Why does sethe go to the clearing

Theme Wheel. Everything you need for every book you read. The way the content is organized and presented is seamlessly smooth, innovative, and comprehensive. LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Beloved , which you can use to track the themes throughout the work. She misses Baby Suggs and wishes that she were around to help her deal with this new information. She decides to go to the Clearing. Before became haunted, Baby Suggs used to be a quasi-religious figure in the community and hold gatherings at a clearing in the woods.

It also raises the question of what happened to transform Baby Suggs from a communally loved religious figure into a depressive who cared only about little scraps of color, and what made the inhabitants of now almost completely isolated from the surrounding community.

Active Themes. At these gatherings, Baby Suggs would pray and then call forth children and tell them to laugh. Finally, she would call forth women to cry. Then, everyone would mix together and cry, laugh, and dance as they wished. Baby Suggs would not offer any traditional sermon, but simply told people to love their own flesh and skin that white people so despised.

Once things turned bad at , though, Baby Suggs lost her faith and stopped preaching. Related Quotes with Explanations. When the three arrive at the Clearing, Sethe feels just as she did when Amy left her on the bank of the river.

She was weak and tired, but managed to walk along the river until she met a black fisherman who gave her food and water. The man introduced himself as Stamp Paid and ferried Sethe across the river, where a woman named Ella found her and took her to Once Sethe got there, Baby Suggs took care of her, bathed her, and bandaged her. The memory of her escape provides another example of the importance of relying on the help of a larger community for Sethe and other people in her position.

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Delete Quiz. Question 1. Why does Sethe want to go to the Clearing? To search for Baby Suggs's ghost and find comfort and clarity. To search for the baby ghost and find forgiveness. To search for Halle's ghost and find peace in moving on. To search for Howard and Buglar in hopes they might come home. What purpose did the Clearing serve when Sethe first arrived at ? A gathering place for both whites and blacks. A gathering place for spiritual revivals led by Baby Suggs.

A gathering place for the KKK. A gathering place for white people who believed freedom should be outlawed. How much time passed between Sethe's arrival at and the murder of her baby daughter? The better part of 6 months. What is the name of the man who helped Sethe cross the Ohio River? What does Sethe ask of Baby Suggs's ghost in the Clearing?

To rub her neck like she used to. Beloved runs away angry at Denver for the accusation, and Denver reflects on the only other companionship of her life before Beloved, and that was Lady Jones' school. Lady Jones was a racially mixed woman, educated at a colored girls' school who taught colored children who couldn't go to school. As a little girl, Denver had gone to Lady Jones' school for a short time and enjoyed learning.

She never noticed that her classmates avoided her until another student, Nelson Lord , asked her if her mother had murdered her sister and then taken Denver to jail with her. That question unlocked the fears Denver had of Sethe and scared her so much that she lost her hearing for two years and stopped going to school.

During the time that her hearing was gone, Denver paid close attention to the ghost; it kept her company while she waited for her father to come get her. But the silence of her deafness was broken by the sound of the baby ghost trying to crawl up the stairs of After that, the ghost turned spiteful. Denver attributes the departure of Buglar and Howard to the fear of Sethe trying to harm them again, not to the fear of the ghost.

She remembers that after her hearing came back, life at became bleak for everyone. Buglar and Howard were agitated until they left; Baby Suggs gave up on life and waited for death in her bed; and then Paul D showed up and scared away the ghost. His presence ate up all of Sethe's attention, and Denver was left alone until Beloved showed up.

Starved for love, Denver realizes with some shame that even if Beloved were trying to hurt Sethe, Denver would still be devoted to her because Beloved's companionship eased her loneliness. Deciding that whatever Beloved may be, she's at least hers, Denver goes to find Beloved and seek forgiveness. Browse all BookRags Book Notes. Copyrights Beloved from BookRags. All rights reserved.

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