Beloved

The first thirty or forty pages of Beloved were confusing to me, because the focus of attention would switch from characters or time would change between paragraphs without telling the reader. This stylistic choice made it very difficult to start reading the novel for me. The example of this that comes to mind for me occurs on the bottom of page 28, after Paul D and Sethe have just finished having sex. “Actually it was a good feeling-not wanting her. Twenty-five years and blip! The kind of thing Sixo would do-like the time he arranged a meeting with Patsy the Thirty-Mile Women.”
Following this statement is a page-long description of Sixo and his attempts to sleep with a woman who lived a considerable distance away. I failed to understand how Paul D equates his sex with Sethe with the sex Sixo had with Patsy. They both couplings had been anticipated for a long time before they came to fruition but it is never said that Sixo suddenly felt antipathy toward his lady after they had done the deed. Perhaps he did when he told the rest of Sweet Home and the author doesn’t feel the need to mention it. Either way the novel felt especially sporadic in it’s beginning, and reminded me of the novel “Go Down, Moses” which is about relations between blacks and whites. The idea that time is cyclical and that it hardly matters whom specifically is involved in events is prominent in both books.
The ghost in Beloved is different from the spirits in The Monk and Wuthering Heights in its character and presence. In Beloved the ghost has haunted 124 for as long as most of its’ residents have lived there. The ghost is like The Monk’s ghostly Nun or a stereotypical ghost in the beginning of the story by being angry, violent, and tethered to the sufferings of her life. On page 43 Sethe explains to Denver that she had not been praying when Denver had seen the dress hold her.
“I was talking about time. It’s so hard for me to believe in it. Some things go. Pass on. Some things stay. I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it’s not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it’s gone, but the place-the picture of it-stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don’t think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened.” In this passage, Sethe seems to be explaining the idea of ghosts without using the word. The concept of ghosts can be found in many different cultures and perhaps seethe has chanced upon the idea autonomously. Nearby Sethe then tells Denver that “Nothing ever dies”, and later Denver tells Sethe that she thinks “That baby has plans”, making the pages extremely foreshadowing of Beloved’s revival.