“The reward was worth the harm grass juice and clouds of gnats did to our eyes, because there right in front of us, about fifty yards off, they stood like men. Their raised hooves crashing and striking, their manes tossing back from wild white eyes. They bit each other like dogs but when they stood, reared up on their hind legs, their forelegs around the withers of the other, we held our breath in wonder.”

The novel opens with Frank and Cee’s sighting of a group of horses. Their eyes have endured the discomfort of grass juice and gnats but are now treated to the wondrous sight of horses fighting like men. The fight is both beautiful and brutal and sets the scene for the struggle for survival and dominance that defines Frank’s experience throughout the novel.

“Since you’re set on telling my story, whatever you think and whatever you write down, know this: I really forgot about the burial. I only remembered the horses. They were so beautiful. So brutal. And they stood like men.”

Morrison introduces the idea that Frank’s story is being narrated by someone else. The repetition of the word “whatever” suggests that Frank is acting as though he is indifferent to the narrator’s endeavor. However, his insistence that they know the “truth” about remembering the horses imbues his statement with a defensive edge and implies that he cares about what is being put down on the page.

“Residents of fifteen houses had been ordered to leave their little neighborhood on the edge of town. Twenty-four hours, they were told, or else. ‘Else’ meaning ‘die.’”

As the third-person narrator describes Frank’s experience of escaping from the mental home, Frank recalls the first time in his life when he had to make a swift exit: when he was 4 years old, his family had to leave their neighborhood on pain of death. This account sets up a pattern of transience and a mood of urgency in the novel.