The Past In Toni Morrison's Beloved

This quote from Paul D is his fear of their past throwing him and Sethe back to a place they won’t get out from. Paul D’s coping method of avoiding the pain of his past is to lock his memories and feelings in the ‘tobacco tin’. This is one of the major character points of Paul D, as he grows to open himself up at the end of the novel. It’s meaningful because it’s easy to shut people out than to let them in; but eventually people have to open themselves up, no matter how scary it seems.
Here, Sethe warns her daughter about the force of the past and how past traumas can come back and manifest themselves in the future. These warnings are what held Denver back from ever leaving 124 until the end of the book, when she realizes that even if she prevents encounters with the past, the past can still come after her. This is meaningful because it shows that although the past can be scary, you still have to face the past to move …show more content…
It shows that Sethe still believes it was necessary for her to kill her and when Beloved came back, Sethe assumes that Beloved would understand everything and she didn’t have to worry about explaining it to her. It’s significant because it shows how love can blind someone into believing the wrong things and although people try to justify their actions, sometimes it’s still wrong.
Each of the three parts of this book begins with these three statements. The ghost that haunts 124 is always with them until it disappears when it’s exorcised. The haunting spirit, who took the physical form of Beloved, served as a constant reminder to Sethe what she’d done to her baby daughter and was a physical embodiment of the past that would haunt Sethe until she moved on. It’s significant because it shows that the past can haunt people in different forms whether it be mentally or physically and the only way to solve it is to move