Much of last night's reading was told from the perspective of Stamp Paid and some of that dealt with his recollections of Baby Suggs. As I was reading this part, it occurred to me that Stamp Paid and Baby Suggs might be the most virtuous in the book. Immediately after this I realized that even they were not blameless. Most of the time in books there are good and bad characters that are easy to distinguish, or if not there are characters who are easy to sympathize with and overlook their flaws. In this book there are no good people, only characters with flaws we cannot overlook. I think Morrison does this on purpose to make us realize the horrors of slavery and what it does to people.
Let's make a list of flaws:
Stamp Paid: rats out Sethe to Paul D and doesn't have courage to put things right
Baby Suggs: gives up on life and withdraws to her bedroom
Sethe: kills Beloved, refuses to consider it wrong
Denver: is jealous of Paul D and later her mother
Beloved: seduces Paul D, disregards Denver in her devotion to Sethe
Paul D: can't stay faithful to Sethe, isn't man enough to tell her about it
Ella: hates Sethe and thinks her a demon
Mr Garner: exploits his slaves
Mrs Garner: lets Schoolteacher be horrible to the slaves
Halle-Can't pull himself together and escape with Sethe
The only character I can find no flaw in is Amy, and we only see her for a day so it's hard to pick out flaws. Also she is white and never had to deal with the whole slavery issue. But in all of the black characters in the book, none of them are flawless. When I examine the list of flaws, some of them jump out at me as being just an ordinary human flaw, such as Denver's jealousy. However, a large percentage of the flaws were brought on by characters simply cracking under duress. Baby Suggs, Halle, and to an extent Sethe seem like virtuous people who just shut down after nightmarish situations. These especially drive home Morrison's point that slavery makes monsters out of otherwise good people by placing them under impossible duress.
As an interesting side note, the only significant character I could find who had absolutely no redeeming characteristics was Schoolteacher, which fits with Morrison's point about the horrors of slavery.
You make a good point by pointing out the complexities of all these characters, but what actual human being doesn't have flaws? I think that the fact that all these characters are flawed may simply be a testament to Morrison's ability to portray relatable characters. Notice that even most actions in the novel are not purely good or bad, but fall into some sort of gray area. Sethe's actions can be seen as good or bad depending on how you look at it. The way that the townspeople fail to warn 124 of the approaching slavecatchers isn't necessarily malicious, but it isn't kind either. I think that Morrison uses these morally ambiguous scenarios to show the complexity present in post-slavery society and that the eventual abolition of slavery itself was not simply black and white.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Edo completely, and I think your observation is simply a testament to Morrison's remarkable ability to write about real, true people. This book would be pretty boring if Sethe had committed no wrongs and was only running away with her family from a great evil. The characters, especially after climactic scenes where things are finally revealed, have a way of making you second guess what you know about them and change your opinion of their actions. I do, however, think that as readers, we are likely to categorize the "goods" and "bads" into groups, with some being worse or better than others. Maybe this is how we truly decide our allegiances when siding with/against certain characters. For me, I still have a hard time hating Sethe, even in light of what we learned she did to Beloved. For other readers, they might classify her actions as utter evil, and throw her into the "bad" characters. It's weird, because I still have such an attachment to Sethe, who murdered her children, but I get so annoyed with Denver, who's only crime is that she loves her sister too much. With this book, I don't think anyone will ever be able to decide on who is a better character than another.
ReplyDeleteJust gonna jump on the bandwagon of enjoying a novel with realistic people here. As the two above commenters have said, no real people are flawless, outside of maybe like Jesus. I think Amy is a little flawed though in her ditching of Sethe at the river for fear of being caught, but I'm not saying I wouldn't have done the same thing. I think most people would. Schoolteacher really is just doing his job just how everyone else would do it. It only looked bad because the previous type of slavery at Sweet Home was so nice to the slaves.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to put a word in for Stamp Paid, too. Sure, he makes a questionable call in "ratting out" Sethe to Paul (although he could just as easily look at it as letting Paul in on what everyone but him knows--it could go either way), but he immediately starts questioning himself and doubting whether he did the right thing. In my view, being an ethical person doesn't mean being flawless, or always DOING what's best--it means being constantly willing to interrogate one's own actions, to hold oneself to a high standard. When Stamp doubts himself and worries that he's messed things up for Sethe and Denver, I don't blame him--I'm impressed by his moral nuance.
ReplyDeleteBut I see your larger point, Jonny. Morrison is depicting *damaged* people who have been through unimaginable traumas. Sethe is a great example of this: none of us will ever be tested in the way that she is; her impossible dilemma is only made possible by a profoundly unnatural social order. No matter how much we want to "blame" Sethe, we always have to blame slavery first.