Hiding fire and brimstone in lacy groves: the twinned trees of Beloved

Morrison continues to develop the connection between trees and masculinity through Paul D's interaction with several trees. The most notable of these, of course, is the tree he calls "Brother," his anthropomorphic companion at Sweet Home. Critics generally interpret Brother as a nurturing image, often as a counterpart to the destructive tree on Sethe's back. (5) In fact, Andrew Schopp even claims that Paul D cannot see Sethe's scar as a tree, in part, because of "his own conception of what a tree should be'" (221). And for Paul D, trees become what Bonnet describes as places of "safety and refreshment" (43). Trees, Paul D says, "were inviting; things you could trust and be near; talk to if you wanted." He and the other slaves frequently eat and rest beneath Brother's protective branches, or the branches of another tree. Choosing a tree, Paul D laments, "had been hard because Sweet Home had more pretty trees than any farm around" (Beloved 21). Trees like Brother become even more important to Paul D after his escape because, upon the advice of the Cherokee tribe with which he first sought sanctuary, he follows different "tree flowers" to safety (112). And when Paul D occasionally loses sight of the flowering trees, he "climbed a tree on a hillock and scanned the horizon for a flash of pink or white in the leaf world that surrounded him" (112-13). The little sapling, a smaller version of Brother to which Paul D connects while imprisoned in Alfred, Georgia, becomes the final, diminished tree image to hold import for Paul D. However, Morrison subtly complicates all of these seemingly nurturing trees within her text. Paul D's wonderful memories of Brother make it easy to forget that his act of looking back for a last glimpse of his favorite tree causes him to see the hateful image of Mister that challenges his manhood and continues to haunt him for years (106). Likewise, while trees help Paul D to escape from slavery, when he escapes from prison, he and the other prisoners must fight "the live-oak branches that blocked their way" (111). Morrison even renders the small sapling ambiguous when Paul D reflects that he "stayed alive to sing songs that murdered life, and watched an aspen that confirmed it, and never for a minute did he believe he could escape" (221). Morrison's use of the pronoun "it" leaves ambiguous whether the aspen confirms life, or, like the song, confirms the murder of it. Paul D's lack of hope for escape implies the validity of the latter interpretation; if the tiny tree confirms any sort of life at all, it confirms only the hopelessness of a life with no chance for freedom.

Paul D's conflicted tree images combine to express reservations about his own manhood, an issue that he struggles with throughout the novel. Questions surrounding his masculinity occupy Paul D from early on; even while he remains a slave, he questions the manhood bestowed upon him by Mr. Garner: "Was that it? Is that where the manhood lay? In the naming done by a whiteman who was supposed to know?" (Beloved 125). Trudier Harris notes the connection between Mister's and Paul D's ideas about manhood and determines, "In popular definitions of maleness, Mister is ultimately the 'cock' that Paul D can never become. It is that irony that makes the sight of Mister so painful for Paul D when he is wearing the iron bit in his mouth" (181). So when Paul D looks back for a final glimpse of Brother and instead sees Mister, part of what causes him to begin to tremble seems tied to questions about his manhood. In fact, as Schopp notes, Paul D even diminishes his own manhood with tree-like terms when he lies in bed observing Sethe's scar and compares himself and her scar to Sixo and Brother (221). In that scene, Paul D thinks, "Now there was a man, and that was a tree. Himself lying in the bed and the 'tree' lying next to him didn't compare" (Beloved 22).