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Wednesday, April 10, 2013

The Indirect Effects of Slavery on Baby Suggs


As Stamp Paid approaches 124 to do right by the family of Baby Suggs, he recalls the time when he confronted Baby Suggs about resigning from her place as leader of the community and the argument they had over her quitting the Word.  In this dialogue, Morrison includes emphatic repetition, rhetorical questions, and inverted syntax in order to emphasize the terrible toll the actions of the slave catchers took on Baby Suggs.  Stamp asks Baby Suggs if she believes the “whitefolks won” to which Baby Suggs replies, “I’m saying they came in my yard” (211).  This response is repeated three times throughout the dialogue to highlight that for Baby Suggs, the worst of the slave catcher’s action was entering her property.  However, it is not just there physical presence that disturbs Baby Suggs so deeply, it is all the terrible experiences of slavery she thought she was free of intruding into her home.  Stamp then points out to her that “Sethe’s the one who did it,” in reference to the killing of the baby, but Baby Suggs responds by asking, “And if she hadn’t?” (211).  This rhetorical question suggests that Sethe killing her child may not have been the worst option in light of the slave catcher’s presence.  Baby Suggs shares the sentiment with Sethe that the implications of having the children put back into slavery are so unbearable that death is a reasonable choice.  Stamp later asks Baby Suggs about her current relationship with God wherein he suggests, “You punishing Him” to which she responds “Not like He punish me.”    Morrison uses a chiastic structure here in order to place Baby Suggs first as the subject, acting upon God, and then second as the object.  This device underscores the idea that she has been so terribly victimized that she believes God, who she has had a close connection with, is punishing her.  Taken in conjunction with Sethe’s earlier memory of Baby Suggs as a wise and powerful preacher-like figure, this defeated image of her is in stark contrast, revealing the drastic effects of the symbolic return of slavery. 

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