Toni Morrison uses the term “rememory” in the novel Beloved. This is a confusing, yet provocative term that helps the narrative of the story. Any character in the novel can tell the story from the same perspective as another.

There is rememory and remembering. Remembering is when one recalls an event or series of events from a stimulus, albeit a smell, touch, image, sound, or person. Rememory, however, is more involved than remembering. On page 43 of Beloved, Denver asks if other people can see rememory and Sethe responds with a “yes” followed by describing it as a “picture [that] is still there.” Furthermore, Sethe continues on page 44, “if you go there and stand in the place where it was, it will happen again.” This description of rememory would imply that time is not linear, but instead simultaneous. History lives in the present and no one can forget the events that occurred where a rememory exists. This function of rememory helps the narrative because it allows the story to speak of past events that effect the present. Transitions from present to past are very clean and create a sense of it happening at that same point in time to the reader.

Rememory - it sounds like an awkward term, but its function is absolute. If one visits the gas chambers at concentration camps in Germany from the Holocaust, they are not just seeing big, empty rooms but instead are seeing the people standing in there. They are also seeing the chaos as the room filled with poison. Therefore, rememory to me is not just a term used in this novel but one that applies to real life. As seems the theme of our class, history does live in the present.