In the last section of Toni Morrison's novel "Beloved" (1987), a sentence is introduced, repeated ("It was not a story to pass on") and then varied ("This is not a story to pass on"). I have always read this as a parodoxical call to not retell the story that has just been told. But Anita Durkin offers three interpretations of the sentence: With the emphasis on "on" (my take), it's "not a story to repeat"; on "pass", it's "not a story to overlook"; and on "pass on", it's "not a story to die, to be forgotten." "Beloved" and the story of the enslavement of Africans, then, are untellable, unavoidable, and unforgettable.(Andrew Shields, #111words, 28 March 2026)