God Help the Child

by

Toni Morrison

Booker is Bride’s ex-boyfriend—at the start of the story, the couple has recently broken up after months together. Booker leaves Bride after they fight about Bride’s plan to visit Sofia Huxley, a convicted child molester. At the time, Bride does not know that Booker’s brother, Adam, was sexually assaulted and murdered by a pedophile when they were children. Booker can’t stomach the idea that Bride would show sympathy to a person like that, so he leaves her. Booker doesn’t know, though, that Bride falsely testified at Sofia’s trial and that Sofia is innocent, at least according to Bride. In the novel, Booker follows an arc similar to Bride’s. Since Adam was murdered, Booker has been consumed by grief and trauma. He thinks he is memorializing Adam by holding onto his emotional pain. By the end of the novel, though, Booker realizes that to live a full life—the kind of life Adam would have wanted for him—he must grow through his childhood trauma. Booker begins this process by welcoming Bride back into his life, pursuing a closer relationship with her, and looking forward to the child they will have together after Bride announces her pregnancy.

Booker Starbern Quotes in God Help the Child

The God Help the Child quotes below are all either spoken by Booker Starbern or refer to Booker Starbern. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Inherited Trauma Theme Icon
).
Part 1, Chapter 2: Bride Quotes

I’m scared. Something bad is happening to me. I feel like I’m melting away. I can’t explain it to you but I do know when it started. It began after he said, “You not the woman I want.”

“Neither am I.”

I don’t know why I said that. It just popped out of my mouth.

Related Characters: Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell (speaker), Booker Starbern
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 6: Bride Quotes

“Come on, baby, you’re not responsible for other folks’ evil.”

Related Characters: Booker Starbern (speaker), Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell, Sweetness, Mr. Leigh
Page Number: 55
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 1 Quotes

He was part of the pain—not a savior at all, and now her life was in shambles because of him. The pieces of it that she had stitched together: personal glamour, control in an exciting even creative profession, sexual freedom and most of all a shield that protected her from any overly intense feeling, be it rage, embarrassment or love.

Related Characters: Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell, Booker Starbern
Page Number: 79
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3 Quotes

He suspected most of the real answers concerning slavery, lynching, forced labor, sharecropping, racism, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, prison labor, migration, civil rights and black revolution movements were all about money. Money withheld, money stolen, money as power, as war. Where was the lecture on how slavery alone catapulted the whole country from agriculture into the industrial age in two decades? White folks’ hatred, their violence, was the gasoline that kept the profit motors running.

Related Characters: Booker Starbern
Page Number: 110-111
Explanation and Analysis:

When the police responded to their plea for help in searching for Adam, they immediately searched the Starberns’ house—as though the anxious parents might be at fault. They checked to see if the father had a police record. He didn’t. “We’ll get back to you,” they said. Then they dropped it. Another little black boy gone. So?

Related Characters: Booker Starbern, Adam
Page Number: 114
Explanation and Analysis:

Wealth alone explained humanity’s evil, and he was determined to live without deference to it.

Related Characters: Booker Starbern
Page Number: 122
Explanation and Analysis:

Once in a while she dropped the hip, thrillingly successful corporate woman façade of complete control and confessed some flaw or painful memory of childhood. And he, knowing all about how childhood cuts festered and never scabbed over, comforted her while hiding the rage he felt at the idea of anyone hurting her.

Related Characters: Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell, Booker Starbern
Page Number: 134
Explanation and Analysis:

Six months into the bliss of edible sex, free-style music, challenging books and the company of an easy undemanding Bride, the fairy-tale castle collapsed into the mud and sand on which its vanity was built. And Booker ran away.

Related Characters: Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell, Booker Starbern
Page Number: 135
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4, Chapter 2 Quotes

Complaining about her mother, she told him that Sweetness hated her for her black skin.

“It’s just a color,” Booker had said. “A genetic trait—not a flaw, not a curse, not a blessing nor a sin.”

“But,” she countered,” other people think racial—”

Booker cut her off. “Scientifically there’s no such thing as race, Bride, so racism without race is a choice. Taught, of course, by those who need it, but still a choice. Folks who practice it would be nothing without it.”

