Responding and Reflecting: 1

What I have learned from Beloved is that society as a whole was so incredibly stagnated just over 100 years ago. Beloved showed me that it is important to keep those that are important close to you, but to also meet new people that might become important to you; and it is essential to keep those very people close. From what I have seen is that keeping, and taking care of those people that are important to you comes a long way, especially in a place where things might not come close to getting better. I have always believed that our country is a large melting pot of different cultures come to create a diverse place where everyone can have  a part in, but unfortunately, a lot of oppression and sorrow had lasted long before things had changed, and can be argued that things still need to be changed. It is hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that there are times in a country like this that people had been impoverished and kept oppressed because of the color of their skin, where they were "free" but not really free. When choosing my lens originally, I had very large doubts about finding anything close to Marxist ideals or themes, however, as I had read on, I had managed to surprise myself. While even though they might not be implied, there are themes in Beloved that could be interpreted as Marxist. The main one that I took away from the book was the working class sticking together, where they could manage to keep moving on when the privileged and wealthy had kept them oppressed. This is what I had really kept noticing and had really opened my eyes to the many themes that could be considered Marxist. I now will try reading more often with the Marxist lens, as it might be implied or not, but it still can be ever present in any text.