Close Reading Blog Entry

At the time, what was going on in the author’s society? What connections do you see between the events in the text and the author’s life?  

"White people believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. In a way . . . they were right. . . . But it wasn’t the jungle blacks brought with them to this place. . . . It was the jungle whitefolks planted in them. And it grew. It spread . . . until it invaded the whites who had made it. . . . Made them bloody, silly, worse than even they wanted to be, so scared were they of the jungle they had made. The screaming baboon lived under their own white skin; the red gums were their own." (Chapter 19)

In this passage we see that slavery changes how people view each other. In this passage the way that they are talking about slaves makes us feel as though these peoples aren't even valued or seen as people. This passage also shows us that both people who are slaves and aren't slaves are affected by slavery. For example the slaves are seen as a wild jungle, they are compared to “Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood”, these are all things that seem to be wild and dangerous. In one quote from this passage it is stated that “it invaded the whites who had made it... Made them bloody”, in reference to the white people. This means that even the white people who started slavery were suffering from the consequences of it, like slavery was invading them and making them bloody. This shows us that the white people created this dangerous wild situation and lost control of it. We are able to see that from the perspective of blacks they became dehumanised and the white people lost controls of slavery and it spread and became wild.

At the time that this book was set in slavery was just recently ended. The main character Sethe was greatly affected by her life as a slave. Even though her life as a slave is over the environment around sethe is still very segregated. This segregation makes it easy to remember about her past. But even though it had been years since Sethe lives as a slave the memories of the past still haunt her. Like it is said in the quote people do not completely view slaves as humans and Sethe is still feeling this way about herself. Because of Sethe's past she is not able to value herself as a human or live a life without the negative memories of how she has felt from the past.

When comparing the events of Sethe's past to how she lives her life I feel as though many of her actions are results of her unfortunate past. Since Sethe lost her ability to make her own choices and have freedom, many of her choices became centered around her freedom. For example Sethe can now move from the haunted house that she stays in but she prefers to stay there. She might prefer to stay there because the does not want to feel like she is always running. Another example of Sethe putting freedom first is that she gets rid of most of children so that they will not experience the life that she lived. This shows us that the results of Sethes past truly affected her deeply so that she is unable to live her life without the fear of not having full freedom.