In contrast, Denver will not flee the past, because she
ardently desires a history. This is evident in her obsessive need
to reconstruct the events of her birth in as much detail as possible.
She longs for the sense of self that history provides. Similarly,
her isolation from the rest of the black community impedes the formation
of her identity.
Denver’s attachment to her “emerald closet” is part of
the novel’s broader symbolic network of trees and tree images. For
Denver, trees provide comfort and shelter. Elsewhere, the ability
of trees to function as centers of solace and peace is complicated
by the way white men have perverted their natural function. Schoolteacher’s men
bind, burn, and shoot Sixo near the trees that he and Paul D found
trusting and inviting. And while trees bear the blossoms that lead
Paul D to freedom in Chapter 10, they also
bear the lynching victims that haunt Sethe’s memory. Paul D regards
Sethe’s scar--tissue “tree” with bitter irony. Since white men have
reimagined trees as sites of brutality, thinks Paul D, Sethe cannot
mask the ugliness and brutality of her wounds by seeing her scars
as a tree.
