Reading Response - Beloved

I read Beloved for the first time when I was a senior in high school for my A.P. English class. I loved the book so much that I chose to write my senior thesis on it. For some reason I got really into the story. I think what touched me the most was the tragicness of Sethe's life and the struggles she was faced with. I truly cannot even begin to fathom a life in which I am not free to do as I please; a life in which I live in fear. Sethe's encounters with schoolteacher and his sons truly made me sick to read and to later think about. As we have discussed so many times in class before, I am not sure what I would do if I were placed with the same life-altering decision that Sethe was faced with - whether or not to kill her children to save them from the life that she so hated and feared. I am not a mother, so I can only speculate what I would do in that situation, but if I knew of a life worse than death, then I would probably attempt to kill my children and myself in order to escape that fate. I wrote my senior thesis on the motherhood themes within Beloved, which is also why I chose to do my article presentation on the Aje mother-daughter relationship. I think that above all other themes- ghosts, slavery, etc.- motherhood reigns supreme in Beloved. The reader is faced with multiple different mother-child relationships (the love so strong that Halle had for Baby Suggs shown in him buying her freedom, the love so strong that Sethe had for her children shown in her trying to kill them even though it hurt her so badly to do so, the attempt of Beloved to unite her and Sethe again, etc.). As I think I've made pretty clear in my desire to read this novel multiple times and write numerous papers/presentations on it, I would certainly recommend this novel to anyone who is interested in some heavy, thought-provoking reading.