God Help the Child

Jeri effectively comments on the fact that Blackness is coveted in certain commercial circumstances even if those very same circumstances are still quite racist. Jeri urges Bride to lean into this dynamic, or at least to accept whatever benefit she might be able to get out of the otherwise bleak reality of race relations in the United States. In keeping with this, she tells Bride to wear white, thus emphasizing the darkness of her skin. And it works: Bride gets the promotion. By calling attention to this commercialized—and ultimately superficial—version of empowerment, then, the narrative ultimately shows how market forces exploit Black culture even as they devalue Black lives.

The phrase repeats the novel’s title while emptying it of accountability. By letting Sweetness speak first and last, Morrison refuses to let the story end in a redemptive and satisfying way, like the reader might expect or hope it would. In this way, the line is an example of situational irony, as the novel’s final perspective returns to Bride’s “first punisher” to show how trauma can endure over time. Importantly, Sweetness distances herself: she says “the child” instead of “my grandchild.” Instead of acknowledging how she neglected and mistreated Bride, and instead of actively helping Bride or her child, she outsources that help to higher powers: “god” and “luck.” Even as Bride tries to heal from trauma, the social and familial forces that warped her childhood remain. The novel’s title and closing line thus act as bookends that show how little has changed: Sweetness abdicated responsibility as Bride’s mother, and she now echoes that same abdication of responsibility as the grandmother of Bride’s child.