After you complete your reading for today, we'd like you write your journal entry for chapter 9 as a blog post. The focus of it revolves about the issue of Memory, Rememory, and the Power of the Past - what is the novel saying about these topics at this point? What are the challenges and issues that arise when the past is either raised or specifically avoided? When is it embraced - when is it hidden - why?
At this point in Beloved, many memories are brought up from different points in the past. Sethe decides to go to the clearing where Baby Suggs held her services in order to honor Halle. As she sits there she remembers when she first arrive at 124 Bluestone at the home of her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs. This memory brings up a different Baby Suggs than we have seen before in the story. This woman is very determined, happy, and excited for her grandchildren and daughter-in-law to be living with her. Not only is Baby Suggs welcoming, but she is also realistic, "Convinced her son was dead, she handed the stone to Sethe." She understood that although she wants her son to be alive and to arrive at her house, she know that this will probably not happen. She is realistic with her expectations, so that she does not get her hopes up for something that might never happen. As Sethe thinks about Baby Suggs in this light, she is nostalgic for her to be there at that moment helping her through the tough information that Paul D just shared with her. The challenge of thinking of a happier time is that it makes her feel very broken and upset about her life now. This memory was mixed with the memory of trying to learn how to be in control of herself, "Bit by bit, at 124 and in the clearing along with the others, she had claimed herself. Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another" (112). Here she remembers her past feelings and ideas of claiming ownership of herself which gives her the strength to continue to remember other things. This is because she remembers how she has grown between leaving Sweet Home and now, helping her to use the strength she has acquired and worked at getting and using it to help her with the memories she now has to handle.
