yes, it is a complex film, but not difficult to understand with a bit of life's knowledge.
I noticed that some posters have given incorrect information:
All but one child was killed - Denver is the only surviving child.
The boys were ghosts as well. It showed the boys and the baby beloved (the eldest daughter) killed by Sethe with a saw - she cut all their throats and was about to kill denver as well when the black man showed up and grabbed her off sethe. Later in the story, when beloved has sethe in her clutches, the boys return to sethe - but return as ghosts (just like when they left).
To denver, she is traumatised by her mothers memory, Sethe thinks the boys are alive and that the poltergist made them leave, however, they were really dead, and denver was seeing things that didnt exist, just like how beloved shows up - the power of the mind is amazing. we see it all the time with magician's.
when beloved gets reborn in the river (the place where denver was born) she shows up and sethes waters break (like she is giving birth again)
I am not sure what i would do in the same situation, however, as a white woman living in a western world, i have no idea of what black women went through at the time of slavery, nor now. This film helps me understand what may have gone on back in those times. For a female slave it was traumatising, being the property of someone else (someone else decides when you wake, eat, sleep, procreate, or even die) yes it is a fate worse than death and Sethe has the strength to choose for herself what will happen to her own children.
I find it really interesting how most posters to this forum think that Sethe has a real choice, her choice is to allow the white men to take her children into slavery, or to kill them - she has no other choice. What would you do if you knew your female children would be gang raped, would bear children to the slave owner and any male children he had, would be beaten, branded. And a similar fate to your male children? It's not like we have to make these choices ourselves these days.
anyway, I could go, on, but essentially i agree with you, it is a top film and depicts how desperate a mother can be to save her children from a fate worse than death.
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ladyjay0786
8 years ago
The boys were ghosts as well. It showed the boys and the baby beloved (the eldest daughter) killed by Sethe with a saw - she cut all their throats and was about to kill denver as well when the black man showed up and grabbed her off sethe. Later in the story, when beloved has sethe in her clutches, the boys return to sethe - but return as ghosts (just like when they left).
To denver, she is traumatised by her mothers memory, Sethe thinks the boys are alive and that the poltergist made them leave, however, they were really dead, and denver was seeing things that didnt exist, just like how beloved shows up - the power of the mind is amazing. we see it all the time with magician's.
Never thought of it that way. It looked like in the scene where she cuts the baby's throat that the boys are still alive. It looked like one was opening his eyes. Maybe it was just my imagination. But your explanation makes sense. I did find it strange that the boys were NEVER heard of again after they left in the beginning. They never wrote and they never came back to visit. Makes sense that Sethe imagined them still being alive and that they left because of the ghost. They were young at the time so where would they run away to? Makes sense that Dever imagined them too but then again she saw Beloved so it's possible she imagined everything too.
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