Notes

When Denver had asked her mother what she was praying about, Sethe told her she was thinking about time, memory, and the past. In Sethe’s philosophy, “nothing ever dies.” This means that past events continue to occur, not only in one’s “rememory” but also somehow in the real world. Sethe believes it is possible to “bump into” past events and places again, and her main priority is shielding Denver from these tangible, painful collisions with the past.

. [I]f you go there—you who was never there—if you go there and stand in the place where it was, it will happen again; it will be there, waiting for you . . . [E]ven though it’s all over—over and done with—it’s going to always be there waiting for you.
This passage is from Chapter 3. In her “emerald closet,” Denver remembers what Sethe once told about the indestructible nature of the past. According to Sethe’s theory of time, past traumas continue to reenact themselves indefinitely, so it is possible to stumble into someone else’s unhappy memory. Accordingly, although Sethe describes for Denver what “was,” she turns to the future tense and tells her that the past will “always be there waiting for you.” Sethe pictures the past as a physical presence, something that is “there,” that fills a space. Beloved’s arrival confirms this notion of history’s corporeality. The force of the past is evident even in the difficulty Sethe has speaking about it. She stutters, backtracks, and repeats herself as though mere words cannot do justice to her subject matter. Even in this passage, as she warns Denver against the inescapability of the past, Sethe enacts and illustrates the very phenomenon she describes. She repeats her warning several times in a manner that demonstrates the recurrence of ideas and her inability to leave past thoughts behind. Sethe’s warnings are the main cause of Denver’s fears of leaving 124 and of the community. Only in Chapter 26 does Denver finally venture out alone. She realizes that even if she succeeds in preventing chance encounters with the past, the past may nevertheless actively begin to come after her.

Why does Morrison use terms like "rememory" and "disremember"? Why not just stick with the standards?

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Replete with physical, visual, oral, and auditory impressions, the extended metaphor of the cornfield blends two motifs — plants and female genitalia. The clinical revelation of Sethe's clitoris ("parting the hair to get to the tip, the edge of his fingernail just under, so as not to grace a single kernel") and the glans of Halle's penis ("pulling down of the tight sheath") gives way to gentle, virginal images of the "ear [yielding] up to him its shy rows, exposed at last." Morrison, entranced with the image, repeats "How loose the silk," suggesting the girlish sweetness of Sethe, whose pubic hair is still "fine and loose and free." Their union is favorable to the lovers, because its "simple joy" meets their anticipations.

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In contrast, Denver will not flee the past, because she ardently desires a history. This is evident in her obsessive need to reconstruct the events of her birth in as much detail as possible. She longs for the sense of self that history provides. Similarly, her isolation from the rest of the black community impedes the formation of her identity. A solitary child-woman, Denver takes refuge in a circle of boxwood shrubs and inhales the fragrance of cologne. Her memories return to an earlier time when she saw Sethe kneeling in prayer beside a white dress with "its sleeve around her mother's waist." Denver savors the story of her birth and Sethe's dim memories of her own mother, known only as Ma'am. Denver's thoughts blend with Sethe's voice retelling the episode in which Sethe prepared to die but was saved by Amy Denver, a threadbare white servant girl fleeing toward Boston from the cruelties of Mr. Buddy.

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