Regaing Self Awareness: Belove

A detailed Summary of Regaing Self Awareness: Belove

The process of finding one's "self" is strongly reliant upon our interactions with other people. From the beginning, as infants, to when we are still small children, we have no idea who we are or what our relationship to the world is. Our perceptions of the world are through the eyes of our parents or guardians and other adults who try to teach us and show us the world. They instill in us their own ideas of right and wrong, good and bad. As we grow, our peers have much influence over how we define ourselves. We constantly have the desire to fit in and belong, sometimes altering our "selves" to be like others. In addition, they too have been growing and learning in their own environment with different family members' influences. Each of our own influences, in turn, influences others. From there, we again take in and learn what we can so we can make our own decisions on how to define our "selves". Later, society influences our thoughts on who we are as people and our relation to the world as a whole. There is a constant norm that people try to assimilate to or diverge from. Society presents its own ideas of who we should be as people, and it is then our own job to take that information and do what we will with it to

Two things can happen when we are required to base our definition of "self" on others. One can take others' ways of living and thinking, process them, and formulate his or her own definition, independent of anyone else. Or, one can use the relationships he or she has with other people on which to base their own definition of self, thus making him or her dependent on those other people. As young people, we learn and take in all we can through the world, our experiences, and relationships with other people. From there, we grow and establish our own identities, our own "selves", in response to those interactions with others. This definition is continually growing and progressing as we evolve as people, interacting with different people in different environments and situations. A person acquires a healthy sense of self when, through the process, he or she defines who he or she is in response to, but independent of, those other people. An unhealthy sense of self, however, occurs when, during that process of discovery, one establishes his or her own identity on the basis of, rather than in response to, other people. One's sense of self, then, becomes dependent on other people. Either way, who we are and how we define ourselves is based on our interactions and relationships with other people.

Baby Suggs was misused and abused for the majority of her middle-aged slave life. She was treated like an animal or a machine, a tool for reproducing more slaves. All of her children, from different fathers, were taken from her. She was alone in a cruel world of white masters and could not even keep her own children. Anything or anyone she had ever loved was taken from her. She finally ended up at Garner's plantation where she was allowed to keep her final son, Halle. However, the experience of being stripped of her family had already worked its toll on her soul. Morrison explains, "men and women [were] moved around like checkers. Anybody Baby Suggs knew, let alone loved, who hadn't run off or been hanged, got rented out, loaned out, bought up, brought back, stored up, mortgaged, won, stolen or seized." (Beloved, 23). Though she did not have her family with her to identify with and define her sense of self by, she used the treatment of her masters and white people in a positive way. Her definition of "self" was a response to the maltreatment she endured. Because she did not have her family, she had no one but herself. That was the one thing she did have -- her own self. That they could not take away. So she loved every part of her being -- physical , emotional, and spiritual. She preached her religion of "self-love" to those other slaves in her same position who would listen and believe. She went to the clearing and told her listeners to love each and every part of their bodies, for the white men did not love it, they rejected it. They were the only ones who could love themselves for who they were. She said, "You got to love [yourself], you!'" (Beloved, 88). Although Baby Suggs was deprived of what would normally be needed for a healthy sense of self, she used her interactions and relationships with other people to create positive definition of "self".

make our own definition for ourselves of who we are.

One of the characters, Billy, defines himself through his mother. We don't know, through the movie, what exactly his relationship is with his mother, or the extenuating circumstances that may have influenced this relationship, but we do know that the relationship is bad. At the sound of his mother's name, he becomes submissive and childlike, rendering himself vulnerable to any form of authority. Another character, Chief, responds to the interaction he had as a young child and adult with his father. His father had been an alcoholic, a definition of himself that was a response to the political frustrations that occurred in the time of the American people taking the lands of the Native Ameri

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Approximate Word count = 2678
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels