en, straddled the ankles of the old men who held their little hands while giving them a horsey ride. Baby Suggs laughed and skipped among them, urging more. Mothers, dead now, moved their shoulders to mouth harps. The fence they leaned on and climbed over was gone. The stump of the butternut had split like a fan. But there they were, young and happy, playing in Baby Suggs yard, not the envy that surfaced the next day. (258) It is almost as if these places exist devoid of time and space, and appear in the form of the past, serving as a permanent reminders of a time that most of these characters long to forget, not pass on. Their souls are branded with the memories of slavery, chain gangs, lynchings and beatings. The memories still exist for the characters in the book, even though the Civil War has been won and slavery abolished. Morrison moves around in the novel, allowing each character to in turn, share pieces of their rememory. This multiple narrative viewpoint enables Morrison to fully establish the past, which she has created. Each account of suffering has the haunting of 124 as its center, while the events which caused it explained in ever-widening detail, embracing the composite experience of slavery. The enormity of the experience focuses on the triple burden carried by African American women who had no control over their children or their bodies. Along with the rememories that resurface to the present, there are also mental images, or pictured thoughts that arrest the mind and torment the heart. It is futile to try and escape, or to try to beat back the past, because like the places, the images that are revived by the brain are even stronger. This is something that Sethe comes to learn in the book. She shook her head from side to side, resigned her rebellious brain. Why was there nothing it refused? No misery, no regret, no hateful picture too rotten to accept? Like a greedy child it snatched up everything. Just once, could it s...
