Julia Schwartz

December 14, 2003

Shackles

            Time, be it the fourth dimension or simply a figment of the human imagination, is undeniably an integral player that affects the ways by which we choose to live our lives. To some, time is a chain, locks that will never come undone, shackles that tie us to routine and stop us from going where we’d wish. To others, time is merely a qualification, nothing to be bothered by: it is only a way of keeping track.

            Time can never be considered without questioning the faculties of memory. Memory is a way through which we can travel through time, reliving the past and escaping the present. However, as in the case of characters in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, memory often allows too much escape from the present. Memories cloud the present for many characters, stopping them from living full lives in the present, substituting the shackles of time for those which they wore as slaves.

            Sethe never really allows herself to live any sort of real life aside from the twenty-eight days she had at 124 before she murdered her child. Although time heals most wounds, she has not allowed it to. She refuses to accept that things have changed, refuses to look for a better life. In doing so, she prevents her daughter, Denver , from having a life as well. Denver is ultimately a prisoner of her mother’s memory, for since she is so tied to her mother as a result of their paired seclusion, she sees no future within the “loud” walls of 124.

            Sethe sees no future, either. Until Paul D arrives at the two-story home, both Sethe and Denver live life as a chore, with Sethe trudging to and from work each day, garnering supplies to survive. She holds no passion for her job, no passion for her life. She doesn’t even hold any visible passion for her daughter: although Denver and Sethe clearly have an intimate relationship, there is no joy within it until Beloved and Paul D arrive, when they experience family life at the carnival, or the bonds of love and caring when they skate upon the frozen pond.

            Sethe and Denver live as Baby Suggs did when she gave up on life, simply cowering in her little bed all day, waiting for death to overtake her. Baby Suggs had believed in the future, and cherished her memories of the past – Halle, her precious son – and she actively tried to make a better future for herself, her family and her community, as shown through her open acceptance of Sethe and her children, as well as various other passersby of 124 and the attendants at her famed sermon in the Clearing, earning her the modifier “holy.” 

Because Baby Suggs was able to accept the closing of the past, she was able to let herself live fully in the present; she allowed herself to dream of a better future in which the present would be better than any of her past. Yet Sethe will not let go of her past; she will not accept that it is a chapter of her life that is closed, and there is no turning back the page of time. She revels in memory, sharing what Denver wants with her, letting the rest consume her. She practically has no sensation of the present, with every action in the present being taken over by flashbacks to the past – when Mr. Bodwin comes for Denver , Sethe is so illogical and myopic that the thought doesn’t even occur to her that there could indeed be another white man on a horse with a hat. No, this white man coming down the road is Schoolteacher, out to recapture her or her child, out to recapture her life for his own. If she hadn’t been stopped, she surely would have met her demise with the murder of Mr. Bodwin by way of the ice pick.

Denver seems to have no perception of time, but it isn’t in the positive way, that would allow her to live solely for the moment, being perhaps too hedonistic, but still at least a character of some sort. Instead, Denver ignores the past, only asking her mother for stories that were explicitly about her, such as the Amy Denver birthing story. She does not think of the future in her small life within 124, only daring to consider another life, with friends, education, and the progression of time when she is taken once again under the wing of Miss Bodwin.

 This past that Sethe gives Denver is not even a real past. As is common, her memories that she imparts to Denver as truth are really only her interpretations of events – just as there is “my story, his story, and the truth,” so too is there Sethe’s story, Amy’s story, and the truth. Denver only hears Sethe’s story of the birth, which is completely biased, not only smoothed over by Sethe’s memory, but compounded by the fact that Sethe was half out of her mind during that time because she was pregnant and ill. Her perceptions during her interactions with Amy were surely far from coherent or accurate, yet they are given to Denver as truth.

Just as Sethe distorts the few memories she does share, so too does she ignore many of them. She is clearly tormented by her rape – the “milking” by the Schoolteacher’s nephews, and still haunted by the ghost of her hanging mother whom she never knew. Yet she does not share these stories with anyone until Paul D, and then it is only the story of Halle . Sethe believes that if she can suppress those memories, they will disappear, be erased, even though that is an impossibility.

