Beloved

“When the four horsemen came—schoolteacher, one nephew, one slave catcher, and a sheriff—the house on Bluestone Road was so quiet they thought they were too late.”

This quote is an allusion to the Bible and the four horsemen of the apocalypse who are harbingers of the Last Judgment of mankind. They symbolize the end of days, which makes this an apt way of marking the appearance of the schoolteacher, symbolizing the end of Sethe’s 28 days of peace.