In the four horsemen chapter in Beloved, Morrison writes the scene from the point of view of each of the horsemen. Although all of the points of view are interesting, especially the slave catcher who views the whole capture as a job and only that, and Schoolteacher who just sees the lost goods and is think of how to punish his nephew, I think the nephew's take on what is happening is also really interesting.
The first line we get was, "he didn't know he was shaking." This is immediately followed by what can be seen as something like denial. Although Schoolteacher warned him that something like this could happen, he didn't expect it and he seems to start feeling regret at his actions. The nephew thinking things like "Hell he'd been beat a million times" and then later, "I mean no way he could have..." give us the sense that he really didn't think that this could happen. The second quote gives us the sense that the nephew feels responsible for this to some extent. The fact that he is shaking also supports this assertion. Although when he does what he does he thinks nothing of it, as soon as he sees the consequences of his actions, children being killed, he regrets what he has done.
I think this is a really interesting perspective to look at. In the case of the others who are trying to take Sethe and the kids back to Sweet Home, they view none of her actions as their own fault, but the nephew does see what happens as at least partly his fault. This gives us a more nuanced picture of how slavery affected people. In addition to harming the slaves physically and mentally, it harms the masters too in the sense that they have to lose enough regard for fellow humans that they can cause so much harm and not feel bad about it. Basically the nephew in this story shows us the sheer amount of conditioning that the southerners went through to be able to do what they did and not regret any of it.
Overall, these four different perspectives on what is happening in the shed give a nuanced view of the relationship between the slaves and the masters. What do you guys think about these perspectives?
The first line we get was, "he didn't know he was shaking." This is immediately followed by what can be seen as something like denial. Although Schoolteacher warned him that something like this could happen, he didn't expect it and he seems to start feeling regret at his actions. The nephew thinking things like "Hell he'd been beat a million times" and then later, "I mean no way he could have..." give us the sense that he really didn't think that this could happen. The second quote gives us the sense that the nephew feels responsible for this to some extent. The fact that he is shaking also supports this assertion. Although when he does what he does he thinks nothing of it, as soon as he sees the consequences of his actions, children being killed, he regrets what he has done.
I think this is a really interesting perspective to look at. In the case of the others who are trying to take Sethe and the kids back to Sweet Home, they view none of her actions as their own fault, but the nephew does see what happens as at least partly his fault. This gives us a more nuanced picture of how slavery affected people. In addition to harming the slaves physically and mentally, it harms the masters too in the sense that they have to lose enough regard for fellow humans that they can cause so much harm and not feel bad about it. Basically the nephew in this story shows us the sheer amount of conditioning that the southerners went through to be able to do what they did and not regret any of it.
Overall, these four different perspectives on what is happening in the shed give a nuanced view of the relationship between the slaves and the masters. What do you guys think about these perspectives?
I agree that it is interesting that these people somehow feel no responsibilities for Sethe's actions, actions that are motivated by what these people have done. The most interesting part of it though was that the Nephew feels a twinge of guilt. To speculate on the meaning of this is that it is a critique of what slavery does to those involved. Morrison is saying that slavery strips away the humanity of people, the nephew though is still young enough that slavery has not yet been able to take all of his humanity.
ReplyDeleteI also feel like Morrison is telling us that slavery strips away so much of the slave's humanity that they aren't even guilty for anything they do. I see this because through out the entire view of the nephew he is saying that it is his fault that this occurred because he beat Sethe, and Schoolteacher feels the same. This makes Sethe nothing more than a product of those around her, with no independence and no mental capability to really make her own decisions, even though we clearly see in other view points that Sethe really is making her own choices in order to play the slave system in America into letting her kids stay free.
ReplyDeleteThe nephew's reaction reflects something that's said more than once through Sethe's perspective about this moment: she finds a way to do something that "stops schoolteacher in his tracks." The shocking nature of her actions is a significant part of its effectiveness, and the nephew reels the hardest. There is maybe a bit of callousness in his "What'd she go and do that for?" response (comparing it to how often *he'd* been beaten, and how it never made him go off and do something so desperate), but maybe there is a glimmer here of how a slavemaster is *made* and not born. It doesn't come naturally for him to look at Sethe as an animal--he has to be *taught*, literally (as we get scenes of schoolteacher having him and his brother list Sethe's "human" and "animal" characterstics, and schoolteacher wants to teach his "boys" the proper proportions to avoid "overbeating" their slaves).
ReplyDelete