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Explanation and Analysis—Rememory:
The novel uses a non-linear narrative structure to explore how the past impacts the present. Beloved is centered around numerous flashbacks that provide context for the way characters act in the present day. The concept of "rememory" in Chapter 3 illuminates the way the novel uses flashbacks:
Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it’s not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it’s gone, but the place—the picture of it—stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don’t think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened.
The novel puts the past and present in dialogue through flashbacks, or "rememories." The prevalence of flashbacks in the narrative exemplifies the sticking power of the past by embedding the past in discussions of the present. The prefix "re" in "rememory" emphasizes the cyclical nature of memory as always happening, which the novel communicates through tense. Outside of dialogue or a character's thoughts, Beloved is in a perpetual past tense that further blurs the boundary between memory and the present. The novel only breaks this with the disappearance of Beloved. After this shift, the line between the past and the present is stark, such as the change from present to past tense at the start of Paul D's flashback in Chapter 27:
As a matter of fact, Paul D doesn’t care how It went or even why. He cares about how he left and why. When he looks at himself through Garner’s eyes, he sees one thing. Through Sixo’s, another. One makes him feel righteous. One makes him feel ashamed. Like the time he worked both sides of the War. Running away from the Northpoint Bank and Railway to join the 44th Colored Regiment in Tennessee, he thought he had made it, only to discover he had arrived at another colored regiment forming under a commander in New Jersey.
Before Beloved's banishment, flashbacks dominated the narrative and blended with the present due to the lack of tense change. By relegating the past tense to flashbacks, Paul D (and everyone else) can finally live in the present instead of reliving the past.
The novel also uses flashbacks to capture events from multiple perspectives. For example, Beloved's murder is told from three perspectives to different effects. Stamp Paid’s perspective communicates the community's frightened perception of Sethe and anger at her prideful disconnect from the community. In contrast, Sethe’s perspective reveals her love and fear for her children and her resulting loneliness when the community abandons her. Finally, Schoolteacher’s perspective depicts his dehumanization of Sethe and his callous disappointment that his nephew’s “mishandling” resulted in such a loss of profit.
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