Beloved and the Past

Faulkner’s Sound and the Fury details the lives of the Compson brothers whose lives become miserable as they are unable to move onto the past. Beloved by Toni Morrison takes it one step further and discusses ex-slaves attempting to recover from this traumatic past in different ways. However, simply than just ignoring their past, Beloved argues that to overcome a traumautic past we must confront the past and move towards the future. The past helps to construct our identity as seen by Denver’s obsession with the past. Denver frequently urges Sethe to tell her about her birth; When telling Beloved the story of her birth and how she was named, Denver thinks “This was the part of the story she loved. She was coming to it now, and she loved because it was all about herself” (Morrison 91). Denver is cut off from the community and thus telling the story gives her a real sense of herself that the haunted house of 124 cannot give her. All that she has is the history of her birth and how she was given her name which is quite literally her identity. Since this is only identity she has, she finds any past that is not connected with hers offensive. “They were a twosome, saying “Your daddy” and “Sweet Home” in a way that made it clear both belong to them and not to her. That her own father’s absence was not hers. Once the absence had belonged to Grandma Baby – a son, deeply mourned because that he was the one who had brought her ouf of there. Then it was her mother’s absent husband. Now it was this hazelnut’s stranger’s absent friend. Only those who knew him (“knew him well”) could claim his absence for themselves. Just as only those who lived in Sweet Home could remember it, whisper it and glanced sideways at one another while they did. Again she wished for the baby ghost.” (Morrison 15) Much of Denver’s past is unknown to her and it upsets her that all these people have possession over an element of her past that should belong to her and is an integral part