Book Report on "Beloved and the Handmaid's Tale, Memory"

Book Report 5 pages (1471 words) Sources: 4 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Beloved and the Handmaid's Tale, memory is crucial for identity construction. Remembering the past provides the means to create social, political, and psychological empowerment. Remembering the past implies the ability to resist a reprise of trauma. Both Sethe and Offred are besieged by painful memories that construct their worldview and their personal identity. Moreover, memory serves as a means to use the past as a lesson rather than succumb to its power as a shackle. In its literary use, memory is "especially important to anyone who cares about change, for forgetting dooms us to repetition…all narrative is concerned with change," (Greene 291). Whether as warning or lamentation, memory-based narratives like The Handmaid's Tale and Beloved enable self-renewal.

In Beloved, a ghost symbolizes the persistence of the past and its variable influence on the present. For example, Sethe fears the ghost on a visceral level. The ghost represents a breach of reality and the laws of physics but more importantly, the ghost represents dead memories returned to haunt Sethe. Whereas Denver does not see the ghost in the same light, Sethe knows that the specter reminds her that the past can never be forgotten. Thus, the same memory can affect different people in different ways. The way Morison structures her novel is critical to understanding the sway the past has over individuals. Flashbacks and non-linear time show that memories are as integral to the present reality construction as current events are.

Margaret Atwood also uses memories as a structural element in The Handmaid's Tale. Offred frequently refers to the past before her captivity on Gilead. The memories of her past are what gives Offred hope for the future. The past reveals not only what should not occur again such as trauma, but also what can be. The pleasant moments contained in the past can be recreated.

In both Beloved and The Handmaid's Tale, memory is a bridge between past, present, and future. As Greene puts it, "Memory is our means of connecting past and present, and constructing a self and versions of experience we can live with," (293). Painful memories and trauma are buried in the past, but recollections resurface continually. Those recollections are integral to the identity construction of the protagonists. In Beloved, slavery provides the atmosphere of social, economic, and political oppression that frames memories of the past. The present psychological and social identities depend directly on how slavery was perceived, its harsh sting internalized by people like Sethe. In The Handmaid's Tale, memories of a saner past filter in through the insanity of the present in Gilead. As King points out in Memory, Narrative, Identity, the ability to structure and make sense of the past can assuage the ill-effects of trauma. Holocaust victims, victims of slavery, and victims of patriarchy all share in common the need to string together memories as beads on a necklace.

When the word remembering is deconstructed, it assumes a whole new meaning as re-membering. To be a member of something is to be an integral part of it, the way an organ is a member of a body or an employee a member of an organization. Thus, to member something would be to make something fit or belong in a given social structure or institution. It follows that re-membering means to regain entry into a lost social or political organization. Re-membering might also mean rejoining membership or at least redefining one's relationship with others in a specific social milieu. According to Greene, feminism is itself a "re-membering, a re-assembling of our lost past and lost parts of ourselves," (300).

Memory is the building block of narrative, as narratives are comprised of re-construed memories. Narrative is a vehicle for healing in both The Handmaid's Tale and Beloved. Both books use narrative as a means to navigate through a painful past and a minefield of memories. Just as holocaust and other trauma survivors can use memoirs to create healing narratives that make sense of the human condition, so too do the protagonists of Atwood's and Morrison's novels. Narrative provides existential meaning to events that could easily lead to self-denial, abnegation, nihilism, and even self-obliteration. The characters in Beloved and The Handmaid's Tale are besieged by painful pasts, but they forge onwards in spite of their post-traumatic stress. Narrative is their way of coping on a personal level, but Sethe and Offred also use narrative as a way to… READ MORE

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