ipl-logo

Re-Memory In Toni Morrison's Beloved

1093 Words5 Pages

“You think she sure ‘nough your sister?”…“At times. At times I think she was–more” (314). In Beloved the eponymous character exhibits characteristics which lend credence to the interpretation of her being the ghost of Sethe’s murdered child – this includes things such as sharing the name of the baby’s tombstone, being the same age as the baby had it been alive, and knowing certain details from Sethe’s past as a slave. In this essay I will argue that Beloved’s appearance in a physical form can be interpreted to signify the repressed memories of slavery of each of the characters, which allows for their personal and emotional growth. This is supported through the central idea of re-memory.

To Sethe, re-memory is not simply remembering something but instead is a physical presence which always ‘exists’ in the world. Sethe states “I mean, even if I don’t think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened” (43) – the choice of including place in the description of re-memory enables the connection between the place where Sethe killed her child being the same place as where she currently lives. Thus, Beloved’s appearance as a ghost at 124 is a living re-memory that has returned to haunt Sethe, Denver and Paul D. Beloved consequently …show more content…

Instead of being an allegory for the repressed memories of slavery in the form of Sethe’s murdered child, Beloved can be viewed as an allegory for all the slaves, “Sixty million and more”, who suffered through slavery in America. The use of the epistrophe at the end of the novel, “It was not a story to pass on…It was not a story to pass on…This is not a story to pass on” (323-4) for a story that has already been passed on to the reader signifies that it is not simply ‘A’ story to pass on but rather multiple stories that live on in

Show More
Related

  • Compare And Contrast Equiano And Rowlandson

    127 Words  | 1 Pages

    The worst bearing of both Rowlandson and Equiano has to face was being separated from their own love ones. Rowlandson was separated from her family and relations when her village was attacked then eventually lost her only child that was with her. Nevertheless, Equiano also endured tormented pain when he was parted from his sister while she was the only comfort to him at once. He was a young boy in a fearful atmosphere with nothing to convey a positive perspective. “It was vain that [they] besought than not to part us; she was torn from [him], and immediately carried away, while [he] was left in a state of distraction not to be describe”.

    Read More

  • Between The World And Me Rhetorical Analysis

    650 Words  | 3 Pages

    Epistrophe: “Think of your mother, who had no father. And your grandmother, who was abandoned by her father. And your grandfather, who was left behind by his father” (Page 82). 8. Personification: “But now your mother had gone and done it, and when she returned her eyes were dancing with all the possibilities out there, not just for her but for you and for me” (Coates

    Read More

  • Friendship In Toni Morrison's 'Recitatif'

    943 Words  | 4 Pages

    Toni Morrison is a famous American author who used to write about racial segregation in the United States. In this perspective, she wrote "Recitatif". In this short story, she talked about the particular story of Twyla and Roberta, two girls from different racial origins. She has shown that their friendship faced many rebounds depending on their age and the place they were. The goal of this essay is to analyze their friendship during each period of their lives.

    Read More

  • Repressed Memories In Toni Morrison's Beloved

    1334 Words  | 6 Pages

    These three steps not only apply to the individual memory but also to the collective memory. In this novel, the memory of an individual is not just his or her memory; it’s actually the memory of a community that has gone through the same pain, cruelties and humiliation. That is, Sethe’s character represents every black woman who was tortured, raped and whose children were taken away from her. Thus, her character represents the pain that every black woman in

    Read More

  • Banning Beloved Research Paper

    490 Words  | 2 Pages

    As the book ends Paul D returns, and finds Sethe laying down in Baby Sugg’s bed ready to die (70). Sethe cried out to Paul that she lost the most meaningful person in her life, Beloved (70). Paul D then hugged her as he told her she was the best thing to ever happen to him (70). Instead of Morrison writing about families being separated, she writes about them being sold as if they were livestock (71). Morrison chose to write about the African-American experiences during slavery (Heinze 127).

    Read More

  • How Does Toni Morrison Relates To The Book Beloved

    978 Words  | 4 Pages

    Beloved is a novel that was written by author Toni Morrison. Beloved was published in 1987 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House Inc., in New York. Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1987. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the American Book Awards, the Anisfield-Book Award, and the Frederic G. Melcher Book Award, all in the year 1988. This novel made a huge impact on African American history, and historical fiction, as it covers the struggle of freedom in early lives of slavery.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Revenge In Toni Morrison's Beloved

    915 Words  | 4 Pages

    It is quite unlikely for one to contemplate murder, but even more unlikely for it to be the murder of one’s own child. While the event of murder is more common than expected, revenge may be the source of anger buildup that leads to the horrendous acts. What may seem yet even stranger to some is if the victim resurrects and seeks a greater revenge. If a wrong is done to someone, should they be allowed to get revenge to whatever lengths they see fit? That question is the heart of Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved.

