"124 was so full of strong feeling perhaps she was oblivious to the loss of anything at all. There was a time when she scanned the fields every morning and every evening for her boys. When she stood at the open window, unmindful of flies, her head cocked to her left shoulder, her eyes searching to the right for them. Cloud shadow on the road, an old woman, a wandering goat untethered and gnawing bramble--each one looked at first like Howard--no, Buglar. Little by little she stopped and their thirteen-year-old faces faded completely into their baby ones, which came to her only in sleep. When her dreams roamed outside 124, anywhere they wished, she saw them sometimes in beautiful trees, their little legs barely visible in the leaves.
Sometimes they ran along the railroad track laughing, too loud, apparently, to hear her because they never did turn around. When she woke the house crowded in on her: there was the door where the soda crackers were lined up in a row; the white stairs her baby girl loved to climb; the corner where Baby Suggs mended shoes, a pile of which were still in the cold room; the exact place on the stove where Denver burned her fingers. And of course the spite of the house itself. There was no room for any other thing or body until Paul D arrived and broke up the place, making room, shifting it, moving it over to someplace else, then standing in the place he had made" (47).
Dreams are symbolic because they tend to represent another world of your own. Whether you know it or not, specific things happening in your dream actually represent something. According to common dream theory two symbols I notice that are very significant easy the railroad track and the house closing in on her
Another symbol in her dream is when her dream is transitioning into another. The transition as symbol because the transition was that after she witnessed the calm beautiful life she started lie falling back and her house was closing in on her, almost like she's been trapped. Being trapped in a dream refers to, " is a common nightmare theme, reflecting your real life inability to escape or make the right choice." The crazy part here is that Sethe is literally trapped in her past and can't manage to move forward. I believe that what maybe what's holding her back is living in the house, 124. She grew up a good majority of her life their and actually is being haunted by her baby beloved. I also believe the house is symbolized as shackles and her past. Since shes so into 124 and never wants to leave it's as if the house is holding her back from moving. Sometimes the best way to leave or forget about the past is moving on. In this case Sethe needs to realize that this house hold brings back such a dark past and because of this she can't imagine forgiveness. She needs to forgive everyone and everything for doing what they did to hurt her and move on. Move away from this dark past leave it behind and pack your things and leave. And this is the point that I believe that Sethe hasn't realized since shes all caught up in the present and having flashbacks that she cant control mentally. According to psychecentral, "Forgiveness isn't a sign of weakness. Instead, it’s simply saying, “I’m a good person. You’re a good person. You did something that hurt me. But I want to move forward in my life and welcome joy back into it. I can’t do that fully until I let this go.”
I really like how you relate whats going on to Sethe by her dreams. I agree that Sethe is trapped in her past and cant move on from it. She has to forgive herself to move forward in her future. Great job :)
ReplyDelete