In, The White Boy
Shuffle, there are many ways that we can see similarities between the way
that Gunnar retaliates against what he sees as racism and what how Sethe
responds to the arrival of the four horsemen. With both Beatty and Morrison,
they make us come to love the character, Sethe for godlike ability to make it
to her children, and Gunnar for being funny to the point where he is satirical.
With both of their methods of protest and escape being suicide, we can look at
them the same way, right. Wrong!
When looking at the way that Sethe made her decision to kill
her children, we can see that she did it because she loved them so much. She
didn’t see any other way to protect her children from Schoolteacher and so she
what she believed to be the right decision. While we cannot assess the
situation because we did not experience the same things she did, we do know
that Schoolteacher was a bad person and Sweet Home did not put the “sweet” in
the “home”. Just like the poem that Phong presented in class today, to someone
who doesn’t know what slavery is like, being forcibly separated from someone
you love and knowing that they are going to be hurt is worse than burying that
person. We can see Sethe’s point of view and thus feel more empathetic to her
plight.
On the other hand, we do not see the same urgency with
Gunnar. While it is clearly visible that people treat him differently because
of his race, it is clear that he has it better than Sethe. The racism that he
experiences is more, being treated like an object and the way that basketball
is treated in the book is that it is similar to slavery. The decision to commit
mass suicide doesn’t evoke the same sympathy that we feel when Sethe decides to
kill her children and is ridiculed for it. He also has the support of the wider
community which makes his decision seem less emotional based.
Thus, there are many differences between the Sethe’s and
Gunnar’s situations and the decisions they make seem do not evoke the same
responses. While killing your own child is an extreme thing to do, even though
we are appalled by the act, we can’t think of anything else she could’ve done
and it worked. Suicide is a controversial topic, but sometimes we can feel
empathetic towards the decision of one to take their own life because of their
struggles. With Gunnar, we cannot see any tremendous amount of struggle and
therefore, it is harder for us to see his decision as right. How do you feel
about the similar decisions of both of these people in dramatically different
situations?
