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What is Beloved to Toni Morrison, not just the novel but the character and the concept?
In my reading, the driving event of the novel is the arrival of Paul D, a long-forgotten (or suppressed?) reminder of slavery at Sweet Home. He inserts himself both domestically and sexually into 124, Sethe’s isolated shell. It’s only after this point that Beloved appears, physical and eventually all-consuming.
“The shadows of three people still [holding] hands” that Sethe sees after a day at the carnival is a watershed moment for her mental state. What we get with Paul D is a trigger of memories, painful and vivid and uncontrollable.
“Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.”
Morrison creates a new word in Beloved: rememory. The way she uses it, rememory seems to be a noun rather than a verb. So my question is, what’s the difference between rememory and memory?
In a narrow sense, rememory can refer to traumatic memory. No matter how far Sethe goes, the ravaging effects of slavery will follow her. It exists in her day-to-day life, in the food she eats, in the people around her.
But if this is the only meaning of rememory, what is Beloved then? In a way, she’s…
