On Sethe's Notion of Life vs. Death
One of the themes that I found the most interesting in Beloved was Sethe’s notion that dying or going crazy can be a more favorable fate than staying alive. While Sethe is escaping slavery––separated from her children, with no idea where her husband is, and six months pregnant with another one of her children––she almost gives up. She almost lays there and lets herself die, but “the thought of herself stretched out dead while the little antelope lived on--an hour? a day? a day and a night?––in her lifeless body grieved her so” and made her keep going despite what her body wanted so badly to do––give up (Morrison 37-38). During her escape from slavery, the only things keeping Sethe alive are her children; the thought of Denver, the little antelope in her stomach, dying with her, or her three kids who went ahead of her not having access to her milk.
When Paul D. tells Sethe about Halle’s experience being forced to watch her assault and how he was last seen smearing butter all over his face, She laments about how “other people went crazy, why couldn't she? Other people's brains stopped, turned around and went on to something new, which is what must have happened to Halle” (Morrison 83). She begins to fantasize about herself and her husband going crazy together, and “how sweet that would have been: the two of them back by the milk shed, squatting by the churn, smashing cold, lumpy butter into their faces with not a care in the world” (Morrison 83-84). Yet again, Sethe is viewing an objectively terrible fate as more desirable than the one that she is cursed to––staying alive and sane. To Sethe, the life that she is forced to live––first her life as a slave, and later her life as a woman shunned by her community and viewed as a monster––is harder to bear than the thought of death.
Sethe’s reaction to seeing Schoolteacher’s hat in her yard is a hard one to understand. Sethe is in a position that no person today could possibly relate to, and she is forced to make an impossible decision.The fact that Sethe’s reaction is impossible to understand also makes it impossible to judge or condone, but it can be more easily understood when considering her notions about death in comparison to life as a slave, especially after Schoolteacher’s arrival to Sweethome. Sethe has concluded time and time again that death is an easier fate than life as a slave under Schoolteacher, and with that logic, it becomes easier to understand why she views her actions as justified and necessary. Sethe holds her position that she did the safest thing for her children, and while that might seem like an oxymoronic position to hold––one that argues that dying is “safer” than staying alive––it stays completely consistent with what Sethe has wished for herself in the past. If it wasn’t for her children, Sethe would very likely have let herself die while she was escaping slavery. In that moment dying seemed like a much easier and less painful decision than staying alive, and when faced with that decision once more–– to stay alive and become a slave or die and never live through slavery again––she comes to the conclusion that death will be a “safer” option for her children, a conclusion that she wholeheartedly believes is correct, because when faced with that same decision during her own lifetime, she has come to the realization that in some situations dying is easier and safer than staying alive.
