While I was reading Beloved, by Toni Morrison, one paragraph caught my attention. It made me do a double-take and read it over again, and than again. After Denver asks Paul D, "how long he was going to hang around," Paul D is very hurt by her comment. He confronts Sethe about the matter, and she defends her daughter.
Paul D is surprised by Sethe's response and thinks it is very risky for her to love her daughter like that. "For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit: everything, just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one" (54).
Baby Suggs, Denver's grandmother, had 9 children and every one except the last one was taken from her. Paul D says that it's risky for Sethe to love Denver that much, because the reality of their situation was that at any moment children were ripped away from their mothers and families. Every mother should be able to love their children infinitely, and it was very unsettling thinking about the fact that mothers and fathers had to be cautious not to love their child too much, because then nothing would be left once they were taken away.
This passage struck me as well. It really made me see their torture in a new light. I can't imagine having to love a life in which I have to remind myself not to get too attached to someone, because I never know when they could be taken from me.
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