In Beloved , Toni Morrison explores the haunting past of slavery through Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman attempting to rebuild her life while constantly hindered by her past. Toni Morrison uses the idea of “rememory” in her novel to quite literally bring Sethe’s struggle to move forward to live. Morrison iconically describes rememory as “Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it’s not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it’s gone, but the place—the picture of it—stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world” (Morrison 36). In this quote, Sethe uses the term “rememory” to describe how the past is not just something that happened and is gone but instead something that can recur and come back. This idea demonstrates how trauma like Sethe’s can remain in a person’s life and hold them back. In Sethe’s case, Beloved is the literal embodimen...
In The Stranger , the readers become familiar with the main character, Meursault, whose indifference and detachment stand out to the reader and can be seen in his interactions with the world around him. At the beginning of the novel, he receives news of his mother’s death but exhibits a lack of emotion that seems callous. Instead of grieving over his loss, he seems almost entirely absorbed by his sensory experiences: the heat of the day, the bright sunlight, and the feeling of fatigue. Camus shows Meursault's indifference in the first sentence: "Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure" (Camus 1). This blunt acknowledgment of her death, devoid of sentiment or reflection, is Meursault’s first signal to the reader that he doesn’t relate to events in the way society expects. Furthermore, Meursault goes on to elaborate on when the death occurred rather than the fact that his own mother died. Throughout the book, Camus creates Meursault’s world using a sensor...