    Read More

  • Slavery In Toni Morrison's Beloved

    1350 Words  | 6 Pages

    Morrison 's use of psychological trauma over the death of Beloved for Sethe has a lasting effect on the audience when compared to the mutinies that occur in both Melville and Douglass 's works. In contrast to the spontaneous events that occur in those two, Beloved tells a story of the psychological horrors that await after a slave obtains freedom from the perspective of a mother that represents the general female population of slaves seen as little more than bodies or objects. In a way, the aftermath of Beloved and Benito Cereno in terms of mental strain on both Sethe and Don Benito are similar except that Sethe 's affliction is due to her strong sense of motherhood whereas Don Benito suffers from a loss of his manhood. Morrison uses Sethe to portray the mental struggle of an escaped female slave depicting the true nature of slavery where she continues to fight even after obtaining some form of

    Read More

  • The Effects Of Rape And Sexual Assault In Beloved By Toni Morrison

    1970 Words  | 8 Pages

    Slaves faced extreme brutality and Morrison focuses on rape and sexual assault as the most terrifying form of abuse. It is because of this abuse that Morrison’s characters are trapped in their pasts, unable to move on from the psychological damages that they have endured. “Morrison revises the conventional slave narrative by insisting on the primacy of sexual assault over other experiences of brutality” (Barnett 420). For telling Mrs. Garner what they had done, she was badly beaten by them, leaving a “chokecherry tree” (16) on her back. But that was not the overriding issue.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Beloved By Toni Morrison

    1405 Words  | 6 Pages

    Beloved by Toni Morrison is a prose written after American Civil war. Beloved was written in honor of Margaret Garner; a black slave who was able to run away from the life of hardship and slavery and moved to the free state of Ohio. The writer represented the life of Margaret in Seethe who was the main character of the novel Beloved. In the novel, Seethe escaped from the sweet home where she was slave and moved to Ohio with her daughters; Denver and beloved. Seethe and her children lived in Ohio for 25 days before the people from the sweet home slavery found her.

    Read More

  • Essay On The Color Red In Toni Morrison's Beloved

    1303 Words  | 6 Pages

    In Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, Sethe, Denver, and Paul D each attempt to cope with their horrific pasts amidst a world haunted by the horrors of slavery. Paradoxically, these memories of despair often accompany intense feelings of motherly love, desire, and hope. Throughout the novel, the color red symbolizes this dichotomy through representing both the past memories of violence, hatred, and death associated with slavery along with the feelings of love, desire, and hope for a better future. After horrific oppression and brutality at Sweet Home plantation and the prison at Alfred, Georgia, Paul D carries a “tobacco tin lodged in his chest” concealing his memories and emotions from his slave life (Morrison 133).

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Names In Toni Morrison's Beloved

    1233 Words  | 5 Pages

    Names have always held power in literature; whether it is the defeated giant Polyphemus cursing Odysseus due to him pridefully announcing his name or how the true name of the Hebrew god was considered so potent that the word was forbidden. In fact, names were given power in tales dating all the way back to the 24th century B.C.E. when the goddess Isis became as strong as the sun god Ra after tricking him into revealing his true name. And in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, names have a much stronger cultural significance; and in the case of the character known as “Beloved”, her name is essentially her whole existence. Morrison shows the true power a name holds in African American literature through the character known as “Beloved”, as her role in the story becomes defined by the name she is given and changes in the final moments of the chapter.

    Read More

  • The Theme Of Materialism In Toni Morrison's 'Recitatif'

    1200 Words  | 5 Pages

    Recitatif was written by Toni Morrison, which is a profound narrative, which I believe was meant to invite and let readers wondering to search for a buried connotation of the experiences that the main characters, which are Twyla and Roberta are face as children, and as their reunited again as adults, which some of the story’s meaning and values involving around race, friendship and the abandonment began to emerge as the plot thickens, and more messages became hidden and remain unrecognized even until the last sentence of the story. In the story from the very first paragraph, there were several details that wasn’t mentioned, that required further deeper thought and that made the story very appealing for me. First, from the beginning

    Read More

  • Two Narrative Perspectives In Toni Morrison's Beloved

    843 Words  | 4 Pages

    Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel Beloved is a multiply narrated story of having to come to terms with the past to be able to move forward. Set after the Civil War in 1870s, the novel centers on the experiences of the family of Baby Suggs, Sethe, Denver, and Paul D and on how they try to confront their past with the arrival of Beloved. Two narrative perspectives are main, that of the third-person omniscient and of the third person limited, and there is also a perspective of the first-person. The novel’s narrators shift constantly and most of the times without notifying at all, and these narratives of limited perspectives of different characters help us understand the interiority, the sufferings and memories, of several different characters better and in their diversity.

    Read More

  • The Role Of Feminism In Toni Morrison's Beloved

    2515 Words  | 11 Pages

    According to Martha Bayles, The main plot of Beloved can be seen as a variant on the same tale: a slave commits a crime, but it’s not only really a crime because it was committed by slave. The system, and not the slave stands, unjustly condemned for a deed that would possess another meaning if committed in freedom to some extent, a similar moral a similar moral adjustment has to be made in judging the act

    Read More

More about Re-Memory In Toni Morrison's Beloved

Open Document