Rememory & the Tale of the Sixty Million and More
Rememory & the Tale of the Sixty Million and More
In Toni Morrison's Beloved, Sethe introduces her concept of rememory. According to her, rememory is the idea that people's experiences and memories are forever imprinted or imbued upon objects, places, and other tangible and intangible indicators, similar to supernatural beliefs in spirits. Sethe asserts that even though the person that underwent the experience forgot about it or died, they or those connected to them could still encounter and re-experience that past event. Using this idea of rememory, Sethe and Morrison seem to redefine our common perception of the past and history. Employing this concept, this blog post aims to interpret Morrison's use of rememory in the final chapter of Beloved.
In the last chapter of the novel, Morrison depicts Beloved's disappearance from history. She describes:
They forgot her like a bad dream. After they made up their tales, shaped and decorated them, those that saw her that day on the porch quickly and deliberately forgot her. It took longer for those who had spoken to her, lived with her, fallen in love with her, to forget, [...] in the end, they forgot her too. Remembering seemed unwise. (Morrison 323-324)
According to the quote, Sethe, Denver, and everyone in Cincinnati gradually and "deliberately" forget Beloved (323). Yet, even after forgetting, the rememory still remains: the rustle of a skirt, the knuckles brushing a cheek, or footprints down by the stream in the back of I24. Yet, even these rememories fade as new ones overshadow them, leaving just this literary rememory Beloved to recount the past of Sethe and I24. Without anyone willing to remember and speak of her traumatic story, Beloved fades from history like the stories of many others in this era of slavery. Just another traumatic story forgotten, another rememory returning to the other side (I have my own theories, but I'll leave the interpretation of this last sentence and its potential relation to Beloved's literal decomposition for the comments :D ).
Using rememory in an even broader sense at the end of Beloved, Morrison expands the concept beyond Sethe's individual experiences and connects it to the tales of the sixty million and more whom she referenced at the start of the novel. Narrating with a more universal and distant voice, Morrison first describes how everyone gradually forgot Beloved with the short explanation, "It was not a story to pass on." (Morrison 324). Yet, this phrase later evolves into a warning: the author writes, "This is not a story to pass on." (324). However, Beloved itself contradicts this statement, passing on the vivid and traumatic rememory for you to relive yourself. Through Beloved, Morrison restores a piece of history previously erased by willed forgetfulness and forced silence, resurrecting another Beloved and another traumatic event that are difficult to remember and comprehend. As Morrison writes, "This is not a [rememory] to pass on," but one to relive and endure, no matter how difficult and distressing it may be, to comprehend a mere fragment of the suffering and impact of the sixty million and more enslaved Africans
brought to America via the Atlantic Slave Trade (324).
- Max Bolton
I think you bring up a good point how this idea of memory and remembering events is very important. Throughout the story we not only see flash backs from all the characters but also the thoughts of characters when they openly admit they can forget certain things. Overall, great post!
ReplyDeleteI believe a great example of a broader influence of rememory is Sethe's mother. Through her mother's tragic stories and experiences, she sees and never un-sees the history of slavery, and therefore, her own past. Beloved is just one of many of such examples, with her not only representing the actions of a traumatized mother pushed to the brink of infanticide, but also slavery as a whole.
ReplyDeleteI can't claim to have noticed this ambiguity myself, but somewhere I picked up on the fact that there is ambiguity in the line "This is not a story to pass on": it is not to be "passed on" in the sense of TOLD and RETOLD to others, but also it is not to be "passed on" in the sense of not AVOIDED or neglected (don't "take a pass on it"). And I agree that there's some ambiguity around what it means to "not remember" Beloved: obviously Sethe and Denver and Paul will never truly FORGET about the incident in the woodshed, and certainly not the haunting afterward, the social exclusion, and all the layers of trauma. But there is this sense of working through and past a trauma, where the "rememory" no longer is able to "whip" Sethe the way it has been. Likewise, the United States might "forget" specific laws that have been rescinded, to the point where slavery and its trappings are illegal, but the traumatic impacts of this foundation to our society and economy linger. We "pass on" thinking seriously about this history and its consequences at our own peril.
ReplyDeleteI like how you connect Beloved’s fading presence to the broader erasure of traumatic histories, especially through the contradiction of "not a story to pass on." The idea of the novel itself being a rememory is compelling—forcing readers to confront what others choose to forget. Beloved’s "decomposition" and what exactly it entails is a fascinating thing to think about. Nice post!
ReplyDeleteI think it is very interesting that the novel passes on the story of Beloved for us to relive, as you note. I wonder if Denver has her own "rememories" of Beloved -- she was born right as Sethe crossed the Kentucky-Ohio border, so she certainly can't recover any buried trauma of Sweet Home or Schoolteacher -- but I am curious if the experience of Beloved at 124 would be enough for her to remember and be horrified by years later. Morrison does a great job portraying recovered trauma in the form of memories in the novel, and I think it is very meta that she uncovers the history for us to witness as well. Great post!
ReplyDeleteThis is a phenomenal reflection, Max. The idea that this isn't a "story to pass on" resonated deeply with me, as it emphasized the risk of stories being altered and fragmented through time until their truth is lost. By connecting Sethe's personal experiences to the collective trauma of the 60 million and more, Morrison preserves a piece of history, urging us to confront it without distortion.
ReplyDelete