Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Thoughts on the Ending

When I first read the ending, I did not understand what had happened because it all happened so quickly. After rereading it, I finally realized what I had missed. The most interesting part of the ending was when Beloved disappeared. Throughout the whole book, Beloved had been hanging around Sethe's house and eventually became like family. She turned out to be the real Beloved, the one who Sethe (as her mother) killed at the age of 2. It was not until last few chapters that we learned her motivations. When Beloved and Sethe opened their front door to find many colored women singing, they were fine until a man, whom Sethe thought was schoolteacher, came close. Sethe turned into an animal; she finally reached her breaking point and snapped, ready to kill an innocent man. After Ella punched her in order to stop her from doing something she would have regretted, Beloved disappeared. I believe that the reason she was there the whole time was to make sure that Sethe suffered, and she did just that. Beloved made sure that there was barely anything left of Sethe to make her pay for killing her own daughter. Sethe felt guilty, so she went along with it, thinking that one day it would be enough and all would have been forgiven. Sethe barely had anything in her; she had no food or strength, so she lost her sanity as well. Beloved left because she got what she was there for, so she did not have a purpose anymore. Once Sethe let loose on Mr. Bodwin, Beloved must have realized that she really did have nothing sane left of her, so her work was done. The ending of this book wrapped up the question on everyone's minds, and it was the perfect ending to this book.

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