His words were rational and, at the time, soothing but had little to do with day-to-day experience—like sitting in a car under the stunned gaze of little white children who couldn’t be more fascinated if they were at a museum of dinosaurs.

Related Characters: Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell, Booker Starbern
Page Number: 143
Explanation and Analysis:

You should take heartbreak of whatever kind seriously with the courage to let it blaze and burn like the pulsing star it is unable or unwilling to be soothed into pathetic self-blame because its explosive brilliance rings justifiably loud like the din of a tympani.

Related Characters: Booker Starbern (speaker), Adam
Page Number: 151
Explanation and Analysis:

“I’m not sure I should, now.” Bride shook her head. She had counted on her looks for so long—how well her beauty worked. She had not known its shallowness or her own cowardice—the vital lesson Sweetness taught and nailed to her spine to curve it.

Related Characters: Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell, Booker Starbern, Sweetness, Queen
Page Number: 151
Explanation and Analysis:

“I lied! I lied! I lied! She was innocent. I helped convict her but she didn’t do any of that. I wanted to make amends but she beat the crap out of me and I deserved it.”

“You lied? What the hell for?”

“So my mother would hold my hand!”

“What?”

“And look at me with proud eyes, for once.”

“So, did she?”

“Yes. She even liked me.”

Related Characters: Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell (speaker), Booker Starbern (speaker)
Page Number: 153-154
Explanation and Analysis:

They will blow it, she thought. Each will cling to a sad little story of hurt and sorrow—some long-ago trouble and pain life dumped on their pure and innocent selves. And each one will rewrite the story forever, knowing the plot, guessing the theme, inventing its meaning and dismissing its origin. What waste.

Related Characters: Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell, Booker Starbern, Queen
Page Number: 158
Explanation and Analysis:

Queen’s right, he thought. Except for Adam I don’t know anything about love. Adam had no faults, was innocent, pure, easy to love. Had he lived, grown up to have flaws, human failings like deception, foolishness and ignorance, would he be so easy to adore or be even worthy of adoration? What kind of love is it that requires and only an angel for its commitment?

Related Characters: Booker Starbern (speaker), Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell, Adam
Page Number: 160
Explanation and Analysis:

A child. New life. Immune to evil or illness, protected from kidnap, beatings, race, racism, insult, hurt, self-loathing, abandonment. Error-free. All goodness. Minus wrath.

So they believe.

Related Characters: Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell, Booker Starbern
Related Symbols: Jaguar, Trumpet
Page Number: 175
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire God Help the Child LitChart as a printable PDF.
God Help the Child PDF

Booker Starbern Quotes in God Help the Child

The God Help the Child quotes below are all either spoken by Booker Starbern or refer to Booker Starbern. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Inherited Trauma Theme Icon
).
Part 1, Chapter 2: Bride Quotes

I’m scared. Something bad is happening to me. I feel like I’m melting away. I can’t explain it to you but I do know when it started. It began after he said, “You not the woman I want.”

“Neither am I.”

I don’t know why I said that. It just popped out of my mouth.

Related Characters: Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell (speaker), Booker Starbern
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 6: Bride Quotes

“Come on, baby, you’re not responsible for other folks’ evil.”

Related Characters: Booker Starbern (speaker), Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell, Sweetness, Mr. Leigh
Page Number: 55
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 1 Quotes

He was part of the pain—not a savior at all, and now her life was in shambles because of him. The pieces of it that she had stitched together: personal glamour, control in an exciting even creative profession, sexual freedom and most of all a shield that protected her from any overly intense feeling, be it rage, embarrassment or love.

Related Characters: Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell, Booker Starbern
Page Number: 79
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3 Quotes

He suspected most of the real answers concerning slavery, lynching, forced labor, sharecropping, racism, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, prison labor, migration, civil rights and black revolution movements were all about money. Money withheld, money stolen, money as power, as war. Where was the lecture on how slavery alone catapulted the whole country from agriculture into the industrial age in two decades? White folks’ hatred, their violence, was the gasoline that kept the profit motors running.

