As I’ve expressed more than enough times, my reading experience for Beloved was largely influenced by the annotations made by a pre-maturation high school me. Where some of my marginalia illuminated very vague symbols within the text, I’m not sure how I felt when reading through the intimate scene written between Paul D and Beloved.
One of my favorite symbols within the novel is Paul D’s tin vs. Sethe’s husk vs. Beloved’s red heart. The three descriptions of their hearts (or character) become very telling the nature of how different they are. Paul D’s tobacco tin is rusted shut, while Sethe’s husk is dried. Both suffer from brutal tolls taken on their esteem, incapable of a sincere or satisfied human exchange, and they both fail to meet what is expected of their gender. A rusted tin and a dried husk are likely candidates for the metaphor, but the differentiation is that one is “rusted shut,” as Paul D’s old tin is so weathered and forgotten that it has fossilized, Sethe’s is just dry. Her husk is, after all, opened. It is used. Paul D’s used or not, implies that it can never be used again and suddenly Toni Morrison has made Paul D a complex, rigid character who refutes the emotions that confront him. Sethe is desperate for them, thirsty for her dried leaves. Her husk was stripped off, fine and loose. The nature of having sex with Sethe seemed easier, more nonchalant. He even says that it wasn’t much different from his regular bestiality.
The fact that Beloved is able to open the tin is huge. It only cinches, but the because of Beloved’s red heart, he is able to start opening. Toni Morrison uses the red heart as a symbol of vivacious, bleeding emotion. Beloved, in many ways, is an embodiment of suffering that other characters are unable to convey. But as Paul D is able to be inside a place Sethe never unveiled (she only took off a layers), Beloved’s red heart is releasing small “flakes” of his guarded heart.
And in the margins, 16-year-old Francisco wrote, “Ew. Sex with ghosts.”
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