The Past In Toni Morrison's Beloved

Past experiences pervasively and irreparably shape the present lives of the characters of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. As demonstrated by the frequent flashbacks, flash-forwards, and point of view shifts that can occur mid-sentence, the painful memories of the past are shown to frequently invade Sethe’s present life. Yet to maintain a degree of sanity in spite of the horrors wrought by slavery, many of the main characters—namely Sethe and Paul D—invent ways to cope with the past. Paul D represses his traumatic experiences, pushing them into a “tobacco tin” that has replaced his heart. In contrast, Sethe more strongly embraces her past, often phasing in and out of her memories in her daily life. Yet she also invents coping mechanisms that to some

Eighteen years after escaping from slavery, the memory of Sweet Home continues to invade Sethe’s present life, intensifying when, a remnant of her past, Paul D, comes to 124. But when Paul D asks her to move from 124 and escape her memories, Sethe instead re-asserts her attachment to the past, claiming she has “a tree on [her] back and a haint in her house” and she will “never [again] run from another thing on this earth” (XX) In these lines, Sethe directly adopts Amy’s language of the chokecherry tree to describe her scars, romanticizing their true nature. Her adoption of this imagery coupled with the defiant tone in these lines further demonstrates how Sethe has been able to redefine her past traumas so as to take ownership of her past--thereby allowing her to contend with its frequent, invasive patterns. This rebranding of the past allows her to maintain the sanity and strength required function in her daily life, enabling her to provide for herself and Denver in the present despite her own intrusive past (exemplified by Beloved’s lingering presence as a “haint” in the house.) Furthermore, Sethe’s romanticized perception of the past is seen in relation to other “trees,” as well, such as in her description of the “[b]oys hanging from the most beautiful sycamores in the world” in her first description of Sweet Home (XX). In this description, the brutalities of slavery are masked by romanticized, natural imagery that takes the focus of the image. Yet in this instance, this romanticized perception is also a source of guilt for Sethe, as she “could not forgive her memory” (XX) for her romanticized view of Sweet Home. Thus, Sethe’s tendency to romanticize the past through imagery related both to her “chokecherry tree” and beyond can be understood as one