“Disremembered and unaccounted for — the multiple layers of Beloved, the character”
In Beloved, Toni Morrison repeatedly uses the terms “disremember” and “rememory” to convey the relevance of the past in the present lives of Sethe, Denver, Paul, Beloved, and other characters in the community. The act of rememory takes life and transforms from a passive act of reflecting on something that happened into an efficacious event that causes some sort of change in the character’s present life. In the novel, Sethe explains rememory to Denver and says, “If a house burns down, it’s gone, but the place — the picture of it stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around there outside my head. I mean, even if I don’t think about it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or
saw is still out there.”
This idea of a house burning down shows how even though something happened already, it’s always shaping an identity so long as it exists in one’s rememory. So to disremember is to deny a memory it’s inevitable effect on the present. However, it is necessary to move on from the past but one must first acknowledge its relevance through rememory. Beloved, as Sethe’s dead daughter, was “disremembered and unaccounted for” because of her dissolution from Sethe’s mind and the community as a whole; they disremembered her. It is not until Beloved’s arrival that Sethe and the community acknowledge the event of her death through rememory and allow the sort of stalemate of scapegoating to end. In a way, Beloved is the embodiment of the past confronting the community demanding that she receive her deserved attention after being unaccounted for for nearly two decades.
In the epilogue, there is an anaphora of the phrase, “it was not a story to pass on,” which then transforms to “this is not a story to pass on.” Here, Morrison is almost sarcastic in conveying the pain of the events that transpired. It was not a story to pass on because it was so painful. It was not something anyone wanted to remember but they had to in order to move on from it, and eventually disremember it. But Beloved and the memory of her is still there in the minds of the community members. Like the weather, it always will be. It’s natural. The weather cannot be controlled or ignored and yet it is always happening to us. Morrison uses the analogy of weather to represent the past’s role in our lives; it’s something that has happened, is happening, and will happen. Disremembering Beloved allows the community to embrace the past and accept its impact on the present. In treating the past like the weather, it’s no longer a struggle to pretend it’s irrelevant because the weather is ever-present in our lives.
Beloved, the character, has multiple layers in her representation in the novel that seem to be debated both by other characters and readers. Stamp Paid seems to think that she is a girl who was locked up in a whiteman’s basement for most of her life, which would explain why she looks so “new.” But that doesn’t explain the undisclosed characteristics that she knew about Sethe, such as her earrings. This is how we, as readers, know that Beloved must certainly be the reincarnation of Sethe’s dead daughter, who appeared in the novel right after the ghost disappeared. Beloved is also a manifestation of Sethe’s ancestors who came to the United States on slave ships in the Middle Passage.
This delineation speaks levels to Morrison as a writer. To quote the author herself, “all art is political.” She believes that for art to be art it must have at least some political connotations. Through Beloved’s character she sends a message to the country to acknowledge the atrocities committed during slavery times. Written in 1987, just over a hundred years after slavery ended, the novel attempted to force Americans to address the impact that slavery still has. Americans seem to be predisposed to sweep slavery under the rug and pretend it never happened. Some do so because it was a painful period in history, and others do so because it’s a part of the past they don’t want to come to terms with.
Beloved as the ancestral figure in the novel is seen in her vague descriptions of where she was before arriving at 124. Morrison uses this vagueness to subliminally show how the characters attempt to disremember the past because they leave out large details when using rememory. Beloved describes a “bridge” that took her to 124. This bridge was vividly painful and hard for her to recount; she reiterates throughout the novel, the heat, confinement, and death that she encountered. The bridge is a metaphor for the slave ships that took Beloved from Africa to the United States in the Middle Passage. Beloved’s use of rememory to address her ancestral history is important because the history of the Middle Passage and slavery in general have been “disremembered and unaccounted for.” Beloved’s story of the past, however personal, is not only a story that she doesn’t want to tell and remember, it also a story that the country as a whole doesn’t want to address. Morrison is saying that the nameless, countless Africans that died as passengers on slave ships deserve to be accounted for. Their history is alive in Beloved’s life, and subsequently the lives of all the characters.
Beloved, as the reincarnation of Sethe’s dead daughter, represents the insistence of the past to refuse suppression by the community. Sethe’s murder of her daughter was unspoken and unaddressed by the community, and Sethe, herself. By returning to 124, she is demanding attention from Sethe, this is why Beloved is initially obsessive with her. She forces Sethe to acknowledge what happened the day she killed her and stop disremembering her past. Usually referred to as “crawling-already” when there are recounts of Sethe’s daughter before dying, the lack of a name for Beloved draws attention to the attempt for Sethe and the community to forget her. Morrison explains Beloved’s lack of identity; “she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can they call her if they don’t know her name?” She is the unaccounted past that no one wanted to look for.
Morrison’s techniques and philosophies as a writer are her best tools in explicating her notions of rememory and disremembering. She wants to “rip the veil” that people use to conceal events that are seen as too difficult to discuss. She uses this philosophy to tackle heavy subjects such as slavery and the marginalization of Africans in a country with a history that has been suppressed but will always be relevant. She emphasizes the importance of not disremembering these past events that have such a significant impact on the present. Morrison’s use of imagery when the characters are using rememory shows a flaw in memory. The tendency of the characters to remember images rather than full events is because over time, memories become distorted and we forget minor details. Memory is not always trustworthy. So when using rememory it is important to consider that people create images of what happened in a particular event based on the impact it had.
The language of Beloved is imperative to the central themes. It’s free-flowing, written without a concept of time and structure as though it is, itself, a stream of consciousness using rememory to face a painful event. Morrison wants to view time as less linear, and more circular. A linear view of time sees events in the past as just that — the past. A circular view sees anything that happens as relevant in the span of time. Morrison demonstrates the ability to convey this and the other themes in the novel with just her language.
