Stamp Paid, debt unpaid
He can walk right in to anyone's home, but now, not 124.
At the beginning of part II we see Stamp Paid trying to move forward in the most righteous way he can after Paul D departs from 124. SP takes some responsibility for Paul's departure, although we are delivered plenty of nuance regarding that blame:
- He went behind Sethe's back, like a sneak - yet he has had to sneak all his life.
- He considered Sethe's feelings - but he considered them too late.
- And "the thorn" is not Sethe's feelings, nor Denver's situation (she "needed somebody normal in her life"), but Baby Suggs. He's going to 124 "for Baby Suggs' sake".
Despite all these crinkles, Stamp Paid goes forth to proffer himself (his attention, assistance, or apology) to Sethe. But he fails...
...again and again and again...
Before thinking about why SP's plans repeatedly unravel, we have to address the peculiar events that accompany his cycle of failure. Every time he approaches 124 in those six days, he has to make his way through a cacophony of voices speaking in a way that SP can't understand, because something is... "wrong" with them. And he hears, repeatedly, the word "mine".
What's strange to me about SP encountering this is not that the meanings of the words evade him despite the words not being nonsensical. It's that he doesn't recognize any of these voices as belonging to the inhabitants of 124, Sethe, Beloved, or Denver. This cacophony is, after all, foreshadowing of the unspeakable thoughts unspoken sections - and yet, here they are, spoken aloud for SP to hear.
Practically speaking, SP should have recognized their voices. He, more than most of the townspeople, has kept from holding Sethe and her family at a cold distance - and maybe he could at least have recognized that these were *not* the voices of other members of the community. (One could imagine a cacophony of disapproving voices surrounding 124, or spiteful voices saying Hah, your man left you. It wouldn't fit with "mine", but even so...)
But SP doesn't. And on top of that, something prevents him from understanding the words.
The moment of failure comes when SP faces the closed door. Here is where I see two possibilities. One, the door is locked, so SP must knock in order to be let in. Or two, the door is unlocked, but SP still feels a need to knock.
For one, we see Sethe lock the door later on (just before we read through the unspeakable thoughts), which is something she may already have been doing (yet if the text mentioned this pre-SP, I missed it). So maybe SP tried to go through and it was locked. That seems like a practical reason to have to knock.
Since SP is pretty much the only character to be able to (and want to) barge into 124, Sethe preemptively locking the door seems like a message to specifically him. ...Well, Paul D also. But if SP is only now being shut out, as "he had never knocked on" the door of 124 before, what changed in Sethe? A desire to connect with the two girls under her roof at the expense of her connections with everyone else in the world?
Yet we only read SP raising his fist to knock. Instead of a purely physical barrier, is this SP preventing himself from opening the door, feeling as if he must knock to enter for the sort of visit he's making, feeling as if after what he's done, knocking is necessary? It certainly fits with SP's tendency to hold himself to high standards and maintain a strict conception of morality...
SP's lack of understanding of the words in the cacophony, his inability to recognize the three women's voices, and his failure to knock on the door of 124 all signify various forces, whether physical, mental, or supernatural, blocking off SP from understanding the inhabitants of 124 and vice versa. That SP in some ways holds the key to amending the whole situation is an omen for the following chapters in which the cacophony grows loud and vicious in the readers' ears.
All quotes from Beloved. Mostly from pp.199-203.
I think Stamp Paid just doesn't know how to deal with this new generation of women. We see him really close with Baby Suggs, bringing the family berries and helping out with everything and such, but in recent years, it seems to fade in some way. I am also not sure if I am even quite right about all of this, but he just doesn't seem to understand the family now. I do think there's been a big shift in how Stamp Paid interacts with the family, as you mentioned, but I'm not sure whether to blame him out outside factors (Paul D and Beloved) for that.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your take and I feel like I should have highlighted Stamp Paid's relationship to Baby Suggs more in the post - that really drives his actions in this passage. But I'm hesitant to criticize him on this because he does so himself, realizing that he should have considered the younger, alive women more.
DeleteStamp is both intimately familiar with and connected to this household (he saved Denver's life and was the one who started the party that set the chain of events in motion), and also ostracized from it, which is why he's struggling with the idea of knocking on the door. He *expects* to be much closer to these people, and any people in this neighborhood. As for him not recognizing the voices, I don't have any definitive explanation for that--but he wouldn't know what Denver's voice sounds like (she was like 30 days old the last time he saw her, and it seems like literally no one in this area has ever heard her speak), and he has no idea who or what Beloved is (and we know she has a really strange voice). Should he recognize Sethe's? Maybe the idea is that, as they all become more possessed by these obsessive emotions, they lose all ties to the regular world--all three of them might be speaking to each other in these "unspoken" voices, some supernatural vocalization of internal "unspeakable" thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI don't know! This book is really weird at a lot of points!
I love your analysis of Stamp Paid and his interactions with 124 and the characters within! This is such a compelling and clear blog post. I thought that your analysis of Stamp Paid’s failure to understand the words or the people speaking them and his inability to go in and interact with the house is spot on and enlightening. It makes so much sense in a scene that I didn’t completely get the first time! One of the things that I found most compelling too, that you discuss, is how Stamp Paid appears to hear part of the “unspeakable thoughts, unspoken,” even though they clearly are spoken because he hears the “mine”s? I’m not sure though! I was just very curious about what this idea of unspeakable thoughts means, and in what way they go “unspoken” if Stamp Paid was hearing them aloud from outside the house. Perhaps it could just mean unspoken to the outside world, excluding everyone outside of 124, like the dynamic unraveling in Part II reflects?
ReplyDeleteI also love how you bring up the idea of SP being able to walk into everyone’s house but has so much trouble during this scene with Sethe. I think that by including this, Morrison makes it even more clear to the readers how Sethe’s relationship with the town is completely different and unique to her situation and life. Even though everyone went through intense trauma in their past, Sethe’s situation and her actions struck everyone differently and even confused many of them. And even if Stamp Paid wanted to go to 124, this force that keeps him away and the “unspeakable thoughts” that he hears just work to highlight the separation that Sethe, and Beloved and Denver as well, feel from the rest of the world and even just the local town community.
I’m so sorry, this was an incredibly rambly comment!! Not sure if it makes any sense! Oops!
Thank you for the excellent blog post, as always! (The last line about the cacophony in the readers’ ears stood out to me so much too- I thought that was brilliantly phrased!). This has so many interesting ideas and analyses of Stamp Paid. It was so great to read and think about!
This is a little off-topic from your main point, but you pointing out the "cacophony" of voices sparked interest to me, because where are those voices coming from? even if it was Beloved and Sethe and Denver, that wouldn't be a cacophony, just three voices, so who are the ones adding their voice into this situation, saying "mine"? This actually reminds me of a couple moments with Beloved where she mentions ambiguous people or men that were around her when/after Sethe "abandoned" her. It's not clear who these people are, what they're doing there (probably dead also?), or if they have any connection or similarity to Beloved beyond being possibly dead. It's a weird theme, the presence of these amorphous, indistinct extra people, specifically in relation to Beloved.
ReplyDelete