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Putting "His Story Next to Hers": Choice, Agency, and the Structure of Beloved

When, near the end of Beloved, Paul D "wants to put his story next to" Sethe's (273), his desire points the reader toward the structural and, perhaps, thematic core of Toni Morrison's intense and challenging narrative of slavery's effects and aftereffects. Paul D's statement has been cited often in published criticism of the novel, but its suggestiveness has not actually been much explored.1 Putting Paul D's story and Sethe's side by side can, however, restore a rich parallelism that is obscured by the shifting points of view and multiple pasts of the narrative. It also can serve to restore Paul D to a position of importance in the novel often denied him and to give particular prominence to the choices Morrison presents to and through her characters, mostly, ironically, while they are subject to and subjects of slavery and therefore ostensibly without autonomy.2 The most important of these choices comes in the implicit juxtaposition of Sethe's choice of death for her children and herself, rather than return to slavery, with Paul D's choice of life when he finds himself in circumstances that