« Thinking Out Loud (paper 3) | Main | Beloved »
April 09, 2007
The man in the hat
"Eighteen years ago, that while he and Baby Suggs were looking the wrong way, a pretty little slavegirl had recognized a hat, and split to the wood shed to kill her children" (186).
Upon first reading this quote, and learning why Sethe killed her daughter, I thought that Sethe was protecting them from the school teacher. The school teacher, however, doesn't seem to be portrayed as a bad person. While he might be meaner than Mr. Garner, beating one of the slaves, he seemed no more worse than any white man of the time. I then realized that she didn't flee the school teacher, she didn't kill her daughter to protect her from the school teacher. She did it, in order to be free and to provide her children freedom. She felt it better for her children to be dead than to be slaves.
Posted by emlauren at April 9, 2007 09:25 PM