One scene that I found quite powerful was when Paul D tells Sethe that Halle saw the men steal her milk. She comes to realize so many things in one moment. Not only was she angry because Halle didn’t do anything to help save her, but she also learns that he went crazy, and that watching that scene unfold broke him and that’s why he didn’t join her in their planned escaped. If he hadn’t seen that maybe things would have turned out differently. After she finds out she sits with her newfound realization and is angry because her mind allows her to harbor another painful memory when she has had her fill of pain and suffering. She also realizes that she didn’t have the choice that Halle had to go crazy, even though she thinks to herself what a nice option that would have been to just let go and not carry on. She realizes that she never had that choice because her children were waiting for her and that she had to go on.
“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. 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 care in the world. Feeling it slippery, sticky – rubbing it in their hair, watching it squeeze through their fingers. What a relief to stop right there. Close. Shut. Squeeze the butter. But her three children were chewing sugar teat under a blanket on their way to Ohio and no butter play would change that.”
In this quote she is clearly saying that it would have been just as easy or better to have given into weakness. She to could have given up and let go, but she knew that her children would in turn suffer and that giving up was not an option for her.
I think this passage is reflective go how much Sethe has endured. How she feels like she has been left by those that she loves. Halle, Baby Suggs, her mother and even in some way Beloved, because though she killed her, she still laments her loss. She is filled with painful memories, and this revelation is another to add. She keeps going forward even though she is filled to the brim with pain, her love for her children keeps her going. Her will to live, whether she recognizes it, is stronger than her pain.
