The Power of Words

Beloved’s supernatural effect on the inhabitants of 124 is most profoundly felt in her ability to heal them through their own stories. Initially, Sethe detests and fears relating the horrors of her own life, of her past, to others; but when Beloved shows up and savors every detail about Sethe, she “found herself wanting to [tell stories], liking it. Perhaps it was Beloved’s distance from the events itself, or her thirst for hearing it – in any case it was an unexpected pleasure” (69). While she had previously attempted to shun all memories from her past because “every mention of her past life hurt,” Sethe begins to realize that this hurt can eventually lead to emotional healing (69). Instead of storing up all of her memories of slavery, she can release them and begin to release some of the pain that they carry. She even lets herself laugh briefly at one of her most painful memories (of her mother showing her where she had been branded), before that memory escapes her careful control over it and reminds her “something she had forgotten she knew” (73) – something she was thus unprepared to deal with emotionally at that time. This newly-remembered vision of Nan telling her about her conception (and its emotional significance for her mother) causes a surge of anger, followed by a longing for Baby Suggs, to overcome her momentarily – which then dissipates into a “quiet following the splash” (74), implying that this release of her emotions has created an inner peace for Sethe. However, some stories, like Paul D’s memory of the bit, are still too painful to be told as they might “push [Paul D and Sethe] back to a place they couldn’t get back from” – a place where they would forever remain emotionally shackled by their painful memories of slave life (86). Denver, though, discovers and manipulates story-telling to her advantage as much as she can. She throws all of her effort into “construct[ing] out of the strings she had heard all her life a net to hold Beloved”: Beloved, the provider of “a racing heart, dreaminess, society, danger, beauty” – everything that Denver longs for (90). So strong is Denver’s exertion in her description of her own birth that she “was seeing it now and feeling it – through Beloved. Feeling how it must have felt to her mother” (89). By trying so hard to keep Beloved through her words, Denver unknowingly creates a “rememory” for herself of her mother’s experience – a tangible, emotional vision of events that occurred before (and even while) she was born that Sethe wanted to shield her from, but couldn’t; because the power of words in the telling was strong enough to overcome Sethe’s need to prevent her daughter from “[going] there,” to the palpable slavery of her own past (44).