American Literature

The Beloved by Toni Morison is a detailed account of events that embody thoughts and memories of the past days. It holistically serves as a meditation on the lasting effects of slavery as personified by the Beloved and the resulting mother-daughter bond. In addition, the novel  invests greatly in the heterosexual relationship of a couple in the historical shape and meaning. It extensively mirrors the notion of memory and consciousness as underscored by Patricia Hampl and Marcel Proust in Memory and Imagination as well as Remembering of Things Past respectively. Wrought succinctly in flashbacks, Toni Morrison captures his concerns modeled on memories as she allows the readers to travel with her in the paths that brought together the creation of the literary piece the Beloved. Arguably, memory in the Beloved seizes a center stage as Toni Morrison takes a direct path to bring to the reader the little known past of the characters, to purposefully depict the present and the future. Drawing from Patricia Hampls Memory and Imagination and Marcel Prousts Remembering of Things Past, this paper seeks to discuss aspects of memory in the Toni Morisons novel the beloved.

Memories are representations of imagined or actual experiences that took place in the past. Psychologists have maintained that in most cases, memories are retrieved on a selective basis depending on the encounter being remembered and the cues involved. With regard to this, memories serve as frameworks upon which meaning in the life of people as well as those around them is created. In Beloved, memory comes out clearly as both incapacitating and treacherous sense of the human consciousness. For example, Sethe endures a host of oppression in the self imposed valleys of memory. This becomes evident in how she is insatiably obsessed with her past experiences which she remembers every now and then. In addition, Sethe is forced not only to explore but also give account of the overpowering sense of desire, craving and longing for something that is beyond her beloved, her daughter and herself (Morrison, 67-75). Although Beloved comes out as an ideal and physical manifestation of these memories, what is enshrined in her will, her memories are indeed tied the emotions, thoughts and experiences of Sethe.

The struggle of Sethe is a more representation of memories which definitely is depicted as a personal process towards self negation. In light of this, the identity of Sethe, following her past experiences and what she can remember, is complicated, elaborate and almost consumed by her memory. According to Hampl (208), memory is the struggle of a human being against their self power and relative to Sethes insatiable efforts to forget, it is plausible to argue that memory is the struggle against forgetting.  Hampl (208-209) further puts that the personalized efforts to remember our past accounts is evidenced as a means of exchange where people renew their ancient concerns and personalize them. This follows the asserted aspect of a process such that we effort to access the stores of our private images an association to basically associate ourselves with the past.  Essentially, in the novel Beloved, Toni Morrison implicitly suggests that the crisis of Sethe is by no means unique and thus memory is self destructive struggle power.

In respect to Proust (190), memory connects both our involuntary and voluntary selves which further represent the power and ability of memory to help individuals reach beyond time and possibly find the important reality of affairs. In this premise, the reality of affairs has an arguable perception that yields happiness to both life and art as in the case of Toni Morisons Beloved. To succinctly survive in the world, it is imperative that one must depend on the integration as well as acceptance of the past as well as the present irrespective of the bitterness of the past. This becomes the basis on which Toni Morrison constructs events that are analogous to   pattern onto which the human mind functions. The activity of memory enables Sethe to restructure her past realities because the radiance that she brings to every episode through these theatrical recurring images, postulates the understanding of herself. Memory in this novel helps the reader to concisely follow Sethe on her journey that moves from her being a woman who just identifies herself as a mother to a level where she identifies herself as a human being (Morrison, 81-89). Accordingly, Toni Morrison suggests that memory is a powerful language that helps to recognize the present state of affairs and connect it to the past something that Proust echoes vividly. As such, the joy certitude that returns in the life of Sethe originates from this connection of memory.

The importance of the past in Beloved clearly constructs the concept of memory. For instance, the importance and most captivating theme in this novel reside in the question of the past being inevitable to ones subconscious mind. The past is something that is hard to forget and regardless of how horrific it may be, it is indisputable that it can not be changed. As Proust argues, the conscious resolution is undertaken by the distinctiveness of every event through memory (Proust, 196). Significantly, what is chosen to be done by the memory of the past definitely shapes the future. Construed as history, the theme of memory and the past in Beloved is reinforced by the fact that the novel is historical in itself. Morison uses characters and the language that embody the historical event which must be remembered. For instance, Beloved is overcome by the memory of the past at the time she spots Mr. Bodwin whom she believes to be the Whiteman who is coming fro her. Seeing Sethe runs fro him, she believes that the past is appearing into her present and thus she runs away in escape (Morrison, 848-56).

The relationship between the Beloved by Toni Morrison, Prousts Remembering Things Past and Hampls Memory and Imagination, has a powerful insight into happens in the inner mind and there is a concise element of consciousness. Proust and Hampl help us to see The Beloved in the eyes of modern art. Morrison suggests that the past is horrible due to questions of slavery and the recovery of memories and she further claims that the past is possible of destroying an individual. However, our ability to move on in life and develop into normal beings depends on the healthy relationship which we have with our past (Hampl, 209). Psychotherapists, according to Hampl, hold that mental health relies heavily on memory and the ability not only to retrieve past images and events but also organizing them. It is evident that we carry wounds from our pasts but our strength lies in the ability to tell stories and also listen to what our stories tell us (Hampl, 209). In addition, the benefits of memory is the personal confirmation of the self and if such is represented in art as in the case of Beloved by Morrison, it facilitates the second living which serves as both the historical and spiritual appraisal of ourselves because, life is a journey as enshrined in our most ancient metaphor (Hampl, 211).

To recap, the Beloved puts in a nutshell irreconcilable models of memory. For instance, the memory by Sethe demonstrates how history is conveyed in dynamics of the nature of life that ranges from coming together, to instituting a relationship. Morrison has dwelt on memory to address history through Sethe which represents the possibility of human consciousness. The reader is able to see the Beloved as a literary piece that reaches into various accounts of the history of the American society. As it assumes that slavery in America ended in 1863, it 3equally haunts the reader to frown at the past. Morrison uses the Beloved to picture the recovery of human dignity in the history of America and at the same time challenges the faith of the American society in resolving the historical trauma.