Memory
Memory
Memory is one of God’s greatest gifts. The ability to recall a warm summers day or to think back to your first time seeing the ocean is an ability we take for granite. For some, being able to recall childhood events is simple and pleasurable, but for others it can be painful and cloudy. Memory can alter who you are as a person, and cause you to do things you normally wouldn’t do. The altercation of memory, trying to forget, or losing your memory can lead to your destruction. However, with a sound mind, recalling your past, and embracing your memories can lead to your deliverance.
“In the Lake of the Woods”, is a story of a wife and husband whose pasts ruin their future. It is an illustration of how memories cannot be forgotten. John Wade is an ambitious politician with a life that looks good on the outside, but is crumbling from within. Throughout his life he experienced traumatic events that contorted him into a different person. John is 15, when his alcoholic father dies. He enlists in the army and serves in the Vietnam War. He marries and forces his wife to abort his child when it interferes with his political career. These events would help to create and cause John to “lose himself behind the mirrors.” He would unsuccessfully try to block out these troubling events. He thought of himself as a “sorcerer.” “ He’d picture his father stumbling down a dark alley, lost, not dead at all.” John would not accept the fact that his father that his father was dead, and instead of grieving and moving on, he would forget his father died and just pretend it did not happen. Like John, Christopher Banks in “When We Were Orphans” lost his parents. Compared to John, he was better able to cope and accept his father’s death. John had a split personality. In Vietnam he was “Sorcerer” performing magical feats for his fellow veterans. When he was home and in front of the public he was John. The trouble started when “Sorcerer” took over. In Vietnam John killed innocent people. He tried to cover it up, but in the end he was found out. “ At times he went out of his way to confront hazard, walking point or leading night patrols, which were acts of erasure a means of burying one great horror under the weight of many smaller horrors. Sometimes the trick almost worked. Sometimes he almost forgot.” The “trick” did not work for Mr. De Winter in “Rebecca” either. He killed his wife like John killed the old man with a hoe, but the murders caught up to them. Vietnam was a tragic war and out of it came “Sorcerer” the part of John that wanted to kill, manipulate, and make things disappear. “Not a footprint, not a single clue. Purely gone the trick of his life. The burdens of secrecy would be lifted memory would be null. One plus one makes zero.” This was John’s ideology, this is how he rationalized the killings and pain in his life, if it disappears then it never happened. Like the movie “Dead Again” what John did in his past life ended up coming back to him. “All secrets lead to the dark, and beyond the dark there is only maybe.”
“When We Were Orphans” is a book about a murder that occurred twenty years ago, and how it can be solved by recollections and the use of memory. Christopher Banks the main character was orphaned at a very young age, and was taught to believe that his parents were murdered. Mr. Banks is a very talented detective yet the only crime he has yet to solve is the disappearance of his parents. He uses his strong recollection of details in his past to piece together a theory of what occurred so many years ago in Shanghai. Much like Tim O’Brien’s character John Wade, Banks recalls only the memories that he wishes to remember, and thus comes to a wrong conclusion as to what happened to his parents. Unlike Wade, Christopher’s parents love their son. In fact, the true fate that befell his parents was due to the love they had for their son. His father ran away with his mistress because he thought he was undeserving of his wife, and his mother became a servant to a Chinese warlord so her son could be taken care of as he grew older. Banks acute memory and criminal expertise help him to find the truth about his parents.
“Rebecca” a movie of how a man who lost his wife by accidentally killing her tries to move on with his life, but his memories catch up to him. Instead of telling the truth, and admitting the accident, he hides his wife’s death and sinks her body in a boat at the bottom of the ocean. This similar fate might have also happened