Linked with water images, Beloved, who dwelled in water beneath the bridge during her tenure in the land of the dead, engulfed Paul D in an ocean wave of possessive emotion. On his return to the shed, he relives the powerlessness of being devoured by "a life hunger" that he could control no more than he could stop his lungs from gulping air. After the overwhelming passion ended, he realized that their coupling "wasn't even fun." Like a landed fish, he lay "beached and gobbling air," safely returned from "some ocean-deep place he once belonged to." As though reliving a prenatal experience, he views his release from Beloved as a kind of birthing.
The female/water images segue neatly into Paul D's wartime experiences. He perceived the land as a breast and "fingered its earth for food, clung to its banks to lap water and tried not to love it." Toiling first in a Confederate body reclamation squad and then in foundry work, he wandered in Alabama from Selma to Mobile and then took a skiff from Mobile Bay to a Union gunboat, which carried him to Wheeling, West Virginia. On his own, he journeyed to Trenton, New Jersey, and remained seven years before wandering west toward southern Ohio and Sethe.
In contrast to Paul D, Sethe's tie with womanhood pushes her dangerously toward death. Her body is depleted, her will expired, and her maternal breasts—the ones that nourished four children—symbolically exhausted. Paul D—himself wearied, but grateful to be back with his woman—recalls Sixo's definition of love: "The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order." In a touching role reversal, Paul D takes on the task of massaging Sethe’s body and soul. Sethe leans on Paul D and confesses her stunning loss: "She was my best thing." Paul D, the patient, maternal, Christ-like confessor, strikes the fitting chord with his reminder, "You your best thing, Sethe. You are."
