1. Warming up: Trying out a few alternative interpretations of Beloved
a. Beloved is the ghost of Sethe's murdered child.
b. Beloved is an actual girl, not a ghost; until her escape, she was long abused by white men. Sethe welcomes her as own her child to ease her own guilt and to fill the hole left behind by the true Beloved.
c. Beloved is a symbol of any and every escaped slave.
d. Beloved is a vampire.
(If you recall, Foster states that vampires are about "selfishness, exploitation, a refusal to respect the autonomy of other people...the figure of the cannibal, the vampire, the succubus, the spook announces itself again and again where someone grows in strength by weakening someone else" [16, 21]).
2. Delineating Morrison's spaces
The shed
The stairs
The Ohio River
124
The keeping room
The kitchen
First, draw your space. Based on Morrison's descriptions, what shape does this space take in your mind?
Next, label your space. Using Morrison's language, identify key aspects of your space (objects, colors, movements, people, body parts, sounds, smells, etc).
Lastly, analyze your space. Who's empowered in this space? Who's disempowered? What has shifted in this space, and what has stayed the same. So far, what is the significance of your space to the novel as a whole?
3. Quilting together your spaces to find the "cross stitches"
HW:
1. Thursday will be a poetry paper/project work day. Bring in any materials you may need.
2. For Friday (Dec 1): Finish Chapter 1 in Part 2 and complete a reading ticket for Socratic. Your ticket can encompass the entire chapter or focus on the second half--whatever works for you. Here's a challenge if you need one: Try focusing on a minor character.
Heads-up! December 12-13: Poetry papers and project are due. Please not that you will NOT be able to revise these because you won't get them back until your final.
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