The novel is, moreover, an attempt to understand the forces, historical and personal, that would cause Sethe to murder her daughter rather than allow her to experience the horrors of slavery. The horror of the slave past is shown as a haunting, evidenced by the appearance of the baby ghost and the manifestation of the fully grown Beloved. From the opening of the novel, the means of bringing the past into the lives of Sethe, Denver, Baby Suggs, Paul D, and the community is the use of the supernatural. Beloved represents the troubled past that haunts the lives of all African Americans. This troubling past is represented by the word “rememory,” which is used throughout the novel. The characters are constantly in a struggle to “beat back the past,” which intrudes into their lives and causes a haunting pain that is physically represented by the appearance of Beloved.