agenda
• Prepare for Tuesday: assign chapters. Fill out
the question for your chapter. Read over your
chapter and identify important images,
symbols and signs
• Today: Discussion of chapter 19. Braided pov
here we jumpr from Stamp to Sethe- parallel
• Journeys
• Metaphor: jungle under every black skin
Chapter 19: Stamp Paid
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p. 200 Why does he feel bad?
“Pride Goeth before the Fall?” 202
Where does he go and why? 203
What’s with the voices around the house?
red ribbon (213)
Origin of his name? (Wife) 218
234 White people believed that whatever the
manners, under every dark skin was a jungle.
Sethe
• Shift Pov: Sethe (203-208)
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What is the symbolism of the Ice skating?
Nobody saw them falling
What is the click? 207
P. 222 (her view of Paul D?)
• On page 226: Who is Sethe talking to and why?
What story is retold here?
• Internal monologue; to Beloved, defending her
actions
What do we learn about the night of their escape
233?
Baby Suggs (208-211)
• What happened to her after “the Misery?”
– She was going to bed to think about the color of
things
– They came in her yard…
– “One or the other might have saved her, but
beaten up by the claims of both, she went to bed”
– (212
Jungle Metaphor
• Slavery dehumanizes and degrades everyone:
• The jungle the whites have planted has taken
root and has spread to themselves as well.
Agenda
• Turn in paragraph on jungle metaphor
• Get in groups- decide how you will present
your section (chunks-every sentence, every
two sentences? Choral voice on repeated
words?
• Group 7…I have a script for you to follow- see
me.
• Thesis and bullet points of main ideas due Fri.
In-class paragraph 10 pts
• Stamp Paid's meditation about the jungle in blacks and
whites.
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• What is the “jungle” referred to by Stamp Paid? Tie this in
with the references to blacks as animals (School-teacher's
observations, reactions to Sethe's act of murder, etc.), the
white people's inhumanity, and Suggs's sermons.
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2 pts. Topic sentence
1 pt: speaker/thinker
4 pts literary devices
3 pts. commentary
Quick writes 10 pts
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2 pts. Topic sentence
1 pt: speaker/thinker
4 pts use of literary devices
3 pts. commentary
Stream of consciousness
• Associated with The Modernist movement
• stream of consciousness is a form of
interior monologue
• Meant to represent the process of thought.
• Free association of images and emotions
Hearing the voices
• 1. Present as interior monologue
• 2 Tell us what new information these
memories and thoughts have given us.
Middle Passage
• sections of the novel, where Beloved relatess
the trauma of her death with the horrors of
the slave ships. This is generally interpreted as
Beloved "rememorying" aspects of her racial
heritage.
Sethe
– 1. P. 236 Beginning of chapter to p.237 “Think
what spring will bring…”
– 2. P. 238 “First beating I took--p.239 “I can tell it to
you.”
Denver
– 3 p. 242 Beg. To 243 Nelson Lord made me
– 4 p. 246 bottom of page” Grandma Baby…to end
Beloved
– 5. 248 1st para.
– 6 .251 “ I am standing in the rain-252 I want to join.
• Group 7 Chorus (3 people) Chapter 23
– Whole thing
Stream of consciousness
• P251
• What are the important images in this?
• What themes do they relate to?
– Memory of earrings that her mother used to play with
her
– Desire not to be separate from Sethe, but part of her
(“her face is mine.”
– Iron collar-collective slave imagery-ships
– 60 million slaves died on the journey from Africa to
America
– Hot thing
– Men with no skin
How are these four chapters linked?
• motif of "mine," which reflects their strong
love, their desperate need, and a dangerous
desire to possess the other person.
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Blended stream of consciousness
• The three stream-of-consciousness monologues
(Sethe's, Denver's, and Beloved’s) are followed by
a lyrical chapter in which all three voices
intermingle. In a famous phrase, Morrison calls
them "unspeakable thoughts, unspoken”.
• Three voices blended together into one
• Identity has merged
• Ownership: She is mine, She is Mine, She is mine.
Chapter 24
• Paul D’s memories of what happened
• Sequence of events
• P. 258: He can no longer separate his strategy
for closing off his heart and surviving.
• Family
P. 264-how has tense shifted and why?
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Present tense to make the memory more vivid
Sequence of events….
