Beloved And Don Quixote: Similarities In Themes And Characters

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go of your mind is dying. She needed a new life. She
had to be named" (Don Quixote 9-10). And she must name herself for a man �
become a man � before the nobility and the dangers of her ordeals will be
esteemed. She is to be a knight on a noble quest to love "someone other than
herself" and thus to right all wrongs and to be truly free. In another of
Acker's works she writes: "Having an abortion was obviously just like getting
fucked. If we closed our eyes and spread our legs, we'd be taken care of. They
stripped us of our clothes. Gave us white sheets to cover our nakedness. Let
us back to the pale green room. I love it when men take care of me (Blood and
Guts in High School 33). In Morrison's Beloved, Sethe has two "abortions." The
first and most obvious is the act of infanticide in killing Beloved. The second
"abortion" is Sethe "getting fucked" by the grave-digger. This abortion, like
Acker's protagonist, creates a name. The name is Beloved � a ...

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love at all" (Beloved 164). She believes in this pure love,
the kind perhaps Acker's protagonist is looking for.
Also, like Acker's Don Quixote, Morrison shows, through the relationship
between Sethe and Beloved, the dangerous potential of "free" love. Another
similarity shown in Beloved is that freedom is always perilous � it has the
potential to be self-consuming. This love allows Sethe to commit infanticide as
well as compelling Beloved to claim possession of Sethe's self. Despite her
efforts to earn Beloved's understanding of her action, Sethe never retreats from
her insistence that the murder was justified. She wills Beloved to return in
order to hear her say "I forgive you," ...

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