Dangerous Love

“Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit; everything, just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shove it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you’d have a little love left over for the next one.”

The significance of this quote is that loving someone so much is dangerous for a mother because once that child of yours has left or has been taken away the mother's heart would be heartbroken and she’d feel torn to know that she might not see him/her ever again. Here Paul D feels that to love like Sethe is in fact dangerous because she is giving all of her love to Denver. Paul D feels that one should only love a child just a “little” so that way if Denver were to leave and be independent, Sethe would have room “leftover” to love Paul D.

What is love truly? Is love just one thing or is it seen in multiple ways? This quote reveals how Sethe’s love is unconditional towards Denver and how she is the “best thing’ that has ever happened to her. In this quote the are different points of views because Paul D notices that Sethe’s love is so “much [that it’s] dangerous”. But he doesn’t approve of her love because he feels as if one should just love a “little bit [because]...maybe [there would be] a little leftover”. This give one an misinterpretation that Paul D might be jealous because Sethe give more attention to Denver than to him. This could be that he want Sethe to show him some love and not so much to Denver.

In this quote, love can be interpreted in many different ways. Based on this quote, it contains a mania, which is an obsessive and jealous love, and agape, which is an altruistic love because Sethe cares deeply for Denver that she is not willing for her to be unprotected and Paul D has jealousy because he sees how Sethe is giving Denver all of the attention, and he fears she might not have love leftover for him.