Is Beloved Really a Ghost?

I think no one can deny the incredibly obvious connection between Sethe's dead child and the mysterious character of the young women Beloved. From her baby-like smooth skin, to her age being comparable to what the age of the dead child would have been had she been alive. There is even a line explaining how after seeing her, Sethe has an urge to pee resembling her water-breaking. As Mr. Mitchell said, the birth imagery is simply undeniable.
          Because we as readers are given all this birth-imagery, we are able to draw connections between Beloved and the ghost of the house. However, the characters in the book are unable to make the same connections. To be fair, it makes sense when viewed from a non-reader perspective. For example, Beloved is nothing like a ghost. For one, she has a physical body, and has to walk (or shuffle) around like a normal person. While her voice, the way that she struggles to hold her head up, and the 3 marks on her forehead (which are noted to resemble baby hair, more birth imagery) may be weird, at the end of the day she isn't exactly a ghost. Or atleast, she doesn't exactly fit the depiction of a ghost that one might expect. Could she be classified as something different? Maybe a Morrisonian Ghost? Who knows? It has already been shown that Sethe and Denver feel an attraction to her for some reason, as well as Denver having suspicions of her supernatural abilities, so maybe she strikes a balance between normal living person and infantile poltergeist that makes her fit in so well.

Where is the Proto in Janie?

Something that struck me, as it must have struck most people were our first impressions of Janie as a character. For starters, Janie is the first female main character of any of the novels we've read in class so far. Besides that, she is seen in the first chapter taking harsh comments from the entirety of Eatonville in stride. If we thought she was strong then, she only appears stronger once we finish the book. Dealing with having to murder the love of your life as they try to do the same to you isn't something anyone can do. Along with surviving a hurricane and having to bury dead associates, you truly appreciate why Janie's overalls are dirty at the end of the book.

Earlier in class, we referred to Janie as a proto-feminist character. When regarding proto-feminism as the feminism before feminism, its not hard to see that this is true for Janie's character. Unlike most other female characters in literature at the time, Janie is the main focus of the entire book, with most if not all events being told more so through her perspective (its literally a frame narrative of Janie's experiences). Alongside this, she is shown being independent in and outside of her relationships, she doesn't match the clingy damsel-in-distress motif at all. Even though she spends the book looking for love, she doesn't let her marriages control or define her. Even at the end of the book, she retires to her room a wealthy, independent and content woman. She certainly is successful, but at the same time why is she considered proto-feminist?

I think that perhaps this is because she is a black character. Keep in mind that at the time the black and white feminist movements would be separate, with the white feminist movement being already much more established. Janie is only considered a proto-feminist character because she existed before the concept of strong black female leads, white feminism had already explored the strong female lead in books such as Mrs. Dalloway.

The Bland Normality of Proper English

An important aspect of any humans life, as well as an important aspect of any novel is dialogue. Talking is something we learn to do in the first few years of our life, and something we utilize until the end of it. No two groups of humans talk the same either, certain subcultures/groups have certain nuances in pronunciation or sentence structure that give that certain dialect a flare. This idea is certainly evident in Their Eyes were Watching God, as all the dialogue from Janie and her associates is written to represent how it would've sounded in person as accurately as possible. However, I feel like this practice is rarely used. In most literature about ethnicities or cultures other than typical "proper English-speaking" Americans, the dialectual flairs that make these ethnic character's speech unique gets literally lost in translation, with each sentence going through the author's head and being written out in as perfect English as the author could produce. I wonder why Hurston chose to intentionally not do that, and what the significance of it is?

The Importance of the Truly Invisible Man

In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Ellison likes presenting abstract ideas through the interactions of outside characters on the narrator. For example, his interaction with the yam-selling man during the snowy Harlem nights truly reveals the depth of the narrator's sweet, yam-flavored southern memories. Another abstract idea (and possibly my favorite of them all), is the concept of Rinehart. Rinehart is essentially a persona the narrator embraces when he goes through an outfit change. People throughout the city refer to him under the names and occupations of Rinehart, not paying attention to what he really is underneath the glasses, hat, and suave demeanor. From a pimp to a reverend, Rinehart seems to have done it all. The most ironic part about this situation is that the narrator never encounters Rinehart himself.

Near the end of the chapter, the narrator seems to conceptualize Rinehart on his own, seeing how this man holds so much influence in so many different areas yet no one has been able to fully place down who exactly he is. What's most notable is that the narrator wants to be like Rinehart. He too wants to be able to influence these multiple aspects of society, yet still be his own man on the inside. Rinehart is, as far as this book goes, the closest to invisibility that we've seen.

I think that the narrator's unintentional impersonation of Rinehart has truly opened his ideas to what invisibility truly is, and the fact that the narrator wants to be a "man" like Rinehart is a testament to his developing conscious of identity, and what kind of identity he wants to forge for himself.

Who are you speaking for?

After the narrator experiences the happenings in the "Factory Hospital", we get a sense that he's back at square one. And up until he meets the man selling the yams, this is essentially the case. However, we still see a shadow of his pre-operation self in the beginnings of his speech to the mob. What is interesting is that during the course of the narrator's speech, you can see his change in mentality as the tone of the speech changes. It goes from "law-abiding" citizen to essentially f*** the police. This change isn't a product of his own doing, but it seems like it was brought about through the consistent pestering of the crowd. In the narrator's efforts to move this crowd to take some form of action, he listened to their words and essentially allowed himself to be affect by this mob mentality, becoming their voice. I think this may be because of his lack of own personality at the hands of the factory-hospital. Whatever the case, I think this speech is a good example of the narrator being affected by his environment. Or maybe the narrator had his complacent personality erased and now wants revenge against the authority?

Invisibility is in the eyes of the beholder?

            Over the (admittedly short) course of AALit, we have encountered 2 main stories, Native Son and Invisible Man. While one literally contains "Invisible" in its title, both books deal with the idea of African-American "Invisibility" and what the actual definition of invisibility is, in this sense.

            When it comes to invisibility, Wright uses Bigger to define his feelings of invisibility using his own words. In his eyes, he sees it as the ability to "act out" whenever he is free from the eyes of white people as long as he acts the way they think hes supposed to act. While this invisibility does not save Bigger from the clutches of the corrupt hand of "justice" in the form of a premeditated trial, it does give us a basic concept for invisibility. It isn't the typically thought of complete disappearance of an individual from view, but rather just a lack of awareness of the individual. I think that this may be due to the fact that any African-american person in this time period was not seen as an individual human, but rather just another negro, same as any others that happened to be walking the street. Because of this, it allows an individual to essentially blend into any surrounding using only a change of demeanor and dark skin.

            While Invisible Man has not exactly presented us with the narrator's view on invisibility, it does give us insight into how one gains it. As the narrator goes back into the past to recount his life and how he ended up in an abandoned room, he goes back all the way to before he knew of his invisibility. This shows that invisibility isn't naturally occurring, but rather something acquired through some inner revolution, the same way that Bigger realizes his invisible status after committing accidental murder. That said, if it takes Bigger committing homicide to fully realize his invisibility, what has the narrator done to have embraced this newfound "power"?