To Be Loved: Amy Denver and Human Need-Bridges to Understanding in Toni Morrison's Beloved

College Literature, Fall 2005 by Coonradt, Nicole M

By abetting an escaped slave, Amy places herself in danger of serious punishment, including imprisonment, under the "Fugitive Slave Law of 1850." Except for her own "fugitive" status as a runaway indentured servant who is in violation of a legally binding contract, she has the opportunity to turn Sethe in to receive a reward. Though she could, in theory, join the ranks of whites who profit from the slave trade, the fact remains that she does not; rather, she saves Sethe. Harding and Martin observe that, "'twinned' characters in [Morrison's] novels freely elect to share each other's existence and explore their mutual affinities" (1994, 41). Amy reaches out to Sethe because of her compassion and this need to share. For both characters, their "mutual affinities" and interaction affirm their value as human beings, not as property.

Morrison also explores the gap between blacks and whites and the deeper divisiveness of this separation:

With [Morrison's] exploration of splitness, [she] renders the dividedness of the American and African-American cultures: objects are split, bodies are split, psyches are split, families are split, neighborhoods are split, a nation is split. Given that American Culture is externally divided from the "old" worlds of Europe and Africa, and given that it is internally divided into multiple fragments, Morrison's novels analyze the consequences of African Americans' external separation from dominant white culture. (Page 1995, 30)

To begin to remedy this "splitness," as Page calls it, this deep divide that American culture has excavated, Morrison realizes she can do so only by enlisting the help of the "in power" white community that originally created and condoned, or ignored, the problem. Moreover, she cannot hope to accomplish this if her work should harbor racial undertones that encourage the black community to blame all whites, which would further magnify the divide rather than bridge it. If Amy functions as a bridge through her role as a foil to Sethe and the many "beloveds" in the text, we see that, as Harding and Martin note, "The double or kindred spirit relationship . . . is an occasion for [Morrison's] characters to practice the absolute imperative never to choose and thus never to exclude, which means once again 'seeing' unity in multiplicity and the possibility of 'identity' in otherness" (1994, 41-42). If the white community cannot accept "otherness," as Amy does when she overlooks racial differences to save Sethe, little hope exists either to subvert racist notions in America or approach any sort of healing, painful as that healing may be.

At the same time that Morrison does not condemn all whites, neither does she exonerate all blacks. In a Biblical reading of Beloved, Corey explores how Morrison "calls attention to the collaboration of the black community in Sethe's fate, refusing to represent blacks only as victims" (2000, 42). Their betrayal at first may seem merely inadvertent, and thereby blameless, but as Corey argues: "While the [black] community does not directly betray Sethe, as Judas betrayed Jesus, they betray her indirectly, like Peter, in their failure to warn her of the coming danger (157). Their inaction might easily be interpreted as the opposite of what we might term "Good Samaritanism" since they should have warned Sethe but elect not to, something which definitely goes against the norm for their otherwise tightly-knit community where mutual aid is essential to survival. This clearly illustrates how Morrison implicates the black community in the evil that arrives at the house on Bluestone road the day after the feast. Terri Otten notes the way in which "Evil persists in the 'meanness' of the blacks who refuse to warn Sethe about the white men come to reclaim her . . . "(1989, 82). Morrison highlights the extent of divisiveness and "othering" when she shows how Sethe's own community turns its back on her.