The past can be overwhelming-either you can learn to accept the events that have occurred and potentially let it strengthen you, or it will tear you to pieces if you dwell on it and lack acceptance or an awareness of how it might change you for the good. What has been done in one’s life can shape or determine what is to come in the future. Without being patient and understanding of your past, you can’t make that past a brighter future if you never learn to overcome a bad memory. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter, Henry David Thoreau’s, Walden and Toni Morrison’s, Beloved the authors dive into different aspects of the past, each character s past dynamically affects their present; the main characters in each novel struggle with the institutionalized wrongs of their societies and how to reach for a solution to these false doings. In Beloved, the “cherry oak tree†and Beloved herself, serve as a constant cue to Sethe of all her wrongdoings and the unforgettable experience she went through.
