Sethe's Escape and Its Long Shadow

Follows Sethe's flight from Sweet Home, the brief miracle of freedom, the infanticide that follows, and the eighteen years of solitary consequence.

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Sweet Home under Garner

Sweet Home under Garner A Special Kind of Slavery At Sweet Home, Mr. Garner runs a slavery that lets his Negroes be men: they can buy a mother, choose a wife, handle guns, and even learn to read if they want. Sethe arrives at thirteen, an iron-eyed girl, and the five men let her choose among them. Choosing Halle Sethe chooses Halle because he gave up five years of Sundays to buy his mother Baby Suggs out of slavery. They marry in a ceremony that is barely a ceremony, and their first coupling happens in the cornfield under the amused eyes of the other men. The Memory's Beauty Sethe later remembers Sweet Home as beautiful despite its horror; she cannot forgive her memory for preferring the sycamore trees over the boys who were hanged there. The farm becomes the origin of both her love and her trauma.

Schoolteacher Takes Over

Schoolteacher Takes Over The Man with the Notebook Mrs. Garner, widowed and failing, invites her brother-in-law schoolteacher to manage Sweet Home. He arrives with two nephews and a coach box full of paper. Unlike Garner, he does not advise or listen; he measures, observes, and records. The Classification System Schoolteacher writes in his notebook, sorting the slaves' human characteristics on the left and animal ones on the right. He measures Sethe's head and teeth, counting her features as if she were livestock. The men are no longer men but objects of study. The Ink That Betrays Sethe makes the ink schoolteacher uses, unknowingly helping to write her own dehumanization. The notebook becomes the instrument of a new terror, and the easy manhood Garner encouraged collapses into the animality schoolteacher insists on.

Stolen Milk and the Chokecherry Tree

Stolen Milk and the Chokecherry Tree The Violation After her children are sent ahead, Sethe stays behind to wait for Halle. One day schoolteacher's nephews hold her down and take her milk, the milk she is saving for her baby daughter. She tells Mrs. Garner, and schoolteacher punishes her by having her whipped. The Tree on Her Back The cowhide splits her skin, and the wounds heal into a mass of scars that Amy Denver will later call a chokecherry tree: trunk, branches, leaves, and blossoms. Sethe carries the tree for the rest of her life, a constant reminder that her body was not her own. The Breaking of Halle The violence destroys Sethe's husband too. Hidden in the barn loft, Halle watches the nephews take her milk and does not come down. His mind breaks, and he is never the same again, though Sethe does not learn this until Paul D tells her years later.

The Flight across the Ohio

The Flight across the Ohio Leaving Sweet Home Sethe sends her three children ahead in a wagon with other runaways, then flees herself, pregnant and alone. Schoolteacher has already broken the Sweet Home men, and Sethe refuses to let her children be raised under his notebook and his whip. Amy Denver's Help Half dead in the wild onions, Sethe is found by Amy Denver, a white girl looking for velvet in Boston. Amy massages her swollen feet, drapes spiderwebs on her torn back, and helps her into a leaking boat to cross the Ohio River. The Birth of Denver In the bottom of a stolen rowboat, Sethe gives birth to her fourth child. Amy cuts the cord, wraps the baby in her skirt, and names herself in the child's name: Denver. The river crossing becomes the hinge between slavery and freedom, between losing one child and gaining another.

Twenty-Eight Days and the Shed

Twenty-Eight Days and the Shed A Month of Freedom At 124, under Baby Suggs's care, Sethe experiences twenty-eight days of unslaved life: healing, ease, real-talk, company. She learns the alphabet, learns to wake at dawn and decide what to do with the day, and claims ownership of her freed self. The Four Horsemen Then schoolteacher arrives with a nephew, a slave catcher, and a sheriff. They have come to take Sethe and her children back to Sweet Home. The sight of the men in the yard reopens the wound of slavery, and Sethe makes a terrible choice. The Infanticide She gathers her children and takes them to the woodshed, intending to kill them all rather than return them to slavery. She succeeds with her crawling-already? baby girl, cutting her throat with a handsaw before Stamp Paid snatches the infant from her hands. The baby dies, and the community sees what Sethe has done.

Eighteen Years of Solitude

Eighteen Years of Solitude Prison and Reentry Sethe serves time in jail with her nursing daughter Denver. She is released, but her sons Howard and Buglar are so traumatized that they eventually leave home; Baby Suggs dies of a broken heart; and the black community shuns Sethe for her pride and her crime. The Ghost as Only Companion 124 becomes a haunted house, and the baby's ghost is Sethe's sole company. She lives with it, talks to it, and tells herself there is no world outside her door. The ghost is both punishment and proof that her love was real. The Waiting When Paul D arrives eighteen years later, Sethe has become a woman who does not look away, who has learned to survive by killing off her memories. But his presence opens the closed portion of her head, and the long shadow of the past begins to move again.

Sethe's years at Sweet Home before Mr. Garner's death

after Mr. Garner's death, when Mrs. Garner sends for her brother-in-law

shortly before Sethe runs, while she is pregnant with Denver

summer of 1855, before Denver is born

twenty-eight days after Sethe arrives at 124

1856 to 1873, after Sethe's release from jail