Suddenly, there was Sweet Home rolling, rolling, rolling out before  her eyes, and although there was not a leaf on that farm that did not make her want to scream, it rolled  itself out before her in shameless beauty. It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too. Fire and brimstone all right, but hidden in lacy groves. Boys hanging from the most beautiful sycamores in the world. It shamed her—remembering the wonderful soughing trees rather than the boys. Try as she might to make it otherwise, the sycamore beat out the children every time and she could not forgive her memory for that.     From “Beloved,” by Toni Morrison     In this brilliant paragraph, Toni Morison expresses the pain and anguish black slaves felt amidst the beauty of the land that imprisoned and subjugated them. And  the attraction that these fields exerted upon them even though their lush foliage beneath warm blue skies was much like bitter wine, which after soothing us with the restful dullness of tipsiness, ravages our body with terrible sickness. Toni Morrison wonders why the human brain has been wired to remember good events in our life and forget those that evoke so much pain on us: “She could not forgive her memory for that.” Mankind has learned this defense mechanism over thousands of years. Otherwise the human being would have always been haunted by bad memories.