One of the things that challenged my way of thinking in class last Thursday was the conversations surrounding the theme of dispossession and freedom.
I think I found this theme so difficult to swallow because so much of freedom in capitalism is through the act of ownership; owning land, owning property and owning oneself. The ability to move seems like an act of freedom and requites capital to do so. However, in the last part of Beloved where we hear Paul D's history, I think that it demonstrates that dispossession is a sort of freedom, that capitol isn't enough.
At first, it seems as though one needs land/capital to feel a sense of self. This is illustrated when the narrator is speaking about the estrangement and inferiority his feels towards the landscape that surrounds him:
"And in all those escapes he could not help being astonished by the beauty of this land that was not his. He hid in its breasts, fingered its earth for food, clung to its banks to lap water and tried not to love it. One night when the sky was personal, weak with the weight of its own stars, he made himself not love it." (316)
The concept of capital/ownership as freedom is further articulated when he buys his first purchase and feels as if he has his own agency:
"Afterward the Whitman gave him a coin. Paul D walked around with it for hours... Finally he saw a greengrocer selling vegetables from a wagon. Paul D pointed to a bunch of turnips. The grocer handed them to him, took his one coin and gave him several more.....His first earned purchase made him glow... That was when he decided that to eat, walk and sleep anywhere was life as good as it got." (318)
However, it isn't enough. I think he gains 'freedom' when he chooses Sethe:
"Only this woman Sethe could have left his manhood like that. He wants to put his story next to hers." (322)
In this sort passage, he gains a sense of self not through land or monetary gains but through compassion and kinship. He does not own Sethe, nor does Sethe own him. If anything, Paul D finds solace in dispossession and claims his own subjectivity.
I think I found this theme so difficult to swallow because so much of freedom in capitalism is through the act of ownership; owning land, owning property and owning oneself. The ability to move seems like an act of freedom and requites capital to do so. However, in the last part of Beloved where we hear Paul D's history, I think that it demonstrates that dispossession is a sort of freedom, that capitol isn't enough.
At first, it seems as though one needs land/capital to feel a sense of self. This is illustrated when the narrator is speaking about the estrangement and inferiority his feels towards the landscape that surrounds him:
"And in all those escapes he could not help being astonished by the beauty of this land that was not his. He hid in its breasts, fingered its earth for food, clung to its banks to lap water and tried not to love it. One night when the sky was personal, weak with the weight of its own stars, he made himself not love it." (316)
The concept of capital/ownership as freedom is further articulated when he buys his first purchase and feels as if he has his own agency:
"Afterward the Whitman gave him a coin. Paul D walked around with it for hours... Finally he saw a greengrocer selling vegetables from a wagon. Paul D pointed to a bunch of turnips. The grocer handed them to him, took his one coin and gave him several more.....His first earned purchase made him glow... That was when he decided that to eat, walk and sleep anywhere was life as good as it got." (318)
However, it isn't enough. I think he gains 'freedom' when he chooses Sethe:
"Only this woman Sethe could have left his manhood like that. He wants to put his story next to hers." (322)
In this sort passage, he gains a sense of self not through land or monetary gains but through compassion and kinship. He does not own Sethe, nor does Sethe own him. If anything, Paul D finds solace in dispossession and claims his own subjectivity.
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