Towards
the end of Chapter 17 of Toni Morrison’s Beloved,
Paul D uses Mister, a rooster back at Sweet Home, as symbol for everything
wrong with his life. Both Sethe and Paul D express malice towards Mister,
because they remember Mister as proud and mean. For Paul D, Mister represents
how slavery took away his identity, because Paul D was treated as more of an
animal than Mister was. On page 86, Paul says to Sethe, “Mister always looked
so… free. Better than me. Stronger, tougher. Son of a bitch couldn’t even get
out the shell by hisself but he was still king and I was…” Later Paul D goes
onto say, “Even if you cooked him you’d still be cooking a rooster named
Mister. But wasn’t no way I’d ever be Paul D again, living or dead.” As he
recollects this story, it is evident that Paul D feels that slavery dehumanized
him and robbed him of his sense of identity.
Just as Paul D uses Mister to
express his feelings about his harsh past, Sethe also uses symbols to voice her
feelings of anguish. A prevalent example throughout the text is the way Sethe
describes the scars on her back as a cherrychoke tree. In Chapter 9, on page
93, the scars are first described as a tree when Amy is helping Sethe give
birth to Denver. Repeatedly, Amy mentions that parts of the scar look like
blossoms, which make her “wonder what God had in mind.” Amy sees these blossoms
as a symbol from God that Sethe is special, especially because of all that she
suffered while she was a slave. For Sethe, she uses the symbol of the tree to
say that her experiences as a slave have an impact on her that will never
leave. Just as Paul D feels slavery took away his identity, Sethe uses the tree
metaphor to say that she feels slavery left an imprint on her identity as well.
It is even more impactful because trees are usually used as a symbol of life,
but slavery is often considered even worse than death. The tree is used because
it shows that the struggles Sethe faced as a slave are still alive in her years
later.
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