Memories are a powerful force within people’s lives. They encourage, explain and expose the inner depths of an individual and the reason for who they are. Whether remembrances from past occurrences as children or teens or life altering decisions made regarding career and family, memories continue to have an influence on everyday life. They drive a person forward in current judgments and effects relationships with those surrounding. However, as time progresses memories alter. Either details are forgotten or translated differently than their original happening; memories are subjected to distortion. Consequently, the revision in which people remember recollections of their life’s history can influence the interpretation and their retellings. The correspondence between time and memories is often overlooked as parallel, but the interlocking connection contributes sustainably to everyday life, choices, behaviors and personal relationships. In her photographic series, Mutters Schuhe, Nina Röder explores how “subjectivity and perspective affect the retelling of memories” (Garrett, 2014) through the suggestion that emotions and time can trigger a rebirth of perspectives concerning memories.
Nina Röder shot the series Mutter Schuhe, (Mother’s Shoes) in 2008 where it was originally displayed in a small gallery in Windsbach Germany. The series originated as a personal project, but gain global recognition in 2014 after claiming a spot as a finalist on the popular photography gallery
Events in the past are preserved through photographs, writings and libraries. Can memories conserve the historical occurrence to the present? The theory of memory transmission states that a “massive trauma experienced by a group in the historical past can be experienced by an individual living centuries later who shares a similar attribute of the historical group” (Balaev 151). In the story “Cattle Car Complex” by Thane Rosenbaum, Adam Posner is a second generation survivor of the Holocaust. He displays symptoms of post-trauma when stuck in an elevator. Mr. Posner’s parents were prisoners of concentration camps and their memories transmit to him “so deeply as to seem to constitute memories” of his own (Hirsch 1). The Holocaust is a “Nazi Judeocide”
Moreover, writing about memory which is the groundwork of the traditional autobiographical genre is a problematic endeavor, since it is a project of conflating memory, imagination, and sometimes a conscious misrepresentation of the past. Likewise, it is a way to inscribe the discursive selves that they envision as “true” representations of their selfhoods.
Memories from the past are shown throughout our environment. Sometimes, recalling memories from surroundings are simple, like looking into the eyes of your father. As people proceed in their lives, they encounter moments that affect them deeply. Sometimes, a discharge of memories occur, showing a recognition of righteousness in people. In a short story called “Aero Bars” by Robert Hilles, the narrator acknowledges his father’s love through recalling the past. By reminiscing memories of remarkable values or behaviours, one is able to develop a moral conscience.
In the book A Long Walk To Water by Linda Sue Park, Slava shows us courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. This essay discusses that It’s good to have memories of the past but don't let them control you. “Where are we going? Where is my family?
Memory is used as a powerful conduit into the past; childhood experiences held in the subconscious illuminate an adult’s perception. Harwood uses tense shifts throughout her poetry to emphasise and indicate the interweaving and connection the past and the present hold. By allowing this examination of the childhood memories, Harwood identifies that their significance is that of an everlasting memory that will dominate over time’s continuity and the inevitability of death.
F. Scott Fitzgerald understands that memory is a double-edged sword, and he illustrates this thought in two of his short stories, Babylon Revisited and Winter Dreams. In his story Babylon Revisited, the protagonist, Charles Wales, is tormented by memories of his past. His wife is dead, and his old friends won’t stop interfering in his life. His sister-in-law is basing her current ideas of him on the fact that he was an irresponsible person in the past, and it hurts his life greatly. Winter Dreams takes a slightly different approach. In this tale, the memories of the protagonist, Dexter Green, start off as pleasant but are later warped by new information. With these two works, Fitzgerald describes the problems that memories can cause in
Farrell argues, “Merely telling one’s story of trauma, however is not enough to begin the healing process” (186). Flashbacks are more than a memory, even if one tells others their flashbacks, one still would not understand the meaning or the significance of the intrusive memory. According to Caruth, “The flashbacks or traumatic reenactment conveys , that is both the truth of an event, and the truth of its incomprehensibility” (Caruth 153). In order for one to understand and heal from their trauma, one
Memories are important, they are a personal record of our past experiences, and could be called the history book for our life. In the poem "The Heroes You Had as a Girl", author Bronwen Wallace tells the story of a woman who meets her high school hero later in her life, reflects on her memories of him, and ultimately decides not to talk to him. The effect that this topic has on everyone is the knowledge that we can be captivated and let our memories control us, and by knowing that our memories hold that much power, it may make it more mentally efficient to make accurate, and personal decisions in a fraction of the time. The topic and overall meaning that this idea holds convey a message that resonates with the idea that memories are in fact the central hub of our decision making. People remembering memories can affect their perspective on their lives to such an extent, that they prefer to immerse their mind in their past memories rather than the current reality.
