It was not a Story to Pass on.
Ghosts
are something we remember. They are the past; they are the ancestors.
In Beloved by Toni Morrison, an importance is placed on remembering the slaves,
the history of America that has made America today. Morrison uses the
ghosts of slavery, the ghosts of America to give us a friendly reminder that
we, as humans, have a collective consciousness: collective meaning shared
or assumed by all members of the group and consciousness meaning memory.
Since it is shared by all, it places a responsibility on the members of the
group to remember by passing the story down. Through story telling,
the past is embraced and the future is attended to. By this telling,
the group has to learn or use the past to create change. But change
is hard and change takes time. Perhaps, the melancholy tone in the poetic
passage at the end of the novel is Beloved no longer exists. Perhaps,
the group, America hasn’t come as far as it could or should.
In a sense, Sethe and Beloved are interchangeable. They both
carry the weight of the external pressure from the white, colorless society
driving the slaves to form a community. They both carry the weight
of the inner workings of the slave community. Sethe is looked down upon
by not only the school teacher, but also her own community. Since Beloved
is a living memory, Beloved is the embodiment of a collective consciousness,
a collective memory.
Beloved’s childlike aspects juxtaposed to Beloved taking on the identity
of a collective soul for a group or America ties together personal history
with society, eventhough one story can not be the only representation of what
happened during slavery. Each individual has their own story.
Since Beloved is a ghost, a living memory, she takes on the stories of all
slaves. Beloved states that she is not only separate from Sethe, but also
from other slaves from the community(Morrison210).
When the reader gets Beloved’s point of view, it is jumbled and random snid
bits. Beloved cannot and will let go of the past. She is carrying
the weight for all by saying that “All of it is now it is always no
there will never be a time when I am not crouching and watching others who
are crouching too”(Morrison 210). Also, through Beloved’s
monologue, she becomes everyone’s daughter. Beloved states, “Three times
I lost her: once with the flowers because of the noisy clouds of smoke.
Once when she went into the sea instead of smiling at me; once under the
bridge when I went in to join her and she came toward me but did not smile.
She whispered to me, chewed me, and swam away”(Morrison 214).
There is a dualism in what Morrison is doing here: history can never
be erased, for we will always remember something that involved a huge part
of our community, but it is dangerous to live in the past.
The last passage of the book deals with remembering the story of Beloved,
slaves, and alternates the forgotten identity of Sethe and Beloved.
This passage says “They forgot her like a bad dream”(Morrison 174).
The community refuses to see the desperate measures Sethe went to save her
children. Perhaps the community doesn’t want to recognize that as slaves,
as people they could be driven to do something like this. “Remembering
seemed unwise”(Morrison 274). And who wants to keep retelling this story.
The passage states, “This is not a story to pass on”(Morrison 275).
Beloved’s ghost is a reminder that we all have a collective consciousness
and that it is sad to forget.
Sethe and Denver have a conversation dealing with rememory
and collective consciousness. Sethe describes a memory as a living thing outside
of someone’s head. All can see it. All can remember. Remembering
starts with the internal part of the mind, but even if something, slavery
isn’t remembered it is still out there. Sethe gives an example of this
pertaining to Sweet Home. The memory is something everyone can see.
Sethe says, “What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside
my head. I mean, even if I don’t think, even if I die, the picture of
what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there”(Morrison 36). Denver
questions whether other people can see it. If a person remembers
then others will. Sethe defines collective memory in her answer:
“Someday you be walking down the road and you hear something or see something
going on. So clear. And you think it’s you thinking it up. A thought
picture. But no. It’s when you bump into a rememory that belongs to somebody
else”(Morrison 36).
Sethe doesn’t like retelling or rehearing the past.
It is understandable; it is sad and painful. Sethe points out that she
can’t keep retelling the past, for the future needs attention. When
Paul D is filling her in on Halle, Sethe says, “No thank you.
I don’t want to know or have to remember that. I have other things to do:
worry, for example, about tomorrow, about Denver, about Beloved, about age
and sickness not to speak of love”(Morrison 70). Sethe works hard
at keeping the past away by saying that “Nothing better than that to start
the day’s serious work of beating back the past”(Morrison 73). But,
because the past, because Beloved comes backs and literally sucks the life
out of Sethe, Morrison shows that one can not constantly beat back the past.
Juxtaposed to this idea, perhaps Morrison is saying that if African-American
people keep the mentality of being slaves, it could cause a downfall.
For example, Sethe never leaves the house to get away from Beloved.
Of course, she has great remorse and deep maternal hurt for doing what she
had to do. Maybe she couldn’t leave, but she is complacent, but what
else could she do. For example, Sethe states that “Paul D convinced
me there was a world out there and that I could live in it… this here’s all
there is and all there needs to be”(Morrison 183). But she is getting
eaten alive by this mentality (I don’t know, maybe I’m crazy) To say
the least, it is complicated.
Beloved brings the stories out of Sethe. Sethe and Baby Suggs never
spoke of the past. Sethe doesn’t like talking to Paul D about what has
happened at Sweet Home, but as she started telling the past stories to Beloved,
“she found herself wanting to, liking it”(Morrison 58). Sethe notices
Beloved’s hunger for the past, but when Sethe realizes the identity of Beloved,
she “was excited to giddiness by the things she no longer had to remember”(Morrison
183). Things start going downhill when Sethe no longer feeds Beloved
the past and she starts apologizing constantly for what she has done.
Perhaps Sethe should take Baby Suggs advice: “Think on it then lay it down-for
good”(Morrison 182).
Ultimately, as the collective consciousness, Beloved does not want
to be forgotten. As a ghost of one families history, she wants Sethe
to relive the moment choosing another path. My heart leapt when Sethe
went after Bodwin/the white man with an ice pick. (You go Sethe) Without
being submerged in the past with Beloved, Sethe would have never made the
choice to go after what had driven her to so unnaturally kill her child.
Beloved, satisfied, disappears.