Related Characters: Booker Starbern
Page Number: 110-111
Explanation and Analysis:

When the police responded to their plea for help in searching for Adam, they immediately searched the Starberns’ house—as though the anxious parents might be at fault. They checked to see if the father had a police record. He didn’t. “We’ll get back to you,” they said. Then they dropped it. Another little black boy gone. So?

Related Characters: Booker Starbern, Adam
Page Number: 114
Explanation and Analysis:

Wealth alone explained humanity’s evil, and he was determined to live without deference to it.

Related Characters: Booker Starbern
Page Number: 122
Explanation and Analysis:

Once in a while she dropped the hip, thrillingly successful corporate woman façade of complete control and confessed some flaw or painful memory of childhood. And he, knowing all about how childhood cuts festered and never scabbed over, comforted her while hiding the rage he felt at the idea of anyone hurting her.

Related Characters: Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell, Booker Starbern
Page Number: 134
Explanation and Analysis:

Six months into the bliss of edible sex, free-style music, challenging books and the company of an easy undemanding Bride, the fairy-tale castle collapsed into the mud and sand on which its vanity was built. And Booker ran away.

Related Characters: Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell, Booker Starbern
Page Number: 135
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4, Chapter 2 Quotes

Complaining about her mother, she told him that Sweetness hated her for her black skin.

“It’s just a color,” Booker had said. “A genetic trait—not a flaw, not a curse, not a blessing nor a sin.”

“But,” she countered,” other people think racial—”

Booker cut her off. “Scientifically there’s no such thing as race, Bride, so racism without race is a choice. Taught, of course, by those who need it, but still a choice. Folks who practice it would be nothing without it.”

His words were rational and, at the time, soothing but had little to do with day-to-day experience—like sitting in a car under the stunned gaze of little white children who couldn’t be more fascinated if they were at a museum of dinosaurs.

Related Characters: Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell, Booker Starbern
Page Number: 143
Explanation and Analysis:

You should take heartbreak of whatever kind seriously with the courage to let it blaze and burn like the pulsing star it is unable or unwilling to be soothed into pathetic self-blame because its explosive brilliance rings justifiably loud like the din of a tympani.

Related Characters: Booker Starbern (speaker), Adam
Page Number: 151
Explanation and Analysis:

“I’m not sure I should, now.” Bride shook her head. She had counted on her looks for so long—how well her beauty worked. She had not known its shallowness or her own cowardice—the vital lesson Sweetness taught and nailed to her spine to curve it.

Related Characters: Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell, Booker Starbern, Sweetness, Queen
Page Number: 151
Explanation and Analysis:

“I lied! I lied! I lied! She was innocent. I helped convict her but she didn’t do any of that. I wanted to make amends but she beat the crap out of me and I deserved it.”

“You lied? What the hell for?”

“So my mother would hold my hand!”

“What?”

“And look at me with proud eyes, for once.”

“So, did she?”

“Yes. She even liked me.”

Related Characters: Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell (speaker), Booker Starbern (speaker)
Page Number: 153-154
Explanation and Analysis:

They will blow it, she thought. Each will cling to a sad little story of hurt and sorrow—some long-ago trouble and pain life dumped on their pure and innocent selves. And each one will rewrite the story forever, knowing the plot, guessing the theme, inventing its meaning and dismissing its origin. What waste.

Related Characters: Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell, Booker Starbern, Queen
Page Number: 158
Explanation and Analysis:

Queen’s right, he thought. Except for Adam I don’t know anything about love. Adam had no faults, was innocent, pure, easy to love. Had he lived, grown up to have flaws, human failings like deception, foolishness and ignorance, would he be so easy to adore or be even worthy of adoration? What kind of love is it that requires and only an angel for its commitment?

Related Characters: Booker Starbern (speaker), Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell, Adam
Page Number: 160
Explanation and Analysis:

A child. New life. Immune to evil or illness, protected from kidnap, beatings, race, racism, insult, hurt, self-loathing, abandonment. Error-free. All goodness. Minus wrath.

So they believe.

Related Characters: Lula Ann “Bride” Bridewell, Booker Starbern
Related Symbols: Jaguar, Trumpet
Page Number: 175
Explanation and Analysis: