Sunday, December 9, 2012
The child that is Denver
So I haven't started my weekend reading, but from what I have read so far, if things weren't laid out in such an explicit chronological order, I honestly would have thought that Denver was a small(ish?) child. Isolated and friendless, Denver is not socialized, she is stubborn, and childlike in her ways. Reading the first few chapters (and even the first few pages) left me very confused. She was mad at Baby Suggs, her grandmother, for dying (dying?!?), overtly rude to Paul D within their first encounter, and much like a small child, she didn't want to share her mother. We are also told that she is basically 18. Still, even in the beginning, I found her character extremely sympathetic. She has essentially been deprived of everything we like to associate with childhood, and really only is hungry for love, attention, and friendship. In the early stages of the book, Denver really reminded me a lot of Janie from Their Eyes Were Watching God, because both characters were enamored with the idea of love (though different kinds), had grown up under the care of women who had lived through the realities of slavery, and had also grown up away and separated from children their own age. In a lot of ways, she also parallels the ghost of the dead baby. The spirit that haunts 124 is prone to tantrums and innocent mischief, and when Beloved actually enters the story, we see that she is a beautiful, young woman, trapped in a state of infancy. Denver too, just like Beloved, is a fully grown woman, that acts like a child. However this slowly changes along with Beloved's intrusion into the story, and we already begin to see changes within Denver as she adopts the role of an older sibling and caregiver instead of the childlike role she played before. I wonder how she'll continue to evolve.
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I also think that it's really interesting that Denver's isolation from the rest of the world has caused her to remain a child at heart.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing that highlights her childishness is how she dislikes her mother's stories about Sweet Home that do not involve her, and her consequent anger toward Paul D. She reminds me of me when I was little, especially when my mom and her friends reminisced about their lives before I was born. It made me feel so jealous and left out! Perhaps Denver and little Lara share the trait of being attention-grabbing only children (I guess we can count her as an only child, since her brothers have been gone for so long).
I wonder if being responsible for Beloved will cause Denver to mature!
Its really interesting that you can relate to her, that must make reading about her much more intriguing. I have to say I disagree with most of the traits associated with only children though, I'm an only child, and until I explicitly tell people, most assume that I've grown up with siblings because I don't fit into the whole 'self important, attention seeking' only child stereotype. Denver's situation is much much more extreme so that even if she has no siblings at home, she doesn't get the socialization a child would get in a school setting, and often times, she just doesn't feel loved. I want to see her mature because I think its about time for her to, but there's something so sympathetic about her!
DeleteYou're right that Denver acts much younger than her 18 years--in terms of social life, her development has been profoundly arrested by the rumors (and opinions) circling around about 124 Bluestone. She spends most of her time alone, in her "bower" in the woods or with the ghost in the house, and it doesn't seem that she's ever had any friends among her peer group, and while her mother claims to love her intensely, it's not clear how aware Denver actually is of that love. To compound her isolation, we learn that she was deaf and mute for two years after finally asking Sethe about the stuff she's heard kids at school say. As I mentioned in passing in class today, among the various strands of this narrative is Denver's coming-of-age story. Symbolically, she represents the generation born just after slavery, who must contend with trying to build a future in a world that's consumed by the traumatic past. Definitely keep your eye on her as the narrative unfolds (and circles back on itself, again and again . . .).
ReplyDeleteWhile reading I didn't completely pick up on the fact that Denver went deaf and mute for a full two years, but adding that to her huge pile of issues just makes it all the more inevitable that she would end up the way she has (if I were her, I probably would've ended up worse). But yes, I will most definitely be keeping an eye out for her, because like you say, a hugeee part of this whole story is the evolution of Denver, whom I imagine turning out to be a mature, young, woman at the end of the novel.
DeleteI've had a hard time imagining Denver as anything older that 14 or so. I think also what might do it is the way the book is laid out. We first meet her when she is 8 (or ten?)but then it feels like very little time passes as we are introduced to 18 year old Denver.
ReplyDeleteYeah! I didn't even realize the shift in time initially, and assumed that Denver was still ~9 or so because of her behavior. We're definitely beginning to see some substantial changes now though...
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