Beloved and Mercy
This is an argument as to why Sethe's killing of Beloved was justified. Toni Morrison, throughout Beloved, seemingly avoids taking a side as much as possible. The killing of Beloved and the justification of said act are posed as a challenge to the reader to decipher. However, I will make it abundantly clear that this killing was not just the best option, but from the knowledge Sethe had available, the only choice she could have taken.
Sethe, the Pauls, Sixo, and Halle all bear the summation of the pain inflicted upon them by Schoolteacher. For one, he stood as the catalyst for escape to begin with - leading to the death of Paul A and Sixo. His abuse of Sethe not only leaves her permanently damaged from the trauma (having a physical manifestation of it on her back) but drives Halle mad from having to witness it. Paul D is left incapable of forming connections as a result of the unspeakable amount of torment he endured at the hands of Schoolteacher. Those fortunate enough to so much as escape the plantation are left permanently damaged, beyond repair. While Sethe may not like to let on how much her time at Sweet Home has hurt her, it is clear from her internal dialogue and habits that she is deeply, deeply traumatized. She and everyone around her was beaten down by a force of almost unspeakable evil. A character as maternally fierce as Sethe would never subject her on progeny to treatment so inhumane- no matter the cost.
Sethe's love was described by Paul D as being "too thick." We can see this clearly as Sethe struggles through her escape from slavery, 9 months pregnant, propelled forward only by her fierce love. Sethe cares far more about the wellbeing of her children over herself- she mentions countless times how much she wishes she could just lay down and die when escaping slavery, but every time she stops to do so she is roused by a kick in her belly. This thick love is what led her into the woodshed that day, but the choice was successful. In the eyes of a man like Schoolteacher, there was very little she could do. A canyon of complete imbalance stood between them: Schoolteacher, backed by the law and a shotgun must have felt to Sethe like death itself. In the face of odds so impossible, anything short of what she did may have led to her and her children's capture and subjugation. Given these odds, she makes a choice that seemed subhuman. Sethe herself feels guilt for this choice, which she tries to expiate via Beloved, but as readers we are able to draw our own conclusions. And seeing the violence inflicted in what the text seems to suggest is quite a short time, Sethe's hardest choice makes itself much more humane. Death is the most inescapable facts of life, but there is nothing inescapable about Schoolteacher's torment in the eyes of Sethe. In fact, by taking matters into her own hands she sees the only way to absolve her children from living the rest of their lives suffering.
Sethe's choice is encapsulated simply in one of her remarks later in the story. "If I hadn't killed her, she would have died, and that is something I could not bear to happen to her." Sethe, because of her torment at the hands of Schoolteacher realizes that subjecting her children to this life is something worse than death. Sethe kills their bodies, but not their souls. And while Paul D may criticize her taking away her children's agency, what agency did they have at Sweet Home under Schoolteacher? Sethe sees that Schoolteacher, who "measured [their] backs" left no room for their agency anyway, and saw death as absolution from this reduction to beasts of labor. In the end, Sethe's choice seems the only option in the face of these impossible options. As their mother, she made the choice to break their bodies to preserve their souls, the only way to set them free.
David, 1/5/25
This is a compelling account of the moral logic behind Sethe's "rough choice" in the woodshed, and you also offer a way of understanding the curious mix of nostalgia and horror with which Sethe thinks about Sweet Home, eighteen years later. It indeed represents the setting for the only time her family was intact--"it was where we were all together." She never sees Halle again, and the final image of him that Paul gives her ends up haunting her even further than his disappearance had ("knowing was worse than not knowing"). It makes sense, even if it's hard for a reader to process, that she would have some fond memories of this time, even if it represents the setting she can NEVER allow her children to go back to. As you note, everything depends on Schoolteacher and the ways he changes things at Sweet Home: Sethe is deeply unsettled, to put it mildly, when she is treated as livestock by Schoolteacher and his nephews, but this moment also makes absolutely clear to her that the thought of her children remaining in this setting is totally unacceptable. She has a more acute sense of the nightmare, in part because she has something to compare it to. She grasps the essence of slavery, in a similar way as Paul does when he contemplates what it meant to be a "Sweet Home Man"--their "humanity" exists at the pleasure and whim of the owner and overseer, and that's no real humanity at all, if it can be so easily rescinded.
ReplyDelete