Close Reading 1: A Colorless Life

Companies use color psychology to make their message
clear. Chuck E Cheese uses fairly bright colors, to
attract kids into playing games. British Petroleum (BP) uses green
and yellow to show that they're an eco-friendly, or "green company".

"Kneeling in the keeping room where she usually went to talk-think it was clear why Baby Suggs was so starved for color. There wasn't any except for two orange squares in a quilt that made the absence shout. The walls of the room were slate-colored, the floor earth-brown, the wooden dresser the color of itself, curtains white, and the dominating feature, the quilt over an iron cot, was made up of scraps of blue serge, black, brown and gray wool--the full range of the dark and the muted that thrift and modesty allowed. In that sober field, two patches of orange looked wild--like life in the raw. 

Sethe looked at her hands, her bottle-green sleeves, and thought how little color there was in the house and how strange that she had not missed it the way Baby did. Deliberate, she thought, it must be deliberate, because the last color she remembered was the pink chips in the headstone of her baby girl. After that she became as color conscious as a hen. Every dawn she worked at fruit pies, potato dishes and vegetables while the cook did the soup, meat and all the rest. And she could not remember remembering a molly apple or a yellow squash. Every dawn she saw the dawn, but never acknowledged or remarked its color. There was something wrong with that. It was as though one day she saw red baby blood, another day the pink gravestone chips, and that was the last of it." (46)

There are several elements to be derived from this passage. One major theme of this passage is the absence of color. Sethe's life is built around her life at Sweet Home. The "colors" in this passage, reflect Sethe's past. The "slate-colored, the floor earth-brown" represents Sethe's dark past, while the "two orange squares" represent the happiness in her life. It represents uplifting characters such as Paul D and Denver. One question that comes to mind is, despite her dark past at Sweet Home, how does color represent her recovery? In my opinion, color represents Sethe's journey to her happiness. On a psychoanalytical lens, this might represent Sethe's mental state; Sethe feels depressed. The "tree on her back" holds her, so she can't reach her potential. Every morning, when she "never acknowledged or remarked its color", this represents how she's not ready to cope with her depression and experience at Sweet Home. 

Even in psychology, colors allow psychologists and psychiatrists to understand their patients' inner thoughts and feelings. Colors such as "slate-colored, the floor earth-brow", more depressed emotions, while lighter, uplifting colors such as "orange that...shouts", push the person towards a more joyful and happy color, as visible in the image above. In the passage above, the absence of color contrasts with the lack of color, to show that Sethe is mostly depressed, but still has hope, that her life will improve.  The fact that  "the last color she remembered was the pink chips in the headstone", defines that Sethe began her depression when her daughter died. Her daughter was, thus, the light of her life. As Ellie Goulding quotes in her song Love Me Like You Do, her significant other, is "the color of [her] blood". It seems as if, when one has someone that close to them (who died), the color from their life fades, leaving them shattered, depressed, broken, and colorless. This passage could also be compared to the Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy follows the yellow brick road; this road, for Dorothy, allows her to escape poverty and implied sadness, into a world where she is happy. The yellow color defines that her life is renewed and full of color, while the colors of other characters, such as the Tin Man, the Wicked Witch, the Cowardly Lion, are defined by their depressing colors of gray, black, brown, and dark green. It seems as if psychological color defines us, and our mood.