I awake each day in my middle-class white suburban home and look around the world with a detached attitude. Bombings in far corners of the globe, and biological warfare threaten humanity daily, yet I conduct myself as if the state of affairs outside of suburbia has no impact upon my world. I carry this aloof attitude with me to school everyday where now, once required to read Toni Morrison's Beloved, I struggle to understand a part of this world beyond the suburbia in which I live. Reading and re-reading sections, I cannot fathom the feelings of desperation and affection that Sethe experiences as she runs the blade of the saw over her own child's throat. Eluding me is the hell that each sunrise forces Paul D to deal with during his days on Sweet Home. As I explore the pages of Toni Morrison's Beloved, I find the novel rusted shut. This is a story of an escaped, black, slave woman, who feels a love for her children, so intense, that she can justify murdering them in order to protect them from a greater evil. This is a story about the inhumane conditions in which slaves were forced to endure during their lives. This is a story that I have trouble relating too. My background, as a white, middle-class male yields no easy path by which I can connect to this novel. The emotions involved in this story are, much like Paul D's tobacco tin, rusted shut within the pages, keeping me always, at arms length.
             Paul D's tobacco tin represents what Beloved is to myself. His tobacco tin is "rusted shut," sealed off from the world. Sealing off his emotions disallowing his heart to open up to any person. Paul D holds his tobacco tin near to his heart. Which is as close as he allows his affections get, for nothing in his world, during his slave days, lasts. Nothing except the absolute that as each sun rises the same work needs to be done. Toni Morrison's Beloved, much the same way, is sealed off to ...