Beloved
...ck as a “Chokecherry tree.” By calling her scars a tree, they are thought of as something beautiful. The true ugliness and brutality are masked by the charm of a chokecherry tree. Amy Denver, the white girl who helped deliver Sethe’s daughter, first began calling the scars a tree. Amy Denver’s words were taken away when she first saw the ugliness of the scars. It was after a long silence before Amy returned with the words: It’s a tree, Lu. A chokecherry tree. See, heres the trunk-it’s red and split wide open, full of sap, and this here’s the parting for the branches. You got a mighty lot of branches. Leaves, too, look like, and dern if these ain’t blossoms. Tiny little cherry blossoms, just as white. Your back got a whole tree on it. In bloom. (Morrison 79). Amy covers the scars with beautiful words, thereby giving Sethe a more positive outlook on the scars on her back. The trees are also a mode for escape for Sethe. When she was running away from Sweet Home and schoolteacher, she ran into the woods for cover. These woods represented her quest for freedom. These woods also helped to save her life and safely deliver her daughter, Denver. Amy used moss and spider webs, found in the woods, to relieve the pain and help Sethe to survive. “Amy returned with two palmfuls of web, which she cleaned of prey and then draped on Sethe’s back, saying it was like stringing a tree for Christmas.” (Morrison 80). This gives trees a more positive meaning to Sethe since they are associated with getting away from School Teacher and helping to relieve the pain. Yet with all the positive memories of trees, trees also bring on the brutal memories of slavery for Sethe. Trees are associated with escaping slavery and masking cruel scars, along with Sethe’s mother’s death. The slave owners put this negative connotation in Sethe’s mind. Sethe’s mother was lynched by the white men right in front of her eyes. In this case, trees are the aid in Sethe’s mother’s death. Watching her mother die was a source of painful emotional scars for Sethe. She recalls that her mother was “hung. By the time they cut her down nobody could tell whether she had a circle and a cross or not.” (Morrison61). Her mother was hung by a tree at the hands of the slave owners. The white men corrupted the pure thoughts of trees in Sethe’s mind. Paul D, like Sethe, used trees as a route of escape. After escaping a prison, with the advice of the Cherokees, Paul D followed the blooms of the flowers northward to his freedom. “‘That way’, he said, pointing. ‘Follow the tree flowers,’ he said. ‘Only the tree flowers. As they go, you go. You will be where you want to be when they are gone.’” In this quote, the Cherokees give advice to Paul D. Paul D used the tree flowers to dictate the road to his freedom. Like Sethe, this gives him a good memory of the tree flowers since without them he would have gotten lost. He followed these flowers with an undying hope. “So he raced from dogwood to blossoming peach. When they thinned out, he headed for the cherry blossoms, then magnolia, chinaberry, pecan, walnut, and prickly pear. From February to July he was on the lookout for blossoms.” (Morrison 112). These tree flowers were the means of his Paul D’s escape. Paul D has a very special relationship with trees. Especially with a certain one he calls by the name of Brother. Always in the same place if he could, and choosing the place had been hard because Sweet Home had more pretty trees than any farm around. His choice he called Brother, as sat under it, alone sometimes, sometimes with Halle or the other Pauls, but more often with Sixo, who was gentle then and still speaking English.” (Morrison 21). Paul D, used Brother as a source of comfort. It was his place to sit and relax and think. This tree brings back good memories for Paul D. Brother was a peaceful place, a place to escape his hard work on Sweet Home. It also reminded him of his time with Sixo. But schoolteacher’s men bind, burn and shoot Sixo near the very trees that he and Paul D found trusting and inviting. The white men altered the memories of the trees at Sweet Home. No longer can they just be thought of as peaceful, but now they are the sites of Sixo’s murder. The Sweet Home men and Sethe had planned an escape that ended tragically. Halle and Paul A failed to appear at the appointed meeting time, and in their places stood schoolteachers, his nephews and other white men, waiting for Paul D and Sixo. They were both captured and Sixo began behaving so manically that schoolteacher tried to burn him alive, but Sixo only laughed. And so they shot him, to shut him up. These are the memories that the white men infringed upon Paul D’s brain. Forever he will remember seeing Sixo bound to a tree being burned alive. This memory of trees is paralleled with the trees that led him to his freedom and Brother, the tree he and Sixo used lay under. For Baby Suggs, the trees in the clearing represented a place to heal the wounds of slavery. It is here that she would preach to the black community in this clearing among the forests. She would begin by having the people...