for a better life. The culmination of these feelings led her to run off with Joe Starks, leaving Logan behind. One could view this as Janie simply taking advantage of Joe’s offer to get away from Logan’s harsh treatment of her, but this is probably not the case. Janie likes Joe’s ambition and confidence. However, over time as the initial spark starts to fade, Janie sees Joe’s true self, and does not like what she sees, nor how he treats her. Thus when he dies, Janie feels no remorse, and it is only cultural/societal pressures forcing her to pretend that she does. While promising at f
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Arguably the most important sign of the narrator’s development throughout the story is how he bases his own identity and how conscious he is in doing so. At different points in the book, his self-identity rests on different factors, such as how those in power view him, how his peers view him, and ultimately how he views himself. At the beginning of the book, he openly seeks approval from people such as the white leaders in his town, performing a speech for them. Regardless of their disinterested responses, the narrator pushes through literal pain, because he can only have self-worth if the white men find value in his words. At this point, the narrator believes the only path towards success is pleasing other people, and the narrator’s naivety only fuels this need to gratify others. Similarly (yet differently), when the narrator finds his place as a professional speaker for the Brotherhood, he still bases his self-worth based on the responses from the people; he still relies on others to
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How genuine is the Brotherhood’s cause?

We are first introduced to the Brotherhood when the narrator is given the opportunity to speak in front of crowds for the first time since he was young. He speaks about real issues facing the black population all throughout America, and he believes he has finally found his purpose. That is, until the Brotherhood takes a disliking towards his style of speeches and intervenes. At his most successful speech, he decides to go off-script, and aims for an emotional response from the crowd, unlike the Brotherhood’s supposed factual, straight-to-the-point style that the narrator is supposed to take on. While he is very successful in connecting with the crowd, afterwards, it is shown the Brotherhood did not like the path he was going down. Shortly after this speech, he is sent away to talk about women’s issues (out of the blue), for what he knows to be fabricated reasons. With that being said, why would the Brotherhood reassign him when he was doing better than ever? If the Brotherhood really w
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Autonomy in Invisible Man

Does the narrator in “Invisible Man” have total autonomy in his life? This is a very loaded question, so I want to analyze the narrator’s role throughout the book, up to what we have read so far (chapter 12). Very quickly we learn that the narrator is not taken seriously by white people -- think back to when the narrator was trying to give his speech, but he was met with inattentive ears -- but rather as a tool for their own entertainment. While the narrator doesn’t realize this, it is painfully clear to the reader that he is only a cog in the machine, going where they want him to go, doing what they want him to do. Moving on to the narrator’s life in college, we get an in depth view on what the narrator ‘is supposed to do’, his path, per se. When he takes Mr. Norton for a drive through some of the lesser known parts of campus, he receives a sharp correction from Mr. Bledsoe, explicitly telling him to strictly follow the predefined path. As a result, the narrator is shipped off to Ne
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What's up with the white people in Native Son?

In Richard Wright's Native Son, a primary aspect of Bigger's journey/life/story is how he interacts with white people and vice versa. Thinking about it, I can hardly think of any interactions between Bigger and a white person that can be considered 'normal'. The white people are either talking down to him condescendingly, taking advantage of him, or treating him like a novelty, with one possible exception (I'll get to that lat er) At first, it may be easy to discount this question with 'Well, they're just racist', and sure, many of the white characters in the book are unequivocally racist (namely all the police, people in the justice system, politicians, etc.), but what about the characters that are apparently not racist (or at least openly racist), even 'anti-racist'? Let's think about Mr. Dalton; while it may seem like he was just Bigger's employer, something wasn't completely right about him. He felt the need to prove that he wasn
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