Thoughts can be fleeting, however some of the feelings resulting from thought and can have a long lasting impact on the mental state of a person. In my metacognitive exploration I found an interesting comparison between the way in which I think and approach my past feelings and the methods which Tim O’Brien, from The Things They Carried, and Paul D from Beloved express their thinking about the past. I have discovered that the expression of thoughts, including memories and feelings, is the key to a healthy mental state of a person.
Memory – what it is, how it works, and how it might be manipulated – has long been a subject of curious fascination. Remembering, the mind-boggling ability in which the human brain can conjure up very specific, very lucid, long-gone episodes from any given point on the timeline of our lives, is an astounding feat. Yet, along with our brain’s ability of remembrance comes also the concept of forgetting: interruptions of memory or “an inability of consciousness to make present to itself what it wants” (Honold, 1994, p. 2). There is a very close relationship between remembering and forgetting; in fact, the two come hand-in-hand. A close reading of Joshua Foer’s essay, “The End of Remembering”, and Susan Griffin’s piece, “Our Secret”, directs us
In everyone’s life there is a moment that is so dreadful and horrific that it is best to try to push it further and further back into your mind. When traumatized by death for example it is very natural to shut off the memory in order to self-defense suppresses the awful emotional experience. Very often it is thoughtful that this neglecting and abandoning is the best way to forget. In Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, memory is depicted as a dangerous and deliberating faculty of human consciousness. In this novel Sethe endures the oppression of self imposed prison of memory by revising the past and death of her daughter Beloved, her mother and Baby Suggs. In Louise Erdrich’s
History and recollection are utilized in conjunction to provide a more comprehensive overview of the past. History is described as the formal documentation of an event whereas memory is understood to include more emotional personal recollections. The first visual representation explores this dynamic through a metaphor. The two images are positioned on separate pages of a book that demonstrates the juxtaposition between the two concepts, yet still enforces the idea that both elements work together to ‘create the story’. On the first side of the book there is a picture of sheet music, which represents a famous solo piano song, this is juxtaposed with the picture of someone playing the piano on the opposite side. The sheet music is a symbolic
Memory is a powerful concept. Often when an individual undergoes a traumatic situation, the ramifications of these actions seep into an individualfs psyche unknowingly. In effect this passes through memory and becomes sub-consciously buried within a personfs behavioural patterns generally. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink explores the concept of a young mans subconscious desire for a woman whom he gcanft remember to forgeth (1Memento) as she is so deeply inlaid within his soul.
The world is a representation that our bodies and our minds construct within ourselves to represent the outside world. In other words, human perception of the world is subjective to the individual. We pick and choose the experiences that we want to remember and how we want to remember them while we unconsciously forget the majority of our life experiences. We see and acknowledge what we want to see and ignore what we think is not related to us. The way we see, understand and interpret the outside world is structured by what we know and what we believe which also goes back to our cultures and our environment, which is an individual’s history. For us, to be aware of our surrounding and the moment in history that we are living we have memory. Memory is an illustration of the past, it’s our subjective and objective perception of the past. Both, our conscious and unconscious memory plays a vital role on an individual identity. Memory and history will always be intertwined, memory and history are not set in stones and are always changing due to the fact that we as human beings are always changing and moving through time and space. Memory and forgetting also goes in hand in hand. Most of our memories are unconscious, we do not remember everything that happens in our lives, we forget the rest. Human memories reflect the society and the the historical time period they live in. Millions of people are unware of their history, many tries to find and lean about their history while
These memories haunt me every waking moment of my life…and sometimes follow me into the land of dreams. As if watching them constantly replay in my head during the day isn’t enough! Sometimes they are nothing more than a fragment; a single word, hateful eyes boring holes into the back of my head, mouths moving languidly behind flattened palms. And other times, I replay entire scenes in my head, reliving those moments that still, after all this time, bring me to my knees.