Good Luck and God Help the Child

QR Blog Post #2

Good luck and God Help the Child

As Toni Morrison’s GOD HELP the CHILD progresses, the idea that Booker is a tool which Bride uses to overcome the challenges in her past becomes more of a reality. Yet to complement this development, Toni Morrison also introduces insights into Booker which suggest that the same is true for him as well.

One very apparent demonstration of this reality for Bride is that the physical adjustments Bride began to see throughout the beginning of the story are reversed in Booker's presence. From “It was when she stood to dry herself that she discovered that her chest was flat” (92) to “they were focused, wide-eyed, on Bride’s lovely, plump breasts (166). Yet Booker himself may not be the change that caused this transformation… Throughout the beginning of the text, Bride demonstrates that throughout her childhood, she has always been complacent to others; to sweetness and her commands, to her perceived position within society, when Sofia Huxley attacks her and brutally destroys her face, everything. She became controlled by others… Almost as if bound in chains, like a slave to others and not being able to listen to her own free will. Yet when she confronts Booker, that nature is gone. Rather than accepting what people thought, Bride told Booker “You don’t have to love me but you damn well have to respect me” (154). That was the first time Bride really stuck up for herself in the entire text. It was after this that her breasts came back and the physical changes went back to normal, and she also began to reach peace.

The same can be said for Booker. Although he is introduced solely in the second half of the text, Booker’s character is almost a perfect foil of Bride. Bride is ruled by the ghosts of her past mistakes, and Booker is ruled by the ghost of his dead older brother -Adam- who was murdered by a pedophile, along with 6 other little children. Just like Bride refused to move forward in her life and pushed the past aside, just as she pushed her body changing aside, Booker seems stuck in the past as well. Morrison describes “The Cross and the Vault” (111) which is the book, Booker has completed planned out and wants to write, but he never starts to right it... Suggesting that he was incapable of moving forward, and his aunts Queen’s words at Adam’s funeral validate this idea;  “Don’t let him go,” she said. “Not until he’s ready. Meantime, hang on to him tooth and claw. Adam will let you know when it’s time” (117). Queen’s words invited him to live in the past and they “comforted him, strengthened him and validated the unfairness of the censure he was feeling from his family” (117). In this way, Booker, just as Bride was, became ensnared by the past, and just as she freed herself from her past through him, Booker freed himself through her. When he first saw her, “Booker had no words to describe his feelings” (131) and his perceptions about life began to change; “Streets with litter at their curbs appeared interesting, not filthy” (131). What this meant was that when he was with Bride or around Bride he overcame the sorrow and cynicism which had enveloped his life as a result of Adam’s death.

Together, they both overcame their past, lifting the burdens of dead brothers and faults from their shoulders and striving towards something better… Something that was their own. Bride describes how “She had not known its [beauties] shallowness or her own cowardice - the vital lesson Sweetness taught and nailed to her spine to curve it” (151)... To curve it to her will and to break it.

Yet in this conclusion, I find myself asking why? what does this mean? Starting at the beginning of their lives and, coincidentally, the beginning of the book, Sweetness (Bride’s mother) says “her color is a cross she will always carry. But it’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not” (7) in this moment, Sweetness shows her ability to rationalize her actions towards Bride, claiming innocence. And this same idea is displayed at the very end of the novel as well; in the end she refuses to accept blame for her actions and claims that “some of my schooling must have rubbed off. See how she turned out?” (178). Yet in response to Bride being pregnant, she also writes, “Listen to me. You are about to find out what it takes, how the world is, how it works, and how it changes when you are a parent. Good luck and God Help the Child.” (178) This sense of assurance in her own parenting seems wrong, from what I read, I see the idea that a parent’s actions and our childhood have lasting effects (as seen through Bride and Booker). So what you do to children and what they experience matters and they may never forget. It is this idea, that remains the premise of this novel, and yet at the same time Morrison’s last statement “Good luck and God Help the Child” is a strong reminder that it is hard to be perfect as a parent… The innocence of youth will be corrupted at one point or another and whether you endure the same emotional situations as the characters within this novel, parents have lasting impacts and should consider their job accordingly.