Lil

One thing that I've found really interesting while reading  Beloved  is the theme of colors. It's something that has kept coming back throughout the book, and it's clearly really meaningful and symbolic. We're told that Baby Suggs has this weird  fascination with colors – she constantly wants to be shown different colors by Sethe and Denver. The way Sethe sees it, 124 is so devoid of color, it makes sense that Baby Suggs would be so “starved for colors.” Apparently everything in their house is either brown, grey, white, or some other muted, neutral shade. The only things that have any color are two patches of orange on a quilt. It seems depressing, and it is. But, what makes it more depressing is thinking about why exactly 124 is devoid of color. We’re pretty much given the answer – after Beloved dies Sethe stops seeing things by their colors. It reminded me of when Denver was asked a question she couldn’t handle and went deaf for years. One sentence which was especia...

In his criticism of "Their Eyes Were Watching God" Richard Wright calls Hurston out for not being political enough and instead contributing to harmful stereotypes of black people. Something that we talked about in class though, is that on some level the mere existence of "Their Eyes Were Watching God" seems to be political. For one, Hurston chooses to focus her novel on the experiences of a strong, independent black woman, and that in and of itself is important. Further, the novel's focus on entirely black people, and on different all-black communities is another aspect that makes it inherently political. Harmen said something in class which I found really interesting. He said that the novel almost resembles some of the romantic novels that we would (and did) read in 19th century literature. But, instead of a cast full of upper class white people, the roles are played by black people. The fact that Hurston is writing what we might consider "normal" lit...