What it means to love

I was very much in shock after reading about Sethe's past. The little hints and glimmers scattered throughout the book made it easy to see that yes, the baby was probably killed by Sethe herself, but the circumstances and motivations remained unclear. Before I actually got to the retelling of the events, I could, in no way, justify Sethe's actions. Isn't killing your child the absolute worst thing you could do? Hasn't it been ingrained in our minds by every medium of society that murder is just about the worst crime? You probably could argue yes, but in the context of this specific situation, Sethe wasn't killing, she was, as she said in her own words, just sending her baby away to a safer place. To finally taste freedom, to finally realize just how oppressed, how enslaved, and how restricted a life she lived in Sweet Home added a whole new layer of resentment to Sethe's dilemma. Sweet Home was intolerable, she knew she had to get away, if not for herself, then for her children. She took comfort in the fact that she sent away her children alone and vulnerable in the arms of strangers, because that, to her, was a fate more favorable than a lifetime of slavery. With no previous warning, no other means of escape, Sethe had to choose the eternal escape, the only place that her children could be guaranteed safety and protection. In her scrambled state of mind, only one thought ran through her head, and that was keeping her children away from the life that she had endured. If death was the only viable way to save her children, then well Sethe sure took it. Death was the ultimate gesture of her love, honestly the biggest sacrifice any parent could ever be forced to make. She took the cliche of loving someone enough to let them go to a whole new level, and at the end of the day, it worked.