Chapter 7 Of Kathy's Memory, 'Treasure'

Therefore, she finds herself attracted to anything that is a symbol of the past, and as McCarthy says regarding memory in post-apocalyptic fiction, her “memory of the past [gives] way to the onset of the future” (1). This is especially true as the novel progresses with more and more connections being drawn between Kirsten and others around her. The connection between Kirsten, Miranda, Arthur, Clarke, and Tyler all come together once Kirsten completes her journey heading to the Severn City Airport. Therefore, her journey is based on her memories, and her desire to complete her ambiguous reminiscences of the past.

However, others believed that this crime was too traumatizing for Eileen and resulted in repressing this particular memory. But how could she completely block this memory for 20 years? “Franklin-Lipsker testified that she repressed the memory for 20 years because her dad threatened to kill her too”(ChicagoTribune,1990).

In Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel, there is a scene that resonated with me personally. In this scene the main character Raymonde says, “What I mean to say is, the more you remember, the more you’ve lost” (Mandel 195) In this scene, Kristen and Francois are having a conversation about memory and how not having memory can be a positive if something awful happened in the past. Kirsten is talking about how she doesn’t remember anything from before the Georgia Flu due to the fact that she was eight years old when the pandemic hit and wiped out most of the population. Kristen is explaining that the people that are having the hardest time in this new world and the ones who still have memories of the past. They are focused on what the world used to be that they can’t see what the new world could be like. Those who are young and can’t remember the world before the pandemic can more easily move on because they have nothing to compare the new world to. She illuminates to the audience the toughest choice the characters face throughout this novel : do they protect their old identity by clinging to pieces of the old world or do they accept that they need to forget what the world was once like and move on?

Memory is a powerful concept. Often when an individual undergoes a traumatic situation, the ramifications of these actions seep into an individualfs psyche unknowingly. In effect this passes through memory and becomes sub-consciously buried within a personfs behavioural patterns generally. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink explores the concept of a young mans subconscious desire for a woman whom he gcanft remember to forgeth (1Memento) as she is so deeply inlaid within his soul.

I called the constituent, Ms Kathryn Chase, she said that is frustrated that nobody helps her to stop her siblings and her uncle stealing her mother's money and jewelry.

Have you ever thought about the past and wanted that same thing to happen again or wanted to make sure that it would never happen again? Often in a work of Literature characters who are coping with trauma attempt to both repress or revive the past. This trend ends up being expressed in the two novels, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. To repress the past a character would try to prevent what had happened from happening again while reviving the past would be to bring back what had previously happened. In A Streetcar Named Desire the main character, Blanche DuBois who is a teacher ends up moving from Mississippi to live with her sister, Stella Kowalski, in New Orleans and eventually has problems with Stella's husband, Stanley Kowalski. In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close the main character, Oskar Schell is dedicated to finding the lock that fits a key that his father who had died on September 11 at the World Trade Center had given him. The trend of both repressing and reviving the past when coping with trauma is evident in A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer when Oskar Schell in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close tries to find the lock that matches a mysterious key and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire has to be reminded of her past by her brother in law Stanley.

[1] Ruth's memory of her childhood includes the explanation of her drastic separation from her family, that explains why she always avoids the topic of her family when it's brought up. Ruth is hesitant to remember the memories of her painful past.

The story of “ St. Lucy’s Home for Girls” by Karen Russell introduced a girl named Claudette and followed her through her life during school. The author wrote about her learning how to be civilized. She talks about Claudette’s transformation from her old culture to her new culture. The transformation is put into five stages. The stages represent emotions that Claudette and the other girls would feel during these courses.

