Open Up Your Tabacco Tin Heart

You would think that an adult, who has dealt with issues beyond our imagination, would be grown up. Sethe, Paul D, and Denver in Beloved, prove otherwise. A woman or man who has been through unspeakable abuse, lost loved ones, grew up without a sense of individualism or self, and puts themselves through traumatic events, does not know everything. Experience evolves wisdom and maturity, however experience alone doesn't. It is the experience, and how we as individuals deal with that experience that develops our maturity. After Sethe makes a new life for herself with her four children, her past comes back to revive her repressed memories and experiences by taking her and her children away. Knowing of the physical, emotional, and spiritual trauma that lies in this man's hands, she tries to murder her children to protect them from that trauma. In her mind, being murdered by your own mother is better than enduring the abuse of schoolteacher and Sweet home. Being dead would be better than enduring this life. However, her actions prove to be unwise after her two sons run away out of fear of their own mother, her dead baby girl haunts her and her house, and her last remaining child worries that every night might be her last. Again, as I always say, the length of the novel provides enough time for growth for every character. Sure enough, the second time the same scenario happens (only this time it is just innocent Edwin Bodwin instead of schoolteacher), she understands and is mature enough to make a better decision. She attempts to kill Edwin instead of her children, something she probably should have done the first time around. What causes this growth? I believe one of the factors is good company. Throughout the novel, Sethe asserts her independence. However, when she welcomes Paul D's companionship, the ghost leaves, she looks more towards her future, she grows. Her independence out of fear of loving or trusting anyone more than she has to stunts her personal growth, because she is left alone with only the shell she is and her memories. Her memories were also a large factor. She could never get past them, never forgive herself for them, never accept them. Even when obvious signs support that Beloved is her daughter, she chooses to be ignorant and ignore these signs out of her fear of the past. And when she does accept that Beloved is her daughter reincarnated, she succumbs to all of Beloved's demands and allows herself to consumed by Beloved, similar to how she succumbed to all of slavery's demands and allowed herself to be enslaved by the past. Although, as soon as she decides to attack Edwin (thinking he's schoolteacher), she proves her ability to confront her past and Beloved disappears, just as her imprisonment with her past disappears. Sethe isn't the only one that grows by accepting the past either. Paul D has lived by gathering all his feelings and memories into a "tobacco tin" of a heart. It isn't until Beloved (a symbol for the past) forces him to break open his heart and reveal all he is scared of, all he has suffered, and all that he feels. It is difficult for him, just as it is for Sethe, but it reveals opportunities to grow, to move on, to take on a different life, similar to what Denver does to grow as well. Denver's version of her "tobacco tin" is the house, 124. She is suffocated there, surrounded by memories of her brothers, Baby Suggs, the baby ghost, and all of her mothers looming memories. The second she leaves 124, she is filled with courage and purpose. It is hard for her to find her way at first, but she soon understands and embraces this new world and allows for it to help her mature and grow. Do we see a pattern yet? Morrison cannot stress enough the possibility for growth by accepting, embracing, and letting go. Sethe is forced to accept what she did, even as she showers Beloved with attention, trying to redeem herself, embraces Edwin (schoolteacher, or an even deeper interpretation, the past), and lets it go. As does Paul D and Denver. Everyone has their own version of a tabacco tin heart, it is just how you learn to open it, embrace its contents, and allow that space for growth instead of the obstacles that hold you down that lead to your own growth.

Maturity Comes From Maintaining One's Beliefs

Growth and maturity can be defined through many different ways and aspects. To me, growth and maturity comes with experience and insight on situations and life in general, and no one stops growing and learning about life. I see our generation, and sometimes just people in general, make what they find to be a mature decision though they don't really understand or see what makes it mature. What they do understand about these decisions is surfaced, they only see the first layer of what makes a decision mature. I connected this with Mersault's decision to look at life as meaningless. He understands the surface of it, that we all die, our actions, hopes, dreams, and fears are pointless, and takes on the role of an existentialist. However, as I've said before and will continue to echo through all of my posts, novels usually play out a characters growth as a person and takes the entirety of the novel to do so and in the very last paragraph of the novel, readers are exposed to Mersault's first and final step of growth and maturity.  Something I would like to point out, just because you believe in something that others or society doesn't believe in and outcasts, doesn't make that belief immature. The maturity comes from finding how it connects with you and makes up who you are, maintaining your faith in that belief, and being able to use your understanding and connection with that belief to support your life. It wasn't until the end of his trial and his final death that reflects his maturity that he very well might have had for the entirety of the novel and never fully revealed, or found in the end of the novel. When the judge forces religion upon him, almost as an ultimatum to innocence or guilt, being a free man or death, Mersault never abandons his beliefs. It is this maturity of maintaining his understanding and acceptance of not only life but himself, that reveals just how he has grown through the novel. It his final acceptance of his fate and life and death that makes Mersault a mature man. It seems that he understands the world from a different point of view, considers all angles, and does not let these different perspectives change who he is, but let him be more aware and ready for death. In his final moments, he comes to an understanding as to why his mother never gave up life, how she always strived to keep her life worth living. Though he does not and may not have ever found things worth living for, he can understand enough to make  him insightful. And the fact that even in his most desperate moment of life, he never ceases to remain who he has been all his life, good or bad, it is who he is and what he believes in, and that is truly mature.