The Past In Toni Morrison's Beloved

In Beloved, Morrison is attempting to prepare the ground for Sethe’s spiritual rebirthby recovering her missing connection to the unspeakable past. The past returns in the form of Sethe’s dead daughter Beloved, who comes back from the “other side” (75) eager to join the broken parts of her history. She claims for her place and for the history to which she thinks she belongs. She reclaims her place in Sethe’s history and present life as she emphatically says to her sister Denver: “She is the one I need. You can go but she is the one I have to have... I belong here ” (89). Beloved represents the personal, social, and spiritual unease that involves the era of slavery, in which thousands of slaves were victims of those unspeakable times.
As the narrative suggests, Beloved’s presence symbolizes the past that haunts the present by not being fairly told and analyzed throughout the centuries. It has to be remembered and re-examined in order to be accommodated, otherwise it will continue as fragmented and disconnected rememories that cannot be controlledor forgotten. Thus, in Morrison’s narrative, African Americans’ collective rememoriesare made alive in Beloved’s broken and disconnected speech. By trying to forget and bury a painful past still alive, African

Pilate’s performance of Milkman’s pre-birth rites prepares him for other rituals that will initiate him into becoming a mature, responsible and active member of his community. In her role as a spiritual midwife and of mothering in the African and African American sense, Pilate helps Milkman to reunite with the stories of his ancestors, to reconnect with his past and with his dead and living relatives, thus helping him to recover his spiritual dilemma.Her “othermothering”2roleis giving Milkman the psychological sustenance and she is more resourceful for him than the biological mother,