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Beloved Chapter 2
Summary 1 • After twenty-five years of fantasizing about Sethe, Paul D finds the consummation of his desire to be a disappointment. He lies awake in Sethe's bed and decides that her “tree” is nothing but an ugly clump of scars. His thoughts turn to Sixo, a fellow slave at Sweet Home, who would walk thirty miles to meet his girlfriend while Halle and the Paul brothers pined away after Sethe. • We learn that although Baby Suggs had eight children by six different men, Halle, her youngest, was the only one who wasn't taken from her. When Halle bought Baby Suggs her freedom, she believed that, at her age, she was too old for her freedom to mean anything.
Summary 2 • Paul D's interested gaze reminds Sethe of Halle, whose love was more like that of a brother than that of a man “laying claim.” Sethe remembers that when she and Halle first decided to get married, she asked Mrs. Garner if they were to have a wedding, but the white woman only laughed. With nothing to make the partnership official in any way, Sethe secretly stitched herself a dress to mark the occasion. The lovers consummated their relationship in a cornfield, and the swaying corn stalks alerted the other men that Sethe had finally made her choice. That night, the other Sweet Home men ate the fresh corn that came from the stalks broken by Sethe and Halle.
Analysis 1 • Chapter 2 begins with Paul D gazing at Sethe's back and it ends with her gazing at his. These images symbolize what is taking place thematically in the chapter: the characters' charting of their respective memories, of what lies behind them, at their backs. Sethe's back also contains the visible scars of her whipping. The narration alternates between two time periods—the present in Cincinnati and the Sweet Home past. The Sweet Home past is presented from both Paul D's and Sethe's perspectives, as the narrator's focus shifts between the two characters. The novel maps out the points of proximity and distance between them. Both characters, for example, are disappointed after having sex, and they simultaneously begin thinking about Sethe and Halle's encounter in the cornfield twenty-five years ago. On the other hand, Paul D's sudden, secret revulsion toward Sethe's scars suggests an emotional distance that takes even him by surprise.
Analysis 2 • Sethe recalls that Halle loved her in a brotherly way, not like a man “laying claim.” However, beneath the surface of this seemingly positive memory is the fact of the impotence inherent to the slave condition. Even if he had wanted to do so, Halle could not have laid claim to his enslaved wife any more than she could lay claim to herself. Slaves were not permitted to become legally married because marriage means giving yourself in contract to one another, and slaves are already contracted to their owners. The prohibition of marriage also prevented the slaves from having a strong claim on their children. Baby Suggs's loss of her eight children was nothing unusual in slave life. The names of Paul D and his brothers are also a testament to the slaves' lack of ownership over themselves and their children. Paul D's brothers are named Paul A and Paul F, suggesting their interchangeability in the minds of their owners. Moreover, the brothers' last name—Garner—is that of their owner. It thus marks them as the property of another.
