rent time-lines, and leaves in its wake an open scar still bleeding from the past. All these images of the past that find a life in the present erase the boundary between time, and leave in its place a life of eternal regression. Many of the characters are aware of this and refer often to the idea of timelessness. After Sethe realizes that Beloved is her deceased daughter, she rushes back from work, longing to return home. Sethe becomes trapped in the past she had first denied. She forgets herself and wallows in her past pain. Once again with Beloved, Sethe puts the girls interest ahead of her own. Morrison shows the complexities of Sethes character, which is a woman who chooses to love her children but not herself. Structurally, Morrison mirrors this idea of timelessness in her writing. Throughout Beloveds entire monologue there are no periods, and no endings- only spaces. The same idea prevails with time. There are no beginnings and no ends, just a long expanse of chaos. One of the ways Morrison depicts this sense of chaos is by switching and intermingling tenses throughout the book. The scene in which Paul D tries to tell Sethe about what Beloved is doing to him, but instead asks her to have another child, is taking place in their present, yet it is written in the past tense: He waited for her. (126) Yet, later in the novel, when Paul D is remembering the past and the days before they all planned their escape from Sweet Home, Morrison switches her tense to the present: Paul A goes back to moving timber after dinner. They are to meet at quarters after supper (224). Morrison includes the voices and perspectives of the deceased, including that of Baby Suggs. All of these tense changes show how the characters in the novel perceive time, or no time (191). Their pasts are being relived in their present, and the present time immediately flows into the past. Time is not depicted in a linear progression. Instead, time is presented as an inter...
