Novel Summary - Beloved

.
             In Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved, Beloved is the past that becomes the present, where the characters are reliving their past, which helps them to talk about it and reveal the parts that they have hidden for years. Even though, Sethe and Paul D are no longer slaves and they cannot have a free life, the memory of slavery does not allow them to move on. They keep their experiences to themselves and try to deal with them alone. However, after Beloved comes to 124, Sethe and Paul D start to have argues and during one of them Sethe gets to know what happened with her husband Halle. When Paul D explains why Halle does not joins Sethe in the escape, "she put her hand on his knee and rubbed Saying more might push them both to a place they couldn't get back from" (Morrison 72). They are both scared that if they keep on sharing the stories, the fear that existed during the time of slavery will haunt them and they will not be able to get away from it. Yet, by placing the hand on Paul D's knee symbolizes that it is okay for him to talk about that; the past is the past and it cannot come back. As Lynda Koolish states, "For healing to take place, dissociation must give way to the full reclaiming of that wounded self, the reintegration of the denied self as a part of the core of one's being" (173). If a person wants to feel relief and not to worry their head with a past, they need to talk about it first. This is the first technique that Beloved uses to change the characters in the story, which is by conflict. However, the process with coping with the past is often difficult, but it is not necessarily same for all.
             Since Beloved makes it difficult for Paul D to talk about his past out loud, on the other hand she makes Sethe feel comfortable to be able to open up herself. Beloved does not use the same strategies to help the characters to speak out loud about the memories that hurt them.