Matt Howell Dr. Carol Tyx EN 303 October 12, 2015 Less than Human, Less than Animal: A Study of Animal Comparisons in Toni Morrison’s Beloved Benjamin Franklin, in an essay arguing for the abolishment of slavery, wrote, “The unhappy man who has been treated as a brute animal, too frequently sinks beneath the common standard of the human species.” For Benjamin Franklin, one of slavery’s key evils was the effect that being treated as an animal had on a person: a subhuman level of self-worth in the individual that it’s impressed upon. This effect can be seen throughout Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Beloved is the tale of Sethe, an escaped slave, who murders her infant daughter in order to save her from being returned to slavery. Eighteen years after the murder, and shortly after the end of the Civil War, Sethe’s house is haunted by the ghost of her daughter: a ghost who has somehow been reincarnated as a mysterious young woman named Beloved. Throughout the novel the multiple characters, now free slaves, recount, and try to make peace with, the atrocities they suffered during slavery. Within these recounts, a particularly important pattern becomes apparent: the comparison of slaves to animals. Morrison uses this pattern of animal comparisons to illustrate the destruction of the human identities of those who suffered through slavery. In order to fully understand the length to which slaves were thought of as sub-human, it is important to look at the thoughts of a slaveholder. Morrison does this through the perspective of Schoolteacher, Sethe’s owner. Schoolteacher, reflecting on why it’s important to get back a runaway slave alive, had this to say: “Unlike a snake or a bear, a dead nigger could not be
Howell 2 skinned for profit and was not worth his own dead weight in coin” (Morrison 174-75). Here, Schoolteacher isn’t just comparing a slave to an animal; he is actually saying that a slave is less than an animal. According to his thinking, he could kill an animal and make a profit, but killing a human slave would lose him money. Schoolteacher goes on to compare an assault on Sethe to the beating of an animal: “[He] had chastised that nephew, telling him to think – just think – what would his own horse do if you beat it beyond the point of education?” He goes on, “Suppose you beat the hounds past that point that away. Never again could you trust them in the woods or anywhere else. You'd be feeding them maybe, holding out a piece of rabbit in your hand, and the animal would revert – bite your hand clean off” (Morrison 176). Schoolteacher does not think of it in terms of beating a human but instead compares her assault to that of a horse or a dog. He believes he has an animal that is capable of being beaten to the point of turning wild and attacking its owner instead of a rational human capable of weighing whether they should retaliate or not. Furthermore, he blames the assault for Sethe's escape. Technically, this is partly true, but her reasons behind the escape are very different than what Schoolteacher believes. Sethe escapes after the assault where Schoolteacher’s nephews took her milk saying, “Nobody will ever get my milk no more except my own children... It was took from me – they held me down and took it. Milk that belonged to my baby” (Morrison 236). Schoolteacher attributes her leaving to being beaten like a horse and fleeing, but Sethe leaves because the milk, which was meant for her children, was taken. Thus, Schoolteacher does not think of Sethe in terms of a human mother that was violated by having her children’s milk stolen, but instead as an animal mindlessly fleeing. The effect Schoolteacher’s slave-animal thinking has on Sethe’s human identity is evident when the reader experiences Sethe’s sexual assault from her perspective. Sethe explains to Paul
Howell 3 D, another slave from Sweet Home, the plantation where they were slaves, the events of her assault: “After I left you, those boys came in there and took my milk. That's what they came in there for. Held me down and took it” (Morrison 19). This event subtly implies that Sethe is raped, yet Morrison characterizes this event more by the taking of Sethe’s milk, not the forced sex. Therefore, the reader gets the image of Sethe being milked like a cow or another animal. Sethe even characterizes the event as being treated like an animal, not as a sexual assault: “They handled me like I was the cow, no, the goat, back behind the stable because it was too nasty to stay in with the horses” (Morrison 236-37). Sethe describes the assault, an event that literary critic Tuire Valkeakari calls a “gross violation of Sethe’s humanity and womanhood” (168), as both a milking and as being treated like less than an animal. Sethe feels that she was thought so little of that she didn’t even warrant being sexually assaulted in the barn. As one might imagine, this event had a profound effect on Sethe. Not only was she pregnant during this time, but also the milk that they took from her was for her still-infant child. Accordingly, Sethe’s treatment as an animal that could be raped and milked shattered her identity as both a mother and a human. In the character of Paul D, the reader sees another nuance to the animal treatment of slaves. Paul D, as punishment for trying to escape, is forced to wear an iron bit, like that used for controlling horses, around his head and in his mouth. Paul D describes what being put in a bit does to a person: “The wildness… shot up into the eye the moment the lips were yanked back. Days after it was taken out, goose fat was rubbed on the corners of the mouth but nothing to soothe the tongue or take the wildness out of the eye” (Morrison 84). Just being in the bit took away a slave's humanity and made them something akin to an animal. However, for Paul D it was not just the act of being put in the bit that was so devastating to his humanity, it was an encounter with a rooster named Mister.
