Beloved

"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd"
 -Alexander Pope

"This was not a story to pass on"
-Toni Morrison
What is Freedom?

I sure this question has run through the minds of Sethe and Paul D because they were slaves not even considered human. If their previous servitude was erased from their memory would they know and understand freedom?

In the 2004 movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Kate Winslet and Jim Carey play a couple who erase each other from their memories following a very messy and painful relationship. However they meet again and are drawn together even though they're erased from each other's memories. At the end of Beloved, Toni Morrison writes that this was not a story to pass on, the awful memories of slvery and its terrible implications as in this story should not have been passed on but also not a stroy to die. If what happened to the two lovers in the movie happened to Sethe and Paul D they still might be drawn to the memories of slavery still attaining no freedom. They walk the line of remembering and not remembering if they want to achieve personal freedom. As Paul D tells Sethe at the end of the book, "you your own self."