Eyes Wide Open We all learned in our history classes that slavery was a bad mistake that our ancestors made, but do we really know how awful it was? In Beloved, by Toni Morrison, Sethe is an independent woman who would do anything for her children. She escapes slavery and moves in with her mother-in-law in Ohio. When her slave owner and the police come years later looking to bring back Sethe and her children for work, she tries to kill her children and herself in an attempt to save them from the physical and mental trauma that slavery shoves on them. In this novel, slaves are “less than human” according to the majority of the white race. Slave owners take time to determine their “worth” in the working world, they are forced to mate to make
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At Sweet Home, a farm running on slave hands, Schoolteacher is the white owner often seen walking around with a notebook. Sethe looks back and says, “It was a book about us [the slaves] but we didn’t know that right away. We just thought it was his manner to ask us questions” (44). Like a piece of meat in a grocery store, Schoolteacher records the slaves’ characteristics and their price. No human deserves to have a price laid on them. African Americans were “dehumanized” inside and outside the work place, even after the Civil War. Paul D recalls …show more content…
In this story, African Americans are constantly separated from their loved ones. It is normal for them to not know their parents or ancestors or even their own children. It is bluntly stated that, “Anybody Baby Suggs [Sethe’s mother-in-law] knew, let alone loved, who hadn’t run off or been hanged, got rented out, loaned out, bought up, brought back, stored up, mortgaged, won, stolen or seized” (27-28). They have no control over where or when they will be moved around the state. Slave owners do not care whether they have a family to take care of because to them, slaves are just property. Humans are supposed to stay with their families to learn from them and create an inseparable bond. To Paul D and many other victims, loving anyone too much was risky. He thinks, “For a used-to-be-slave woman [Sethe] to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love” (54). This way, if something is to happen to them, which it very likely can, it will not affect Sethe as much. She would not have grown to love them so much so if when they are gone it will not hurt her as much. No person should have to limit their emotions toward family or friends because of the possibility of them disappearing just as quickly as they
At Sweet Home, a farm running on slave hands, Schoolteacher is the white owner often seen walking around with a notebook. Sethe looks back and says, “It was a book about us [the slaves] but we didn’t know that right away. We just thought it was his manner to ask us questions” (44). Like a piece of meat in a grocery store, Schoolteacher records the slaves’ characteristics and their price. No human deserves to have a price laid on them. African Americans were “dehumanized” inside and outside the work place, even after the Civil War. Paul D recalls …show more content…
In this story, African Americans are constantly separated from their loved ones. It is normal for them to not know their parents or ancestors or even their own children. It is bluntly stated that, “Anybody Baby Suggs [Sethe’s mother-in-law] knew, let alone loved, who hadn’t run off or been hanged, got rented out, loaned out, bought up, brought back, stored up, mortgaged, won, stolen or seized” (27-28). They have no control over where or when they will be moved around the state. Slave owners do not care whether they have a family to take care of because to them, slaves are just property. Humans are supposed to stay with their families to learn from them and create an inseparable bond. To Paul D and many other victims, loving anyone too much was risky. He thinks, “For a used-to-be-slave woman [Sethe] to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love” (54). This way, if something is to happen to them, which it very likely can, it will not affect Sethe as much. She would not have grown to love them so much so if when they are gone it will not hurt her as much. No person should have to limit their emotions toward family or friends because of the possibility of them disappearing just as quickly as they