Close Reading #2

“I was about to turn around and keep on my way to where the muslin was, when I heard him say, “No, no. That’s not the way. I told you to put her human characteristics on the left; her animal ones on the right. And dont forget to line them up.”(228)

This is one passage from page 228. In this passage Sethe is talking about what schoolteacher was like, and how he treated the slaves at Sweet Home like animals. You can see this the most when he says to put her “animal characteristics” on the right side of her. This happened a lot back then when there were slaves, they were not treated like human beings, instead they were treated like animals. It is hard to believe now that there were actually people like this back then, it is hard to imagine treating someone like they are animals and not feeling some sort of sympathy for them. This is what schoolteacher and his nephews treated the slaves at Sweet Home, he thought of them as animals that had no right to be in his presence. You can see this in Beloved when the schoolteacher watches as his nephews “steal Sethes milk.” He stands there and watches as if what they are doing is ok because she is not a human being. Treating slaves poorly is what happened a lot back when slavery was still allowed. Slaves were constantly being treated as lower people or sometimes not even as people at all. An example of this in Beloved is when Sethe is talking to Mrs. Garner about how she wants to get married to Halle and Sethe ask if there could be a wedding and Mrs. Garner just laughs at her. Mrs. Garner did not think Sehte deserved a wedding because she was a slave, she did not see Sethe as equal or near equal to herself. This is another example of slaves being treated as animals, they were not able to do anything, they were basically on leashes and had to do what they were told. Schoolteacher was the biggest violator of the slaves at Sweet Home. He treated the slaves like farm animals, her told them what to do and where to go and if they did not do that he would punish them, whether that was getting whipped like Sethe or getting a bit put in their mouth like Paul D.