Response # 5

Sweet Home was the first place the Sweet Home men were treated as both men and slaves. Paul D recalls this before he attempts to tell Sethe what he had done with Beloved : "He grew up thinking that, of all the blacks in Kentucky, only the five of them were men. Allowed, encouraged to correct Garner, even defy them. To invent ways of doing things; to see what was needed and attack it without permission." (Morrison 147) The way Paul D describes his experiences makes it seem like Sweet Home was his first real experience as a slave. Sweet Home gave him the impression that everyone would see and treat him as a man, a real person. School teacher, as much as they seem to hate each other, tried to give them an idea of what it was like outside of Sweet Home: "It was Schoolteacher who taught them otherwise. A truth that waved like a scarecrow in rye : they were only Sweet Home men at Sweet Home. One step off that ground and they were trespassers among the human race." (Morrison 148) While Garner, their master at Sweet Home, gave them a good life for a slave, he also hurt them by not warning them how they would be treated outside Sweet Home. Garner created an ideal way of thinking for them, which probably hurt them in the long run.