Lay em down, Sword and shield

Lay em down, Sword and shield is a phrase that echoes through Toni Morrison's Beloved as a spiritual and emotional directive, most explicitly voiced by Baby Suggs, holy, to her daughter-in-law Sethe. It is a command to release the defensive weapons of grief, regret, and rage that the formerly enslaved carry as survival mechanisms, and to surrender the ceaseless vigilance that the past demands. The phrase first appears in the novel at a moment of profound crisis for Sethe, when the weight of her memories—particularly the revelation of her husband Halle's breakdown—threatens to overwhelm her. Baby Suggs, who had once preached a gospel of self-love in the Clearing, offers this counsel as a balm, urging Sethe to lay down her "heavy knives of defense against misery, regret, gall and hurt" and to find peace by the riverside, a biblical allusion to the spiritual "Down by the Riverside" that promises an end to war and strife.

Origins and Context

The phrase is rooted in the African American spiritual tradition, specifically the song "Down by the Riverside," which proclaims "I ain't gonna study war no more." Baby Suggs, an unchurched preacher who held services in the Clearing, adapts this language to the specific wounds of her community. In the novel, she is described as having "busted her legs, back, head, eyes, hands, kidneys, womb and tongue" from a lifetime of slavery, yet she devoted her freedom to teaching others to love their flesh. Her instruction to "lay em down" is not merely about abandoning physical weapons but about relinquishing the psychological armor that prevents healing. The phrase appears in the narrative when Sethe, reeling from Paul D's account of Halle's fate—how he sat by the churn with butter smeared on his face, broken by witnessing the nephews steal Sethe's milk—wishes for Baby Suggs' comforting touch and words. The memory of Baby Suggs' voice, saying "Lay em down, Sethe. Sword and shield. Down. Down. Both of em down. Down by the riverside," becomes a counterpoint to Sethe's own relentless "rebellious brain" that "snatched up everything" and refused to forget.

The Phrase in Sethe's Life

For Sethe, the command to lay down her sword and shield is both a promise and an impossibility. She has spent eighteen years since her escape from Sweet Home in a state of vigilant defense, first against the ghost of her murdered daughter, then against the community's shunning, and finally against her own memories. The phrase represents an ideal of release that she struggles to achieve. After Paul D's revelation about Halle, Sethe feels the weight of her past more acutely than ever, and she longs for the "fingers" of Baby Suggs on her neck, which she imagines would allow her to "lay it all down, make a way out of this no way." Yet when she goes to the Clearing seeking that release, she is instead choked by an unseen force—later attributed to Beloved—suggesting that the past cannot be so easily set aside. The phrase thus becomes a measure of Sethe's internal conflict: she knows she should lay down her burdens, but the trauma of her history, particularly the infanticide that she committed to protect her children from schoolteacher, makes such surrender feel like a betrayal of her love.

Transformation and Resolution

The phrase undergoes a crucial transformation at the novel's end, when Paul D returns to Sethe after Beloved's disappearance. Sethe, having lost her "best thing"—her conviction that her children were her only claim to selfhood—lies in Baby Suggs' bed, withdrawn and exhausted. Paul D, echoing Baby Suggs' earlier counsel, tells her, "You your best thing, Sethe. You are." This is a reworking of the "lay em down" imperative: instead of laying down her sword and shield, Sethe is asked to lay down the false belief that her identity is solely defined by her children. The phrase's evolution from a call to abandon defensive weapons to a call to embrace one's own worth reflects the novel's broader argument about the necessity of self-love and the possibility of healing. Paul D's words, which recall Baby Suggs' preaching about loving one's flesh, offer Sethe a new kind of peace—not the peace of forgetting, but the peace of recognizing that she herself is worthy of love and care. In this way, "Lay em down, Sword and shield" becomes a touchstone for the novel's exploration of how the formerly enslaved might move forward without being consumed by the past, and how the act of laying down one's burdens can be both a personal and communal act of liberation.