Memory, Storytelling and Healing in “beloved”

Yıldız Hazal Çetin

 Assist. Prof. Dr. Öz Öktem

 ELL228

10.05.2017

Memory, Storytelling and Healing in “Beloved”

          Toni Morrison uses memory as a crucial tool in her novels. For her, memory’s power derives from its capability to construct experiences and by doing so explain a concern for African American antiquity and cultural memory. Remembering process enables one to interact with his or her ancestors. In this essay, I want to discuss the way Morrison explores the stories and psychology of blacks to trigger the sources of memory and insight as devices of healing and strength. Also, I want to argue about the act of storytelling and how it serves as motivation and how it prompts the memories in the novel, Beloved. The past does not simply disappear in the novel, it has a strong impact upon the present. The most crucial example of this is the ghost of Sethe’s dead daughter, who despite being entombed continues to exert influence as a ghost. Memories live through storytelling. The novel analyzes the value of telling stories. As the stories are told, characters create some kind of an oral tradition and this enables them to tell their own stories as former slaves. These memories are significant because they represent racial memories which consist of shared experiences. Remembering process can be painful since the memories have been repressed for a long time. Characters depend on each other to endure the painful effects of the slavery. As characters confront their past they are symbolically reborn. Beloved as an embodiment of the past enables the characters to face their past.          

          The book starts in a haunted house in Cincinnati. Sethe and her daughter Denver has escaped from slavery. The ghost is believed to be the daughter of Sethe. Denver is housebound and friendless and the two sons of Sethe has escaped from the house. Baby Suggs who is the mother of Sethe’s husband dies. One day Paul D who is a former slave shows up at the porch of the house. He tries to arouse a sense of reality. Paul D and Sethe have sex and he sees the wound of Sethe by this way some memories pop up. First, he tries to make the family forget about their past. They together go to a carnival. But on the way to the house, they encounter an odd young woman whose name is Beloved. Stamp Paid reveals everything to Paul D about Sethe who has killed her baby because several white men has tried to take them. Sethe starts to believe that Beloved is her dead child. Beloved consumes her and even Sethe sacrifices her own needs for her and Beloved grows bigger. In the climax of the novel, Denver becomes aware of everything and tries to find help from the community. Some of the women help them. While these things happening a white man who helped the mother of Sethe’s husband appears to take Denver because Denver asks him for a job. When Sethe sees the white man, she tries to attack him with an ice pick because she fears again that he will take her and her daughter. A woman prevents it. While Sethe goes to kill the man, Beloved disappears. At the end of the novel, Denver has her job and Paul D and Sethe come together.

          Wieland states “Morrison’s fiction revives, in order to pass on, mythic truths that create connections between individual and the past, specifically the traditions of Black America and Africa.”(206). If only one remembers the past he or she can keep in touch with his or her ancestors and by this way one can be aware of himself or herself.  Morrison says that if one doesn’t remember the past, he or she will actually be in danger. (206). For Morrison the past and the present are interdependent, (206) thus, cannot be separated. If one has the knowledge of the past, he or she can construct the future. Morrison wants us to both pass this story and not because “it [is] not a story to pass on.” (Beloved 275). It can be painful to talk about the things which happen in the novel, however, it must be told because there is some profit in learning these things. It can enlighten the communities and bring awareness to them. Wieland states that Beloved is the most concentrated on memory among the other works of Toni Morrison and the novel is the product of Morrison’s own memory. She is influenced by the Margaret Garner case which is about a woman who also killed her baby like Sethe in the novel.(207). Thus, one can understand that Morrison tries to reflect the unbearable side of slavery in order to help African-Americans to move on. So, instead of “memory” Morrison uses “rememory”. The term does not depend on a single individual, but contains a community of rememberers (208).

          Stories serve as forces to evoke memories. Beloved’s plot is constructed in a way to reflect the unfolding of the memories. The plot emerges as characters remember their experiences and reveal them to the reader or to the characters. Harris states “The story of Denver’s birth provides the prime example of [the] multiple composition. Denver relates a part of the story (29-30), and especially (77-78). Sethe recounts another portion (31-32). And the omniscient narrator provides more (72-35, 78-85)” (138). As the characters tell stories they create a community in which all have different roles to play. Narrators can tell stories individually or they can join the characters by listening to them. Harris describes the community of storytelling as “a dynamic storytelling ones in which the tellers and their tales have a direct impact upon the lives of those around them” (140). So, one can understand that storytelling is a powerful act, a force which can heal or kill somebody. In the novel, Sethe informs Denver about herself, however, she stops because the past becomes too vivid for her to comprehend. At first, she “beat[s] back the past”. (73).

          Stories help the characters in many ways. For example, stories affect Beloved. She explores more about her family history.  ”But she is also drawing her very lifeblood from them; they are creating a memory for her, filling in the gaps in her life that she cannot remember.” (141). As for Denver, she is isolated all the time. She must break the isolation and she must find a place within her life and her family. As Harris states, “Storytelling is her continual birth process, her continual bid to find herself in the family portrait and to find value within the family.” (141). Furthermore, stories allow individuals to create communal bonds. Sethe wants to share her experience with Paul D and it is stated in the novel “Her story was bearable because it was his as well to tell to refine and tell again.” (99).