"'Tell me something, Stamp.' Paul D's eyes were rheumy. 'Tell me this one thing. How much is a nigger supposed to take? Tell me. How much?'"
"'All he can,' said Stamp Paid. 'All he can.'"
Toni Morrison's characters all have a fighting instinct. The story that she constructs shows this mentality, and then shows how life beats people down and tries to break their wills. Sometimes it succeeds, sometimes it doesn't.
Life broke Baby Suggs. When Sethe killed Beloved and tried to kill her other children, Baby Suggs couldn't take it. From that day on she was a shell of her former self, holed up in her bedroom studying different colors. Life broke Paul D. After years of coping with his memories of slavery, he was done in by Beloved, who moved him out of Sethe's house and into a church's basement. By the time Stamp paid him a visit (good pun, right?) he was beaten down and bitter about life.
However, life never broke Stamp Paid. It almost did. He had some close calls, and almost gave up after he experienced the pain of not being able to enter 124, despite his best attempts. Stamp tried to encourage Baby Suggs and Paul D when they were feeling depressed. Stamp was never one to give up on life.
Toni Morrison recognizes the struggles that people expreience. She realizes that the world can hurt people in the most intense ways. But she also knows that people are capable of fighting through the bad times, and she shows this in Beloved.
I like how you took a deeper look into Stamp Paid's involvement in the novel. At first, I thought he wasn't a very major character, but as the story progressed, Morrison showed that Stamp had a very influential role in the community. Nice post.
ReplyDelete