The introduction of Paul D into the lives of Sethe and Denver is striking, for it not only causes them to break out of the rut they have entered – their humdrum, tedious, boring, cyclical life – it also forces Sethe to confront the past. Paul D is the only one who shared her past with her, the only one still alive who knew Halle , Sixo, the other Pauls, life at Sweet Home. When he reminisces, she is forced to recall her own memories and experiences, and forced to confront them. She cannot go on, once Paul D arrives, without going back. Yet Paul D refuses to allow her to stay in the past, as she would have wished. He forces her to look to the future, daring to speculate on a family – Sethe, Denver , and Paul D; later, the three of them and maybe even a baby.

Beloved also forces Sethe to confront the past which she has so ignored. Because Beloved eventually “proves” herself the embodiment of the murdered “crawling already” two-year-old, Sethe is compelled to promote the actuality of all the practiced apologies; the time for their speaking becomes the present. Beloved is representative of the past, on many levels: if she is indeed the spirit of the dead daughter, she is the worst of slavery; the destruction it wreaks. Yet either way, she holds the inhabitants of 124 hostage, turning them into her slaves.

Denver comes to Beloved’s service largely of her own accord, driven by a desperation to have some companion, any companion. She takes pity on her and aspires to be her mother, her caretaker. Beloved forces Paul D into undesired action by forcing him to sleep with her against his will, moving him around the house until he eventually ends outside, and ultimately causing the rift that separates him and Sethe. Finally, Beloved takes the most advantage of Sethe, turning her into a slave of the worst kind – Beloved forces Sethe into the Alfred, Georgia sort of slavery, not even the more tamed Sweet Home brand. She takes all of Sethe’s food from her until Sethe is near starvation. She forces her to do her bidding, and most of all, she refuses to accept Sethe’s apology.

With the entrance of Beloved, the inhabitants, long-term and recent, of 124 are forced to come to terms with their pasts. Denver ultimately becomes so much the victim of Beloved’s cruel form of slavery that she is forced to release herself from her own past bonds, entering the town and seeking help from Miss Bodwin, which will eventually lead her to Oberlin College. Sethe is forced to find closure for her frenzy eighteen years earlier, the last time that hummingbirds drove into her head and she panicked completely.

Yet perhaps the most drastic change of all occurs in Paul D. Although Paul D encourages Sethe to let go of her own past, to speak of it and come to terms with it – to accept it and then move on – he is ironically unable to do any of that himself. Instead, he locks all of his tormented memories away in his “tobacco tin,” a rusty substitution for a heart or soul. The contents of his tin, never shared with anyone, begin to come out when he comes to 124, because like Sethe, he finally meets up with someone who shared his past, and can reflect upon it. Yet it the hinges of the tobacco tin only truly break during his first encounter with Beloved: “when he reached the inside part he was saying, ‘Red heart. Red heart,’ over and over again” (117).

Paul D’s encounter with Beloved reminds him of other times when he was unable to have control over his own actions, when he was forced to do the bidding of other people. Yet more than that, it makes him realize that he does not want to have meaningless “encounters” with other women anymore; what he really wants it to settle down with Sethe in 124, baby or not. He has found a sliver of a life that he can live, a sliver that will pan out into a tomorrow, and a tomorrow.

Finding that tomorrow is all that the inhabitants of 124 – Sethe, Denver , and Paul D – need to find a whole. When they are forced to reconcile with their various perceptions of the past with the arrivals of Paul D and Beloved, they each suffer greatly, but all ultimately emerge from the ensuing conflict a victor. Each now has a life to turn to, a future that once never existed. For each, days are now limited by time, instead of prolonged by it. They no longer have to go about their lives meaninglessly, waiting for death. Instead, they have a reason to live, a reason to look forward. The bonds of slavery have finally been broken.