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By: Kennedy Edgar

The Rememory of Beloved 

In order to survive, one must develop a quick instinct of fight or flight when faced with a traumatic event. Margaret Gardner, an enslaved African American woman, choose to fight for her children by deliberately killing them rather than to have them return to slavery by slave catchers. Her story is the biggest inspiration for Toni Morrison writing of Beloved. Throughout her novel, Morrison paints the past of each character in hopes to explain why they are the people they are in the present. Morrison uses the term “rememory”, defining it as recalling a memory or moment that had been forgotten. Using this method can have faults with these characters due to the setting being when the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, a law where Northerners were able to capture and return runaway slaves, was put into movement. That historical event transformed many lives physically, as in many slaves escaping North to their freedom but also, mentally and emotionally. Despite the dangers that exist in each character's consciousness due to the past, Toni Morrison uses the character Beloved to draw Sethe and Paul D through the process of rememory so they can move on from their hauntings and learn the ideals of Baby Suggs to potentially free themselves from their post slavery life.  

Baby Suggs is known to be a definitive character that helped the others in the novel free themselves after being recently freed from slavery. After having her freedom bought by her son, Baby Suggs would move to Cincinnati and preach insights to her community to give them what she believed to be a great generosity. Baby Suggs was more concerned over Sethe than any of the rest. Suggs tried to teach Sethe, along with the rest of the community by her saying, “Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh...Love your hands! Love them....You gotta love it, you...This is the flesh I’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved… love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than your life-holding womb and your life giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize”(Morrison 104). The last line of Suggs speech feels directed more towards Sethe because of her incapability to love herself more than anything else, especially her children. Morrison begins this theme relating to Sethe with Baby Suggs to foreshadow what Beloved is going to push her through later in the novel through rememory. All in all, Suggs wanted every African American to realize their self value, whether it be internally or externally. No slave was every allowed to own themselves or rather love oneself because of their constant reminder of being told they’re an object or a piece of property owned by the Whites. Suggs wants to change that feeling into something as beautiful as how their actual true selves are.  

While reading the novel, the character Beloved is categorized similarly to Baby Suggs, both have reputations of being a force for others. Though Suggs force was used through her preachings in the clearing, Beloved was more mystical at the home of 124. Denver, Sethe’s daughter, explains Beloved’s presence as “an unusual event (even for a girl who had lived all her life in a house peopled by the living activity of the dead) was that a white dress knelt down...the dress helping out...'' (Morrison 16). Until she was banished by Paul D from that form, then she became a physical being. When Beloved was first introduced as a human being to the characters, she was immediately directed to being the ghost of Sethe’s dead baby, due to Sethe’s water breaking when she recognized her new smooth lineless skin and wobble like form. Sethe later describes it as, [I’m] “certain that Beloved was the white dress that had knelt with her in the keeping room, the true-to-life presence of the baby that had kept her company most of her life” (Morrison 141). This was all just the beginning of Sethe’s process of rememory and the longer Beloved stayed, the more she asked Sethe questions about herself. For instance, Beloved once asks, “Where your diamonds?”, looking at Sethe’s ears to later say from Sethe’s response, “Tell me, Tell me your diamonds” (Morrison 69). In doing so, Beloved is having Sethe tell a story about her past at Sweet Home, Sethe and Paul D’s old plantation, essentially beginning to bring about old memories Sethe has been longing to suppress. With Beloved being greatly attached to Sethe from the start and Paul D having his hunch about her voodoo habits, Beloved disturbed Paul D. She uses this to her advantage by leading Paul into a shed and having him engage with her intimately. Then she begs him to speak of her name, which shoots Paul D into a spiral trance. Both of Beloved’s forces towards the trapped souls hit close to home because of how delicate, personal and precise it feels for them.  

Possessive ghosts from the past linger inside the mind until given full attention. In Beloved’s playbook, Sethe and Paul D have to face their ghosts head on in order to let them go and if not, they won’t ever be able to live truly free. Post slavery, Sethe put all her devotion into one thing: beating back the past in order to just focus on taking care of her children. Morrison goes into detail by writing, “To Sethe, the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay… The job Sethe had of keeping her from the past that was still waiting for her was all that mattered '' (Morrison 51).  When Beloved truly began to dig deep with her questions for Sethe, the effects were becoming more noticeable. Morrison shows this by saying, “It amazed Sethe (as much as it pleased Beloved) because every mention of her past life hurt. Everything in it was painful or lost… the hurt was always there- like a tender place in the corner of her mouth that the bit left” (Morrison 69). As for Paul D, Beloved burst his guarded heart he structured for himself post slavery in order to protect him from the White’s overbearing power. Morrison describes the event such as, “He said it, but she did not go. She moved closer… he didn’t hear and he didn’t hear the whisper that the flakes of the rust made either as they fell away from the seams of his tobacco tin… ‘Red heart. Red heart’, he said over and over again. ‘Red heart. Red heart. Red heart'’”(Morrison 137). Both of these moments describe the breakthrough for Sethe and Paul D. Beloved, to reach her goal, had to put both characters at their most vulnerable in order for them to realize how traumatizing their past still is for them and that it’s not safe for them to live with all these hauntings. Now, Sethe and Paul D have the opportunity themselves to open the door to the past, let the ghosts out and accept Baby Suggs ideology: to lay down their armour.  

