In reading a number of responses to Toni Morrison's Beloved in Beloved: A Casebook, one is offered the chance at seeing the book, once again after the initial reading, broken down further by the minds of others. Through various authors, we are brought to a heightened understanding of the book. Also, by understanding what others have interpreted from the story, we gain other perspectives, as well.
             In a reading by Ashraf H. A. Rushdy entitled Daughters of Signifyin(g) History: The Example of Toni Morrison's Beloved, the author describes what remembering does to Sethe. "Memory (the deliberate act of remembering) is a form of willed creation. It is not an effort to find out the way it really way-that is research. The point is not to dwell on the way it appeared and why it appeared in that particular way" (37). When taking this into context, one may ask about the way Sethe and Paul D. remember the past, the way they bring up Sweet Home, and even the way the story is told. If one is not to dwell on the way it was, the things that happened in the past, then it is very ironic that the story unfolds in exerpts of memories. I believe what Sethe and Paul D. are trying to do is to recreate their past at Sweet Home, if only to be able to let go. Sethe is tormented daily, it seems, because of how the schoolteacher and nephews treated her; they stole her milk. Not only does Sethe have a lot of past to live through in slavery, she also has to live with the fact that she killed her barely crawling daughter, and tried to murder both of her sons, as well. I suppose it can almost be justified if one considers the threats of the slave catchers coming after Sethe and her children, but the truth stands strong; Sethe killed one of her own flesh and blood. As an abandoned stranger named Beloved comes finds them at 124, we see Sethe break down her guard, as she has once already with Paul D., to accept this child into her home...