Occurrences that cannot be related to our scientific understanding or the laws of nature may also be defined as supernatural. The combination of fiction, horror, and romanticism that make up Gothic literature often lead to these paranormal events. Explaining the reason for this, a high school teacher stated, “Gothic literature aims to show that the fixed binary oppositions that operate in reality are actually a construct, and there lies a middle, blurred ground between what we like to think are neatly pigeonholed terms” (Gothic). Gothic fiction often dances between the concepts of life and death. Many people choose to believe that there is a definite line between the two. However, this specific genre blurs these dividing lines by introducing
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Morrison goes on to explain, “Full of a baby’s venom. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims… the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen years old - as soon as merely looking in the mirror shattered it… as soon as two tiny hand prints appeared in the cake” (3). Sethe’s choices from her past followed her for 18 years and affected her entire family and others around her. The supernatural element, the ghost, stands for her mistakes in the past and Morrison simultaneously begins to dissolve the fine line between the living and the …show more content…
During chapter 23, the point of view is at first Beloved’s perspective, but then changes to Beloved, Sethe and Denver all together. “Tell me the truth. Didn’t you come from the other side? Yes. I was on the other side” (Morrison 254). Here, it seems as if Sethe is asking Beloved questions about who she really is and where she came from. Beloved shows, in the chapter previous to 23, the “other side,” a dark, stuffy place, crowded with dead people and “men without skin.” The place she describes represents a hell or underworld or some place of the supernatural beings. However, when Beloved recounts the people piled on one another, many of them dead, and being given water to drink but only rocks to suck on, the dark and depressing place greatly resembles slave ships. Morrison uses this comparison to further make clear that slavery was nothing more than inhumane. She relates it to the supernatural in order to reveal that it goes against morality just as paranormal creatures resist the laws of
Morrison goes on to explain, “Full of a baby’s venom. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims… the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen years old - as soon as merely looking in the mirror shattered it… as soon as two tiny hand prints appeared in the cake” (3). Sethe’s choices from her past followed her for 18 years and affected her entire family and others around her. The supernatural element, the ghost, stands for her mistakes in the past and Morrison simultaneously begins to dissolve the fine line between the living and the …show more content…
During chapter 23, the point of view is at first Beloved’s perspective, but then changes to Beloved, Sethe and Denver all together. “Tell me the truth. Didn’t you come from the other side? Yes. I was on the other side” (Morrison 254). Here, it seems as if Sethe is asking Beloved questions about who she really is and where she came from. Beloved shows, in the chapter previous to 23, the “other side,” a dark, stuffy place, crowded with dead people and “men without skin.” The place she describes represents a hell or underworld or some place of the supernatural beings. However, when Beloved recounts the people piled on one another, many of them dead, and being given water to drink but only rocks to suck on, the dark and depressing place greatly resembles slave ships. Morrison uses this comparison to further make clear that slavery was nothing more than inhumane. She relates it to the supernatural in order to reveal that it goes against morality just as paranormal creatures resist the laws of