For me, the most intriguing element of Toni Morrison's Beloved is the way the author deals with time in her novel. Beloved is neither written in medias res nor strictly from the beginning of Beloved and Sethe's stories to the end. Rather, the novel spans Sethe's life, traveling forwards and backwards through time with ease. This smooth blending of past and present is enhanced by both Sethe's storytelling, especially when Beloved comes into 124, and by Sethe and Paul D reminiscing about their lives at Sweet Home.
After telling Denver the story about Amy and Sethe's journey while pregnant, Sethe talks about "rememory". She says that things which are in her "rememory" cannot be destroyed. As an example, she says that "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" (43). In this way, people, places, and things that have been lost are still accessible; they transcend time, existing in the "rememor[ies]" of individuals and as ghosts in the world. Despite this sensitivity to the permanence and existence of memories in life, however, Sethe still tries to avoid thinking about certain parts of her past. Instead, she lets faces and times slip away from her and cannot see that Beloved, the girl who comes to stay in her home, is more than just a girl.
Sethe begins to reconcile herself with her past and future on two occasions - first, when she, Paul D, and Denver are going to and returning from the carnival, and second, when she tells beloved about crystal earrings. While walking to the carnival, Sethe observes that "the shadows that shot out of their feet to the left held hands", and, "on the way home, though leading them now, the shadows of three people still held hands" (57, 59). In these two scenes, Sethe sees a transition from her past to her future, from following (to the left) to leading, in Paul D and Denver. Here, she does not run from her past, she leads it forwards. Instead of the future "being a matter of keeping the past at bay", it is something she walks willingly towards, holding the hands of her friend (lover?) and daughter (51). Later, while answering Beloved's question about her earrings, Sethe again begins to see that her past need not only cause her pain. She is shocked to find herself "wanting to [talk], liking it" when Beloved asks (69).