“My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have

any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous

alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and
blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in
my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of
selfishness and intolerance.”
Adrienne Rich (b. 1929), U.S. poet. Of Woman Born, ch. 1 (1976).1

“Parenthood is not an object of appetite or even desire. It is an object

of will. There is no appetite for parenthood; there is only a purpose or
intention of parenthood.”
R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943), British philosopher. The New
Leviathan, pt. 2, ch. 23, aph. 85 (1942).2

Baptize
A. To cleanse or purify. B. To initiate3

I
 I like to play music. Whether I’m reading, studying or

cleaning, music is on. I’m sitting at my computer, waiting for an idea

for this paper. While the sounds of Marvin Gaye are emanating from

the speakers, a thought hits me. Here is a person who was killed by

his parent. A similar situation is presented in Toni Morrison’s novel,

Sula. This is the scene I will analyze for my second essay.

The scene takes place on pages 45 - 48. The opening of

the scene is described by the omniscient narrator. The narrator sets

up the scene by painting a picture of a handicapped woman in pain.

Eva is her name. She’s on a mission of liberation. Her sick son, Plum,

lies in his bed sleep, unsuspecting of his fate.

The general subject matter is about a parent’s pain

regarding a sick child. It’s about a parent who cares and cannot bear

to see her child suffer. To her, this child has gone as far as he’s going

to, without destroying both parties any further.

This scene was included in this novel to underscore the

drastic measures a parent will take to ease a child’s suffering. It may

seem extraneous, but Eva feels that this way will offer Plum some

dignity and freedom. Eva’s measures at rescuing Plum have

exhausted her, this is the last straw.

II
 This scene is special and it creates a relationship with the

rest of the novel. It chronicles another display of Eva’s brand of

“love”. She went to great lengths to care for her children. The

spending of the last bit of food to cure Plum’s blockage and the selling

of her leg, are further examples of what she’d do in the name of

survival and the protection of her family.

The scene occurs late one night in 1921. Plum is sleeping,

he has been back in Medallion for approximately one year. He

displays the symptoms associated with a drug problem. He’s shabby,

steals, sleeps erratically and looks haggard. His sister Hannah, found

a “bent spoon black from cooking.” His mother Eva wakes up and

gets dressed. She now knows something is wrong and that something

must be done. The narrator tells us how she is not having an easy

time negotiating her trip with the crutches. She’s unaccustomed to

using them. The language here is picturesque, describing Eva as

resembling a giant heron, awkwardly swooping and swinging through

rooms on her way to Plum’s bedroom. With a swing and a swoop, she

used a tip of one crutch to push open the bedroom door. He’s lying in

a very dimly lit room. Before the narrator leaves, we’re told how Eva

swings over to the bed, sits down and gathers a slightly sleeping Plum

in her arms. I can imagine the pain that Eva feels knowing what she’ll

do. This pain will never publicly manifest itself, Eva internalizes

everything. She operates on the “Theory of Necessary Evils”,

III
whatever it takes to get the job done. This doesn’t mean that she’s

without feeling or emotion. Eva is a very pragmatic woman who isn’t

handcuffed by emotion.

In this next section, a half asleep Plum speaks to his

mother, “…You holdin’ me Mamma?”. It can be ascertained that by

his chuckling, drowsy and amused voice that he’s under the influence

of some narcotic (possibly Heroin). That may also explain the mental

haze he’s experiencing. Eva is holding her son close, rocking back and

forth. Once again, the pain must be excruciating. This was her last

child, her baby son, on the verge of oblivion. She loved him so much

and wanted to leave him everything. I can only imagine sitting there

with my child, comforting him within my arms only to do the

unspeakable shortly thereafter. Ms. Morrison hits home again by

taking us down memory lane with Eva as she reminisces about Plum

as a child. It is a very highly charged emotional scene, but very

understated. The room is dirty with litter from old junk food wrappers,

a glass of strawberry crush and a Liberty magazine. The addition of

the magazine into the setting of Plum’s room foreshadows future

events. He will be receiving a kind of “liberty”.

Plum soon speaks again, through the haze. “Mamma, you

so purty. You so purty, Mamma.” This denotes Plum’s affection for his

mother, which further pains her. This is evident because Eva is crying.

An uncharacteristic display at best. A very powerful scene once again.

IV
Here’s a woman who can feel the pain of her child as her own. She

lays him down and looks for a long time, possibly contemplating how

things could have gotten to this point.

Eva gets thirsty and picks up the glass of strawberry

crush. She notices that it’s not soda pop, but a glass of blood-tainted

water. She’s so horrified that she throws it on the floor. This must do

nothing but further fuel the fires of hopelessness within her.

Plum wakes up and tells his mother to go back to bed. He

says, “…I’m all right, Didn’t I tell you? I’m all right. Go on now.” Eva

finally speaks, “I’m going, Plum.” Going back to the giant heron

reference, she swings and swoops out of the room into the kitchen.

Still chuckling, Plum was in the twilight of a warm light

sleep thinking of his mamma. Thinking of the love he felt for her.

How he longed to be closer to her. The omniscient narrator returns to

describe in an low key style the next horrific scene. It’s presented as if

Plum was in a dream world, half conscious, half asleep. He feels a wet

light with a deeply attractive smell traveling all over his body. To

further underscore his twilight state (and the bird/heron reference), he

imagined he saw “the great wing of a eagle” blessing him with the wet

lightness. He felt it was a baptism. It was a baptism of sorts. He was

being prepared to travel to another world. A world where he may

have a chance to start over. A world where drug addiction wouldn’t

hold him hostage and steal his soul. His soul would be given a

V
reincarnation. All of the trappings of this world would go up in smoke.

I guess he sensed this by closing his eyes and sinking back into the

sanctity of sleep.

It’s here that Eva stepped back from the bed, rolled up

some newspaper, lit it and threw it on her kerosene-soaked son. He

just laid there in the delight that everything would be all right. Quickly

the flames engulfed him. Eva shut the door and made her painful

journey back to the top of the house. I don’t know if the journey was

physically or emotionally painful. I figure it would have to be both. I

wonder how heavy her heart must be, while at the same time relieved.

Her baby was not suffering and he didn’t have to worry about living a

fruitless existence. Still, the hurt must have been astronomical.

By the time Eva arrived at her bed, Hannah opened the

door shouting that Plum was burning. As frantic as Hannah was, Eva

wasn’t (at least not on the outside). She just looked into Hannah’s

eyes and said, “Is? My baby? Burning?” They didn’t speak, the eyes

spoke volumes. Eva did what had to be done. What else could she

say? That was her ultimate expression of love and responsibility.

In conclusion, Marvin Gaye like Plum had their lives

dictated by drugs. Mr. Gaye’s father shot him after an altercation.

Plum hurt his mother in a similar way. She pinned her future hopes on

him, he was drifting away. Both parents were disappointed, frustrated

and hurt. They both chose methods that would “cure” their children

VI
and possibly put them on their way to a new beginning. Even though

anger was a motivating factor, love was the greater underlying factor.

Works cited

1. © & 1987-1996 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations is licensed from Columbia
University Press. Copyright © 1993, 1995 by Columbia University
Press. All rights reserved.

2. © & 1987-1996 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations is licensed from Columbia
University Press. Copyright © 1993, 1995 by Columbia University
Press. All rights reserved.

3. © & 1987-1996 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third
Edition copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic
version licensed from INSO Corporation. All rights reserved.

VII
VIII