Ominous images hovered in Chapter 15, particularly the prickly bracken that Stamp Paid braved to gather blackberries. But for all their destructive power, like the circlet of thorns that crowned Christ's head, the cruel prickers that pierced Stamp Paid’s skin yielded the sweet fruit that he fed to the infant Denver. Bitter and sweet overlapped. Likewise, the fullness of the feast at 124, like the loaves and fishes with which Christ fed his followers and the Last Supper that preceded his crucifixion, foreshadowed the black community’s betrayal of Sethe, whose unforeseen violence disturbed their peace.
But while Chapter 15 mixed images of pain and sweetness, Chapter 16 pours out a bitter harvest, a slow-motion montage of slavery's worst fears. Far more threatening than thorns or envious neighbors to Sethe and her family are the galloping "four horsemen," the slave-day version of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, portentous embodiments of famine, war, pestilence, and death. Each white male of the foursome represents an aspect of inhumanity. Schoolteacher, who remains unnamed, preserves a cool detachment about the slaves, whom he studies as breeding stock for Sweet Home. The slave catcher, motivated by profit, recognizes the worth of potential captives who must be guarded from violence to preserve their usability and maintain maximum value. The nephew, himself a victim of physical abuse, learns too late about the seeds of violence that he has sown by his inexplicably perverse sexual abuse of a helpless female slave. The sheriff, perhaps the most pathetic of the four riders, must uphold an unjust law that sanctions the capture and return of runaway slaves. He must act without regard to the human cost of a woman's murder of her own child to spare it the torment of slavery.
