Rememory...remember?

In Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, I was struck by the cyclical nature of the novel, which played an especially large role in rememory. The telling and retelling of stories shape the novel, so I often felt like I was running around in circles. For example, the novel ends with the repetition of “not a story to pass on,” but that’s exactly what the characters did; they retold stories in order to tell a bigger story.

Despite it being a little confusing, I enjoyed the cyclic storytelling. My favorite example is probably the multiple versions of Sethe’s “big secret.” As Paul D recalls, Sethe was “Circling, circling, now she was gnawing something else instead of getting to the point” (Morrison 191). While trying to tell her version of how and why she killed her baby, Sethe must hover around it until she circles into the climax of her story. This style of storytelling appears many times throughout the novel.

However interesting the cyclical storytelling, I think it falls under a larger umbrella of rememory. Part one of the novel concludes with multiple versions of the story, and each one reveals different details. I think the different versions of the story allow readers to compile one overall version that encompasses bits and pieces of each. Sethe remembers her baby being able to crawl, Paul D does not believe the story is true because “that ain’t her mouth,” and Stamp Paid cannot even give his own version, so he reads from the newspaper.

Rememory involves recalling and retelling past memories, and it is loaded with emotions. Sethe decides to kill her children because she hopes to save them from a fate she considers worse than death. The slave catcher came and triggered the memories from her days at Sweet Home, so she saw no alternative; rememory is loaded with emotions. When Sethe tells Paul D her version of the story, she says, “It ain’t my job to know what’s worse. It’s my job to know what is and to keep them away from what I know is terrible. I did that” (194). Basically, Sethe understood that desperate times call for desperate measures.