Beloved

Words: 1312
Pages: 6

Slavery leaves lives ruined, families pulled apart and countless people dead. Memories are selective representations of experiences, actual or imagined. They provide a framework for creating meaning in one's life as well as in the lives of others. "In 1855 a runaway slave from Kentucky named Margaret Garner was tracked by her owner to Cincinnati, where she has taken refuge with her freed mother-in-law. Concerned, she tried to kill her four children" (Woods 262). Morrison wrote this novel based on Margaret Garner's life and the struggles of slavery at that specific time period. In her writings she would create a picture of the struggles of every character because of the symbols and the descriptions she uses to educate the readers. "In Beloved, this interior life is re-created with a moving intensity no novelist has …show more content…
finally begins sharing his memories with Sethe he fears that revealing too much will wrench the two former slaves back into a past from which they might never escape. Paul D. is able to “move on” from Sweet Home by being with Sethe at 124 Bluestone Road. He is able to cease his endless wanderings and fear of racial violence since Beloved is forced out by the black community. He is able to reclaim some manhood and agency by her disappearance, which empowers him despite the lasting memory she left behind. "Saying more might push them both to a place they couldn’t get back from. He would keep the rest where it belonged: in that tobacco tin buried in his chest where a red heart used to be. Its lid rusted shut" (Morrison 83). Both Sethe and Paul D avoids the pain of their past as best they can, and both have developed elaborate and ultimately destructive coping mechanisms to keep the past at bay. Sethe has effectively erased much of her memory, and Paul D functions by locking his memories and emotions away in his imagined “tobacco tin.” Paul D now is able to fully embrace Sethe and her love and with that he is able to call some place