Ruth May tells her mother that she may forgive herself and let the weight on her shoulders drop. This allows the reader to see that Ruth May is not mad and that she has been watching over them for so many years. We can see that Ruth May is with them when the family goes back to the Congo to see Ruth May’s grave and they have an encounter with a young women. The young women gives Orlenna a wooden okapi, which symbolizes that Ruth May is their with them. Only Ruth May knows about this and the fact that it was given to Orleanna seems like it was meant from Ruth May. This gives Orleanna hope that Ruth May is still their and that she will always be with her mother. This okapi can also symbolize to Orlenna that she will never forget about Ruth May; no matter how old she gets, Ruth May will always be symbolized in that okapi. The last book is very important to the reader because it talks about Kilango. When the family goes back to the Congo, they ask the same women that gave Orleanna the okapi if Kilango is still their and she has no clue about it. Kilango is no longer their, which could represent multiply things: the loss of the Price family in the Congo, the loss of Ruth May, or even the loss of their father. I think it represents the loss of their father, not because he was important to the family, but because he caused a lot of stress and emotional pain on the family. The

Laurel remembered the breadboard as a clean, beautiful carved board that was very well kept. She was livid when she found Fay cracking nuts on it with a hammer. The beautiful board was now dull, full of splinters, and used to extinguish cigarettes. Enraged, Laurel was tempted to strike Fay on the head with the board but then “realized that the breadboard was a visible sign of the past and does not contain the memory” (Phillips). She was so focused on the physical object rather than the memory behind the breadboard. Laurel realizes that a memory is not “lived in initial possession but in the freed hands, pardoned and freed, and in the heart that can empty but fill again” (Welty 179).

            Paradoxes within this invisible rational framework begin to emerge, however. Because human senses are inherently limited and fallible and "memories are by their nature fragmented, isolated, and arbitrary," they are highly suspect in providing reliable evidence of rational structure to the progression of thoughts and experiences of any individual or group (53). Order can and will be made from the fragments available in a given situation; it is an extension of the most intense form of human will. "The world will be made whole For to wish a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, the very craving gives it back again" (153) Memory thus houses a great paradox: the ability to create a sense of completeness and the ability to provoke the most profound sense of loss. It is the paradox woven into the nature of memory which moves time forward. "The force behind the movement of time is a mourning that will not be comforted" (192). Based in part on her memories, Ruth begins to consider the idea that in committing suicide, her mother wanted to evoke a less absolute, constantly negotiated existence, "whole and fragment", within her daughters' minds (163).

In part one of the novel, the narrator looks back in her life and tries to see how she used to be, in order to become who she wants to be. She is on a quest to find her father back in her old hometown, and as she’s there she does not remember any of it. She did not have the best family life because her mother would call her uncivilized and her brother was in the war. She does specifically talk about a childhood memory where her father made her brother stay in a cage, until one day he “escaped” and started drowning, which is always in the back of her mind. A family friend, Paul, tells her that her father is missing and she is relieved because he never forgave her for her divorce, so as long as he is alive she does not want to find him, symbolizing

This systematic retrieval of memory enables Wilson to remember who the Talcott family was and the unique appearance of the old, stone house. Moreover, these basic memories are crucial in constructing a narrative and uncovering involuntary memory, which is also highly apparent in Wilson’s

  Memories are works of fiction, selective representations of experiences actual or imagined. They provide a framework for creating meaning in one's own life as well as in the lives of others. In Toni Morrison's novel Beloved, memory is a dangerous and debilitating faculty of human consciousness. Sethe endures the tyranny of the self imposed prison of memory. She expresses an insatiable obsession with her memories, with the past. Sethe is compelled to explore and explain an overwhelming sense of yearning, longing, thirst for something beyond herself, her daughter, her Beloved. Though Beloved becomes a physical manifestation of these memories, her will is essentially defined by and tied to the

Afternoon is about the gentle days of old age, and the author tries to convey the message that we should enjoy the young and developing times that we have before it’s too late. The mood established by the poem is long and slow, gentle and calm, with actions being described as “comforted” or “Fragile”, and relaxed concepts like peace. This goes on until the last 2 stanzas, where the author admits their hopes for the days of old age to be further away to enjoy the younger times longer, hence the main point of the passage.