124 Bluestone Road Slavery

She who had never had one but this one; she who left a dirt floor to come to this one; she who had to bring a fistful of salsify into Mrs. Garner’s kitchen every day just to be able to work in it, feel like some part of it was hers, because she wanted to love the work she did, to take the ugly out of it, and the only way she could feel at home on Sweet Home was if she picked some pretty growing thing and too it with her.

Slavery: Sweet Home and 124 Bluestone Road Historically, the period in which slavery was prevalent in America signaled a time of social and economic unrest. Before the Civil War, though everyone living in the South was not straight out of Gone with the Wind, a certain class system was enforced, and people lived strictly
The perpetrator of the grisly murder, Sethe, is bound by an invisible chain more powerful than any white man or woman, more permanent than any law. The most destructive part is that both Sethe and her lonely daughter Denver become oblivious to the outside world; they lose sight of freedom and subconsciously relinquish their free will to this tiny mistress. This small house is surrounded by “the most beautiful sycamores in the world” (Morrison 6); it is naturally isolated from the rest of the suspicious community. Though it is on the outskirts of a major city, the novel does not introduce many characters in the wake of that house after the death of the baby. They are alone with their demons. Until the arrival of an outsider, no one can tell the extent that the ghost dictates the lives of those who live in the house. Paul D does not understand the disturbing slavery of motherhood and guilt that Sethe is bound to every moment of her life, and thus, he sheds a light of clarity and reality into the isolated world of 124, much to the chagrin of the ghost who does not want to lose her power over her
Both are surrounded by the common symbol of trees. The Sweet Home men spend time under the old branches of Brother, and Denver finds solace and beauty in her bower of trees. Yet, though these symbols begin as a positive reinforcement of individuality and solidarity of personality, it turns sour later in the novel. As if the human condition rots with age, the symbolism becomes increasingly more dark and depressing. Paul D is bound to a tree by Schoolteacher as he watches his friend Sixo burn to death. These once encouraging trees now represent alienation and the horrors of slavery. Paul D longs for his own tree, a family tree, to bring some closure and meaning to his life in the years after he escapes from slavery. So it is only fitting that when Sethe and Paul D are alienated from each other emotionally, a forest springs up between