Paul D, a man who comes into 124, physically and figuratively shakes up the familiar relationships, throws Sethe into an unrecognizable emotional state, and evidently gets displaced by a ghost roaming the house, Toni Morrison uses this character to project the myriad of experiences, reflection, and pain of a African-American male in the Antebellum period. Morrison stalls his relationship with Sethe in front of her audience, through times where we've appreciated Paul D's presence, and times we've resented his ignorance towards his selfish treatment of Sethe. Not only does he equate a female with the home she lives in, saying;
"He believed he was having house-fits, the glassy anger men sometimes feel when a woman's house begins to bind them, when they want to yell and break something or at least run off. He knew all about that—felt it lots of times—in the Delaware weaver's house, for instance. But always he associated the house-fit with the woman in it. This nervousness had nothing to do with the woman […] Also in this house-fit there was no anger, no suffocation, no yearning to be elsewhere. He just could not, would not, sleep upstairs or in the rocker or, now, in Baby Suggs' bed. So, he went to the storeroom" (135).
Moreover, this thought process begins to be hypocritical, quoting "whom he loved (Sethe) a bit more everyday: [...] the blood in her eye when she defended her girls" (136); only to later break up with Sethe on the grounds that she had taken the life of her children to keep them from experiencing the most inhumane and degrading systematic oppression this country, and very much the world, has ever known. His vision of love pertains to a larger basis of insecurity in masculinity. The fact that Paul D would have rather impregnated Sethe than admit to having emotional struggle and turmoil is a point Morrison is portraying through his fluctuating treatment of Sethe. Men, especially at the time, were defined by their physical toughness. If a woman was to assert this "dominance" over a man, the male was not considered a man. The emotional struggles Paul D is going through at the time of his dissent from 124 relate back to his sexual encounter with Beloved. Having been raped, Paul D no longer feels his manhood is honored in the house of 124, as he has been made to feel unsafe in his own body, pressured into sexual acts, and socially isolated. Morrison ends the chapter right before the beginning of Part II by Sethe nonchalantly waving off Paul D's point to end their relationship. By ending the chapter with Sethe thinking: "Sweet. He must think I can't bear to hear him say it. That after all I have told him and after telling me how many feet I have, "goodbye" would break me into pieces. Ain't the sweet" (195).
The audience is left feeling proud that Sethe is remaining unaffected by his absence and harsh insults, but also a large loss of a character's right to finally feel as if they are the person in control of their actions. This confusion is one of many ways Morrison depicts the lasting effects of slavery and how to many people at the time, slavery was mentally inescapable. We, as the audience, must not overlook the pain that both the main characters have gone through individually, and how they in turn allow for the treatment of one another.
