Baby Suggs and Paul D
While I was reading the assignment from 12/3 (pages 159-195), something that stood out to me was the parallelism of Baby Suggs and Paul D. Throughout the novel I thought of them as two separate, very different people, despite both living at Sweet Home. In the novel, Baby Suggs is a voice and person of the past that occasionally motivates or encourages characters in the present. Paul D is a character that exists in the present and does not appear to have any capabilities of “seeing” anything outside of the ordinary. In this chapter, though, there is a joining of the past (Baby Suggs) and the present (Paul D) in the middle of the novel: as Baby Suggs experiences the event at 124 and Paul D hears of the true story of the event at 124 for the first time. The beginning of Baby Suggs’ interaction with 124 begins with her talking with Janey about her need for a job. Janey suggests the slaughterhouse. Almost immediately, Baby Suggs’ is drawn to the slaughterhouse, “When they asked what wor