First Post

Studying Beloved and these photos has engendered in me the fact that many pictures can not be described by words and that pictures are just moments in time. After looking through the photos of the lynching and trying to recall how I felt while reading some of the more graphic parts of beloved I realized that the emotions that I felt during each were entirely different. While looking at the photos I did not feel as much as I thought I would for the victims. I was obviously repulsed by the scene, but felt no connection to the bodies hanging from the trees. They were not human to me and did not have a real history. The act of lynching had done its job; it turned the human victims into something less. It was as if I did not want the bodies of the “two unidentified African Americans” hanging from one rope being steadied by the man in the white suit to be real because if they were I would have to try to comprehend that people were capable of doing this to others when I just want that piece of history to be left behind.

On the other hand in Beloved I felt something for the characters. Through the novel I became connected to Sethe and when she was being raped and having her milk stolen she seemed like a real human going through a traumatic experience. I felt sympathy for her because i could connect to her, but I did not feel as repulsed reading about this act as I did when I saw the pictures. It is in this way that pictures and words can do two very different things. Words can not always describe the most violent of actions and pictures are just moments in time. Pictures have no past or future; they are simply a way to capture the present. Sometimes neither words nor and pictures can not do the work of the other.