Howell 4 Years earlier, when Mister was born, Paul D helped him out of his shell. Mister eventually became the undisputed king of the chickens at Sweet Home. After being put in the bit Paul D encounters Mister sitting in a tub that was “like a throne.” This sight has a particularly profound effect on Paul D: Mister, he looked so... free. Better than me. Stronger, tougher. Son a bitch couldn't even get out the shell by hisself but he was still king… Mister was allowed to be and stay what he was. But I wasn't allowed to be and stay what I was. Even if you cooked him you'd be cooking a rooster named Mister. But wasn't no way I'd ever be Paul D again, living or dead. Schoolteacher changed me. I was something else and that something was less than a chicken sitting in the sun on a tub. (Morrison 86) At that moment Paul D, like Sethe, had the realization that he wasn’t just less than a human, he was less than an animal. Mister had an innate identity; he knew he was a chicken of some importance. He could even be eaten and he would still have his name. Paul D, on the other hand, had no identity. Everything he knew, from his name to the concept of what being a man was, came from his slave masters, and just as easily as they gave it they could take it away. For Valkeakari, the encounter was extremely demeaning for Paul D: “While the bit caused him physical pain, his encounter with Mister revealed to him how severely the dehumanizing treatment to which he had been subjected in slavery had damaged his view of himself and of his human worth” (170). The encounter with Mister under normal circumstances would have had little effect on Paul D. He was just an ornery rooster who liked sitting on a tub; however, when Paul D came upon him in an apparatus that was akin to something designed to control horses, he realized just how much more freedom a chicken had than he did. It was this epiphany coupled with Mister’s innate sense of identity that was so crushing to Paul D’s humanity. Several literary critics of Beloved have looked into the different reasons why slaveholders, both fictional, like Schoolteacher, and real-life, treated their slaves as animals. Critic Deborah Bailin explains, “Slavery persisted because those in power used these
Howell 5 conceptualizations to legally define some people as less ‘human’ than others and to morally justify their definitions and their abuses of power” (36). For Bailin, slave owners had to characterize their slaves as animals in order to both legally and morally justify their treatment. However, this was not just about justification. Some slave owners actually did believe their slaves were animals. Morrison, in a sort of explanation of her own for the treatment of slaves as animals, uses Schoolteacher as evidence of this practice. In a pseudo-scientific “study” of the slaves at Sweet Home, Schoolteacher, along with his nephews, list their human and animal characteristics side by side. Sethe walks by during their “study” and overhears her name: “No, no. That's not the way. I told you to put her human characteristics on the left; her animal ones on the right. And don't forget to line them up” (Morrison 228). Here, Schoolteacher isn’t morally or legally justifying his treatment of the Sweet Home slaves; he truly believes they are part animal, and he aims to record this for “science.” Valkeakari offers yet another purpose for the treatment of slaves as animals: “Physical torture… was a way of breaking the slaves psychologically, in the same manner as horses are broken [and] tamed” (169). A combination of these reasons is likely true, and can be seen throughout the novel. However, the notion of breaking a human psychologically like an animal had a far greater effect on the characters of Beloved. Whether it be Sethe’s sexual assault or Paul D’s encounter with Mister, each character in Beloved reaches the point where they are psychologically broken and their humanity is robbed from them. Accordingly, each character must find a way to heal from this psychological break and take back their humanity. Through her characters, Morrison gives the reader a firsthand account of the unspeakable torture slaves suffered under the guise of being less than human. After being told for so long that they were animals many slaves began to believe it: their identities as humans forever altered.
Howell 6 This treatment left a psychological fissure that has taken generations to heal, and in many ways, is just as wide open today as it was in the years following the end of slavery. However, through literature such as Beloved modern readers experience the human side of slavery, and are given the tools to help heal it.
Works Cited
Howell 7 Bailin, Deborah. “Natural History As National History In Toni Morrison's Beloved.” LATCH: A Journal For The Study Of The Literary Artifact In Theory, Culture, Or History 4.(2011): 32-62. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 29 Sep. 2015. Morrison, Toni. Beloved: A Novel. New York: Knopf, 1987. Print. Valkeakari, Tuire. “Toni Morrison Writes B(L)Ack: Beloved And Slavery's Dehumanizing Discourse Of Animality.” Atlantic Literary Review 3.2 (2002): 165-187. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 29 Sep. 2015.