I don’t know how many of you guys were in African American Literature but I know that ever since Nabeel compared Sethe to Septimus in out breakout room, I could not stop thinking about their similarities. Specifically, I’m thinking about the Four Horsemen chapter in comparison to Septimus’s suicide. In both cases, Septimus and Sethe are not wondering what they should do. Instead, they do what they see as the only option in that case. For Sethe, this means killing Beloved and attempting to kill her other children so that they do not have to return to Sweet Home and for Septimus, this means committing suicide as the only way to escape doctors. But at the same time, there is something bigger than the four horsemen and bigger than Holmes that has arrived at their doorsteps. For Sethe, it is really the whole system of oppression that has been present really for her lifetime. Her children were either going to be free or they were going to die because death has more freedom than going back to that slave plantation. For Septimus, it is the societal expectations of masculinity and soldiers that have also been present for most of his life. After experiencing these expectations in his past and being called a coward by these doctors in the present, there is also a sense of oppression in Septimus’s case.
Something I find interesting that both Morrison and Woolf do it that they allow plenty of time before having these scenes in the novel. In Beloved, we get the sense about something really strange happening in Sethe’s past that made people act weird around her, but I think I can easily say that none of us were expecting her to have killed her child. Instead, Morrison allows us time to appreciate Sethe as a person and see her traumatic past at Sweet Home and to really understand these key things about her before finally showing us this scene. If Morrison had started with the Four Horsemen scene, I think that, at least for me, it would be a lot harder to understand her actions and to connect with her. I know that in class we still struggled with what Sethe did, but at the same time, I feel like we were able to see how she saw that as the only option instead of just writing her off as insane or anything like that.
Likewise, Woolf allows us to see Septimus for quite a lot during the novel even though he is more of a side character. While we do see that he is suffering from PTSD, we get the sense that in the day that Woolf shows Septimus he is a little bit jumpier and more disconnected than usual from the car backfiring. And even though it is one of his worse days, we do get to see some of his “true self” with the hat scene between him and Lucrezia. We also get insights into his past, narrated by Woolf, which she really didn’t do for any other character. Woolf knew how crucial it was to understand his past to understand his present. We get the sense of how in the past he was seen as not masculine enough and even though he went through the war (which is generally seen as a way to make a man) Holmes and Bradshaw still look at him in the same way, seeing him act in a sort of “hysterical” manner that only women are supposed to act. With his traumatic experiences in the war as well as the experiences as being viewed as a coward and not masculine enough as well as the terror of Holmes shoving his way after Septimus, we can much better understand why he sees suicide as his only choice (even as he sees that "life was good" (146)).
I’m now realizing how long this is so I think I will stop my blog here. Do you guys see these connections? Do you see more connections between Sethe and Septimus and how Woolf and Morrison set these scenes up? These were just some of the first things that came to my mind and I think there is still plenty more parallels there.
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