Having to look back on traumatic events potentially creates even more problems because the process may not be done properly putting the individual in a panic response type mode.  Beloved pushing both characters to their breaking point damaged them emotionally and turned everything upside down. At one point in the novel, after her brutal style of rememory, Beloved had made Paul D and Sethe turn on each other. While Sethe ramples about how Beloved came back to her after all that had happened, she mentions, “I would have known who you were right away...I would have known right off, but Paul D distracted me...And later on, when you asked me about the earrings I used to dangle for you to play with, I would have recognized you right off, except for Paul D. Seems to me he wanted you out from the beginning...And look how he ran..too rough for him. Too thick, he said. My love was too thick. What he know about it?” (Morrison 239). Having much history together for their time back at Sweet Home, it all becomes meaningless and goes to shreds because of Beloved. Pulling apart their relationship made Sethe focus more on her children, the opposite of what Baby Suggs told Sethe. As for Paul D, he ran off avoiding Beloved because as he explains, “that girl in the house scares me the most...First time I saw her I didn’t want to be nowhere around her. Something funny about her...She reminds me of something. Something, look like, I’m supposed to remember” (Morrison 176).  Both of them, after being pushed into their own deep end, converted back to their safety net, which ultimately holds them more captive in their heads. Opening the door to the past may lead to the success of letting it all go, but the possibility of developing new demons in the process is a risk someone should take from themselves, not by the ghost itself. 

Taking the steps to free yourself from ghosts is a long rollercoaster of emotions that can be draining, but all the pain and suffering can be overlooked when light at the end of the tunnel becomes visible.  At first intentions, Beloved was reborn to be a kind help to Sethe and Paul D, until she no longer was anymore. For Sethe, Beloved was getting too attached and while she tried her best to make it all up for the lost child, it became overwhelming. Knowing the only solution of any trouble is to get rid of the core problem itself, that's exactly what Morrison does for her characters. She writes it as, “It broke Sethe and she trembled...Standing alone on the porch, Beloved is smiling… Now she is running into the faces of the people out there, joining them and leaving Beloved behind. Alone, again” (309). After Beloved vanished from Sethe, Paul feels free to come back to Sethe. As Paul D is searching around the home of 124 for Beloved, to make sure she is gone, he confronts himself, “with an effort that makes him sweat he forces a picture to himself lying there, and when he sees it, it lifts his spirits...He can’t put his finger on it, but it seems, for a moment, that just beyond his knowing is the glare of an outside thing that embraces while it accuses (Morrison 319). After these two monumental events, Sethe and Paul D end up reconnecting and having a moment that unifies their relationship. Morrison starts this with Paul D saying, “I’m a take care of you, you hear? Starting now”, then she writes, “She opens her eyes, knowing the danger of looking at him. She looks at him… Because with him, in his presence, they could cry and tell him things they could only told each other… He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. ‘You your best thing Sethe, you are’. His holding fingers are holding hers”(322). This sequence of events is the healing of Beloved’s destruction. Paul’s self reflection is his final breakthrough of his emotions. Whatever was captured in that picture finally let his heart glow more red than it ever had before Beloved and once he was able to feel, he could then be available for Sethe. Meanwhile for Sethe, Beloved’s disappearance and Paul’s reassurance is the cherry on top to the teachings Baby Suggs originally gave her. She is now able to consider herself as an individual who needs to be taken care of and loved by herself and others. For both of them, it took an exile of their physical ghost for them to be released from their mental ones.  

From beginning to end and still to this day, millions of people suffer mentally from the effects of slavery. Though it happened many years ago, it's still a gruesome time in history that will never be forgotten. As much as people try, it’s lessons are far too valuable to learn from. Doesn’t matter what ethnicity, slavery haunts everyone to the soul. Toni Morrison writes her novel Beloved to retell the story of Margaret Garner to those people who have forgotten. Many lives were affected, but Margaret’s story is merely an example of how life was for someone in slavery and how one moment can scar so deeply. Back then, people were forced consistently with these life changing decisions, but truly it all came down to how you would survive to live to see the day you would become a freed slave.  

 

 

 

Work Cited Page  

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Vintage Classics, 2020.