"Your love is too thick," he said, thinking, That b**** is looking at me; she is right over my head looking down through the floor at me.
"Too thick?" she said, thinking of the Clearing where Baby Suggs' commands knocked the pods off horse chestnuts. "Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all." (18.19-20)
Just for clarity, Paul D is fighting with Sethe, but "that b****" he's talking about is Beloved. Is Paul D being paranoid or is Beloved causing the fight in some way?
Only this woman Sethe could have left him his manhood like that. He wants to put his story next to hers.
"Sethe," he says, "me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow."
He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. "You your best thing, Sethe. You are." His holding fingers are holding hers.
"Me? Me?" (27.97-100)
Here's Paul D, taking a cue out of Sixo and Thirty-Mile Woman's guide to romance. He's applying what he's learned; instead of being all ego-driven, he's setting his ego—well, not completely aside, but next to Sethe's. Isn't that sweet? And a huge change from the guy we met at the beginning of the novel, don't you think?
Quote 6
"Mister, he looked so… free. Better than me. Stronger, tougher. Son a b**** couldn't even get out of the shell hisself but he was still king and I was…" Paul D stopped and squeezed his left hand with his right. He held it that way long enough for it and the world to quiet down and let him go on.
"Mister was allowed to be and stay what he was. But I wasn't allowed to be and stay what I was. Even if you cooked him you'd be cooking a rooster named Mister. But wasn't no way I'd ever be Paul D again, living or dead. Schoolteacher changed me. I was something else and that something was less than a chicken sitting in the sun on a tub." (8.102-103)
Mister the rooster is the man. So much so that Paul D refers to Mister's super-red coxcomb more than once as a way of highlighting how Paul D falls short because of slavery. And yes, if you're starting to read into the whole red coxcomb thing, go right on ahead.