A family. One tight-knit, nuclear family who understands each other’s intricate personalities and complex backgrounds. This was the shadow that Sethe spotted on her way to the carnival that reeked of rotting roses. This is the shadow that represents her, Paul D, and Denver’s past, present, and future. This shadow embodies Sethe, Denver, and Paul D’s past because it represents the outline of a happy family that none of these characters previously possessed but so badly desired. Sethe fell in love and bewedded Halle while under the ownership of “schoolteacher”, their harsh, inhumane master, but still longed for a life of freedom and happiness, one where she could raise her children away from the struggles of slavery. Denver grew up at 124 loving her mother, Sethe, out of fear; a fear of her mother attempting, again, to murder her children. It was this fear that Denver previously held that …show more content…
191) from a master or any person who was considered superior to the African-American people. Real freedom, to him, is loving more than just the small things, “the tiniest star out of the sky” or the “grass blades, salamanders, spiders… a kingdom of ants” (p. 191); it is loving anything and everything you could want without anyone telling you otherwise. Sethe and Paul D are not truly free because, in their lifetime, they will always be oppressed and looked down on by society just because of their race. They will never be allowed to love what they want, including their children, without some racist white man telling them otherwise or preventing them all together. According to Paul D, the world, more or less, belongs to the “men who had the guns” (p. 191) or the power to take what they want. In late nineteenth century Ohio and Kentucky, it was the men with guns that dictated what Sethe and Paul D’s passions and loves were as slaves or freed