Glance through last couple pages
Round Robin
Paul D 267
• After being captured he hears his price
– $900.00
– Fears about his Manhood continue. He is not sure
if he was ever really a man, or only acted like one
because Garner taught him how. After 25 years,
he is still uncertain of his masculinity and worth as
a human being.
ch. 25:Stamp Paid
• 275
• End of part 2
• Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?
Part 3
• In Part Three the relationship among the three
women at 124 deteriorates as Beloved begins to
devour everything, including (in a figurative
sense) her mother.
• Why does the community now come to Sethe's
assistance after shunning her for 18 years?
Ch 26: Themes
Motherhood
Effects of the past on the present
Community
memory
What quotes do you have?
• Read them to the class
• Why are they significant?
Motherhood and Past
• 284-285 How is the imagery of Sethe wasting
away symbolic?
Motherhood
On Page 286 Denver saw “themselves beribboned,
decked-out, limp and starving but locked in a love
that wore everybody out.”
How does this love relate to the final stream of
consciousness chapter? How do the references
“your face is my face”, “ a hot thing” and references
to “chewing and swallowing” relate to theme of
motherhood and past effects of slavery?
Community
• What does this novel say about isolation versus
community?
• Why do the women come to Sethe’s defense and
why?
• Earlier in the book, Ella tells Stamp Paid that Sethe
was her friend until she “showed her self.” Why the
change in heart at the end? Why is she the one to
lead the women to 124?
• p 302: Ella didn’t like past errors taking posssession
of the present. Why
Other women?
• Lady Jones
• Janey Wagon
agenda
• Collect thesis statements: make sure you have
a copy for yourself to work on this weekend
• Crash course John Green video
• Epilogue: Is it a story to pass on or not?
• Quick write/share
• How does ending resolve the issues presented
in the beginning?
Topic Sentence
• In this quote from Stamp Paid, he is saying that
white people view blacks as barely tamed, wild
animals.
• Revision: The “jungle” referred to by Stamp Paid
symbolizes the dehuminization slavery causes.
• More Revision: The “jungle” referred to by Stamp
Paid symbolizes the dehuminization caused by
slavery.
remember
• A topic sentence needs to be evaluative. It will
be stronger and give the paragraph more
direction if you relate it to a literary device.
example
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The jungle is a metaphor used by Morrison to illustrate the
fear of the unknown between the whites and the Africans caused
by the unnatural presence of slavery. Stamp paid explains the jungle
as an abyss-like existence within each dark skinned person. This
metaphor, along with various images of dangerous snakes,
baboons, and rivers, reveals the fear of the unknown the whites
had for the African slaves. The life like qualities Morrison bestows
on the jungle invades the slave owners. The spread of the jungle is a
reflection of the underlying theme of the inhumanity of slaverychanging and altering the human nature of both slaves and the
slave owners in the process.
Last chapter write: What does she
mean?
• 1. Why does the novel end the way it does?
“It was not a story to pass on”?
• The last chapter presents a contradiction. Although
Beloved's story, according to the narrator, is not a
story to pass on, the novel performs exactly that
action.
• Shift in tense: It was not a story to pass on
• This is not a story to pass on.
Writing activity
• 1 Why does she end it with this ambiguous
This is not a story to pass on?
Discussion
• 2 How does the ending relate back to the
beginning of the novel? What issues have
been resolved?
Final thoughts
For the characters of the novel, forgetting Beloved
is a necessity.
The past must be dealt with in a healthy way.
Although traces of Beloved remind them of her from
time to time, the dead remain dead, and the
relationship between the characters and their past is
allowed to become more manageable.
For us, however, the story has to be passed on if we
are to understand the history that is embodied in
Beloved.
• Beloved is referred to as the forgotten, the unnamed.
The past
• 295-296: Denver thought she understood the
connection…
– . Why does Denver leave?
Community of Women
• Lady Jones
• Ella 300-01
• Janey Wagon
Memory of the rape/killing
• Never directly mentioned by Sethe. Morrison
suggests rape took place, but Sethe refers to it
as “they took my milk.”
• What does the milk represent?
– motherhood
• They took the one thing that Sethe considered
the best part of her.(until Paul D. tells her
otherwise at the end.
• The whites dirted her, dirtied all the slaves