Characteristics

Paul D’s stinging insult certainly left me wide-eyed, but at first I was a bit perplexed by it.

“You got two feet, Sethe, not four.”

Of course, he is comparing Sethe to an animal - saying that her reaction to seeing Schoolteacher was no more humane or intelligent than what a cow or horse’s reaction might have been.

At first, this insult seems fairly biting, but possibly forgivable. Maybe something that would be thrown out in the heat of the moment and apologized/forgiven for later. But it takes on a stronger meaning when Sethe and Paul D’s histories are taken into consideration.

Sethe, for instance, was prompted to leave Sweet Home when she overheard Schoolteacher asking students to observe her animal characteristics. He perceives Sethe, who has so much love and resilience and humanity as a mother and woman, as something wild and beastly. She is later abused as an animal might be, and treated sexually like the Sweet Home boys treat the cows. The parallel between Sethe’s presumably being raped and her milk being taken from her, and the milk the Sweet Home boys took from the cows alongside having sex with them, is harrowing and tragic. Sethe was an animal to the Schoolteacher and his nephews, and in her final argument with Paul D, she becomes an animal to him as well.

Being treated as less-than-human is not an experience lost on Paul D, either. He has been chained to other men and shut away as if in a stable, forced into hard labor all day. More obviously, he had to wear a bit in his mouth. Not only are bits made for horses, but Paul D’s made him feel at the social level of a rooster. He understands what it’s like to face physical pain, emotional exhaustion, and mental trauma as a result of being perceived as an animal.

Thus, the insult takes on an even more degrading, repulsive connotation. Paul D is aware of the beastly qualities projected on him and Sethe throughout slavery, and by commenting on Sethe’s legs, he knowingly threw them in her face. Never has it been so clear that he should not, and cannot, be a part of 124’s family.