Theme Of Rememory In Toni Morrison's Beloved

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Toni Morrison’s celebrated novel, Beloved, certainly address an array of subjects and themes throughout its moving and complex contents. For instance, matters dealing with the intricacies and difficulties surrounding love, motherhood, gender, masculinity, femininity, race, slavery, survival, sexuality, violence, and more pervade its pages. However, the subject of memory, or rememory rather, is particularly interesting and profound—through its psychological messages and reflective implications concerning the consequences of African American suffering. Throughout Beloved, the theme of "re-memory" arises, particularly through the experiences (both past and present) of Sethe, in order to point out the way in which the legacy of slavery is recollected. Sethe’s battle with forgetting the …show more content…

Again and again, Sethe’s character seeks to bury her memories of enslavement, loss and anguish. However, no matter how hard she tries, they resurface. Just as those past events are inescapable pieces of her that cannot be extinguished or erased, so too is the collective memory that records the unfortunate existence and despicable actualities of American captivity. As a result, Toni Morrison’s creative conception of the process of rememory, not only articulates the severe psychological effects of trauma and suffering, but also a profound hope to heal the aftermaths of slavery, establish a communal consciousness, and challenge the official historical narratives in order to revitalize black identity.
The Value of Memory: Creating a Historical Memorial
Essentially, memories are compositions of fiction, crafted from selected representations of experiences, both authentic and invented. Even further, they serve to provide a sort of framework for creating meaning, value and purpose in one’s life. However, in Beloved, memory is represented as a dangerous and debilitating facility of the sensitive and penetrable human consciousness. The main

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