<h1>Why Sethe Did What She Did</h1> <h4> John Brownridge </h4>

All of the events of the “present day” in Beloved revolve around one particular event. An event, that sparks a controversial decision that is so horrifying that is is difficult for many readers to even say out loud. This event is when the 4 horsemen come to 124, and Sethe makes the decision to kill her children. When reading this part of the book, not only was I shocked about the decision, and how Sethe spoke about it later, I was also shocked that I had read a poem with the exact same premise earlier in the quarter, completely unaware of its significance to Beloved. The poem I read was, “Whose Children Are These,” by Gerald Barax.

In “Whose Children Are These,” the speaker comes across children that may or may not be his own, that he is unable to take with him on his escape from slavery. He does not want those children to be subject to slavery themselves, so he is left with the delema of whether or not he should put the children out of their future misery. This poem mentions Margaret Garner, who is a woman who ended up doing that to two of her children, before being caught by a slave catcher. Margaret Garner is a historical supplement for both this poem and Beloved. Both of these stories represent how truly horrible slavery must have been. The fact that people can debate the morality killing one's own children is crazy, and the idea that real people have been put into this situation is sikenning.

The story of Sethe and her baby and the speaker of “Whose Children Are These” and those children are very similar, but there are important differences in these situations. The first, is that the children may not be the speaker’s. The question of “whose children are these?” hangs over the entire poem, and brings an ambiguity to whether the kids are the speakers' children or not. I think Barax is trying to say that it doesn’t matter whether the children belong to the speaker or not; he still has to take responsibility for them, and make a tough decision in regard to them. Sethe’s baby, on the other hand, is Sethe’s baby. The second difference is that Sethe has no chance of escape. In “Whose Children Are These,” the speaker is in the act of escaping slavery when he comes accross the children, while the Slave Catcher is almost surely going to take Sethe and her surviving children. The third distinction is how each character felt. For the narrator in the poem, his mind is in a heated battle with itself about what to do with the children, and he is set up for immense guilt either way, especially if he escapes on his own. Sethe, on the other hand, does the deed almost without thinking, so sure that what she was doing was right. She also felt no guilt afterwards, even as she remembers that moment and recounts it to Paul D. For Sethe, the decision was a completely selfless decision. She had no chance of escape, and all she wanted to do was save her children from a horrifying life on Sweet Home, and there was only one way to do that in her mind. The Narrator of the poem has a chance to escape, and he would be killing the children, not only to save them, but to save himself from risking his escape for the children. Even though Sethe did the horrible act without guilt or internal conflict, her morals were unquestionably in the right place, and the same cannot be said for the speaker in “Whose Children Are These?” When comparing the two scenarios, it could be argued that the speaker cannot the parent of those children, as they did not have the strength and love that Sethe had to have to commit the deed. (Although, I would generally disagree with this statement, because Sethe is such a mentally strong character, and not everyone could have made such a strong decision, even if they had a strong love for someone. Halle is evidence of this, as he loves Sethe, but when he saw her being mistreated, he just went crazy. He had the love of Sethe but not the strength, and the same could be argued for the speaker in “Whose Children Are These?”