I think that if Sethe never went to the Garners house after Baby Suggs had passed away the story would be much different then how it is now.
“Paul D smiled then, remembering the bedding dress. Sethe was thirteen when she came to Sweet Home and already iron-eyed. She was a timely present for Mrs. Garner who had lost Baby Suggs to her husband’s high principles. The five Sweet Home men looked at the new girl and decided to let her be. They were young and so sick with the absence of women they had taken to calves. Yet they let the iron-eyed girl be, so she could choose in spite of the fact that each one would have beaten the others to mush to have her. It took her a year to choose–a long, tough year of thrashing on pallets eaten up with dreams of her. A year of yearning, when rape seemed the solitary gift of life. The restraint they had exercised possible only because they were Sweet Home men–the ones Mr. Garner bragged about while other farmers
shook their heads in warning at the phrase.”
This scene is one example of the story changing if Sethe did not go to the Garners house because Sethe would have never met with the five men that also lived in the Garner house. If Sethe did not go to the Garner house after Baby Suggs had passed away then she would not have met Halle who becomes her husband or met Paul D who she loves in the story when she is living with her daughter Denver. Sethe would also not have given birth to Denever or would she would have to give up on her first child if she did not go to the Garner house.
That’s what they came in there for. Held me down and took it. I told Mrs. Garner on em. She had that lump and couldn’t speak but her eyes rolled out tears. Them boys found out I told on em. Schoolteacher made one open up my back, and when it closed it made a tree. It grows there still.”
This is another scene that would also have not took place if she did not go to the Garner house. This scene has a great importance because if Sethe did not get her milk stolen by force then she would not have be traumatized so much. She would also not have to live with the fact that she was forced to do something that would scar her life.
Sethe living in the Garner house in her early teens years is what really gets the story going to how it is. By meeting the people she met at the early age and the events that happen to her on those early years plays a big role in what she ends up doing and how she lives it out. She gets married to Halle, gets raped, gives birth to children and so on is the result of what happens to her after she lives in the Garner house.
