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... tion is desirable but not possible, jealousy and resentment are causes of an anger which do not necessarily desire violent retaliation even though it may be possible. This illogical emotion - this anger without complete justification - creates a mixture of feelings within the person experiencing it and makes for some interesting responses, some of which are explored in Toni Morrison's Beloved Denver, for example is jealous of Paul D's intrusion into her house, her life and her mother. She dislikes how he monopolizes Sethe's conversation and is admitted entry to parts of her life where she has no access. She resents how they "have become a twosome" and retaliates briefly by talking back to Paul D, taunting him with " Seems like everybody run off from Sweet Home can't stop talkin' about it" (Morrison, p. 13) and " How long you gonna hang around?" This method doesn't fully relieve anger however because she really cannot completely hate Paul D, especially after he treats her at the carnival. Instead she chooses to employ the defensive nuclear script.
Tomkins outlines this script on p. 218: The script of defence may take one of several forms of avoidance or escape in which the individual attempts primarily to minimize the negative affect of the nuclear scene by, for example running away from home, becoming introverted, being alone or becoming mute. The negative affects usually involved in these scripts are terror, shame or distress - the 'feminine' affects. Denver is a master at this following this nuclear script. Rather than confront her mother with her anger, she chooses to escape, to take refuge in a boxwood bower where she is "closed off from the hurt of the hurt world. " (Morrison, p. 28) This is not the first time Denver has used the defensive script either. She also uses it when combating her anger towards her mother when she learns of her past.
When she first hears about her mother's crime from Nelson lord, she asks Baby Suggs about it but realizes that "the [anger and fear] that leapt in her when she asked it had been lying there all along" (Morrison, p. 102). Because she is not experienced with the world and there are no gradations in her nuclear script space, the response she is compelled to choose is extreme. She knows she cannot handle the anger in any other way because it concerns not an outsider, but her own mother, so she 'chooses' instead to become deaf - to isolate herself from the world by a silence too strong to penetrate. Avoidance of any potentially hurtful experience in fact is Denver's main focus in life and it isn't until the end of the novel after she faces the anger and forgives her mother that she can go out in to world again. Denver's reaction to Sethe's news is not unlike that of Paul D's. When Stamp Paid first informs him of Sethe's past, he first becomes incredulous and then angry.
His anger stems from the view that through the act of taking her child's life, Sethe, a woman he has grown to admire and care for, has somehow betrayed him. He confronts her in the parlor and during her explanation his anger towards her combines with his anger towards Beloved until "the roaring in his head" swells enough for him to counteract with " you got two feet, Sethe, not four" (Morrison, p. 169). This harsh verbal response to anger proves Tomkins point that the "primary function of anger is to make bad matters worse" for at that very point a "forest springs up between them." Paul D's next move is to flee from the site, as ill equipped as Denver to handle the anger engendered by Sethe's news, he employs the defensive script by leaving Sethe and moving into the cold basement of the poor church of the black community. Like Denver, he also does not emerge until his anger subsides and he decides to forgive Sethe and help her move on with her life. Another perhaps more mature way to deal with resentment is by following the reparative script.
In this response to anger explained in Tomkins on p. 219: The individual attempts to reach the good scene rather than to hide or avenge himself. This may take one of several forms, either an attempted recovery of the pre-problematic good scene before all the trouble started or a new scene scene projected into the future as a utopian scene which will undo all the problems created in part by the nuclear scene and the nuclear script. Examples of this method of dealing with anger are utilized by all three of the main characters. Denver first tries to overcome anger at her mother by imagining an ideal time when her father will return and save her. Sethe utilizes this method when she first hears what happened to Halle during one of her last nights at Sweet Home. When she hears that Halle had seen the schoolteacher's nephews steal her milk, she is clearly angry.
She moves slowly towards the table and then commences to "grip her elbows so tightly as though to keep them from flying away. " She repeats the phrase "He saw?" at least six times at first unbelievingly and later with increased rage. She paces "up and down, up and down" as she demands of Paul D why her husband " saw them boys do that to me and let them keep on breathing air. " Her anger is temporarily cooled however by her imagining a scene in which she and Halle are "by the milk shed, squatting by the churn, smashing cold, lumpy butter into their faces with not a care in the world. " This escape into an ideal fantasy where present problems are erased and the source of the anger is of little concern is one example of a reparative script. Another example is the one Paul D uses in addition to recasting to deal with his anger at the Georgia prison. His ideal scene, in contrast to Denver however, is in the past not the future. He, along with all the men at prison sing about " the women they knew; the children they had been; the animals they had tamed or seen others tame... they sang lovingly of graveyards and sisters long gone.
Of pork in the woods; meal in the pan; fish on the line; cane, rain and rocking chairs. " (Morrison, p. 108). In short they sing of a time before the prison that although was pretty horrific, still had some sweet moments. Singing about these moments is one way of glorifying the past, of " recovering the pre-problematic good scene before all the trouble began. " The thing to remember with all these scripts however is that although they are deemed necessary and deal temporarily with the anger aroused, they are by no means a permanent solution. They may prove ineffectual after time or through repeated use.
In fact, Tomkins stresses that nuclear scripts are nuclear precisely because they "conjoin compulsion with ineffectiveness. " (p. 216). How, then should one go about dealing with anger? The answer might lie in covert responses to anger such as the one displayed by Baby Suggs. Baby Suggs, holy, after having her "legs, back, head, eyes, hands, kidneys, womb and tongue busted from slavery" decides on using her big heart to fight the anger she feels. Pursuing a path of grace and "sun-lit dances in a clearing", she advocates transforming anger at white people into increased love for blacks themselves. Her response to anger is no less a "response" because it is covert, and no less so because it consists of a loving, hopeful message rather than an angry punishing fantasy.
But this response, unlike the others, which promote revenge, escape or denial, attempts to face the anger head on and then go beyond it. By suggesting that they lay down the weapons of their anger, "Sword and Shield. Down. Down.
Both of 'em down. Down by the riverside. Sword and Shield. " and "Don't study war no more. ", Baby Suggs provides perhaps one of the only ways that the characters in the book can ever hope to overcome the anger and the tragedy of their lives once and for all.
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