Distance Memory Story

Whitechapel is the focal character of D’Aguiar’s novel, The Longest Memory however, the author has used a great many other characters whose stories also stand-alone. Why has D’Aguiar structured his novel in this way and how does it lead the reader to an understanding of the impacts of slavery?

George Hadley wants the best for his family. Already living in a smart house which was bought to make everyday life easier, the house cooks three meals a day, cleans- not just the house but the Hadley’s themselves, even brushing their teeth for them. It’s no secret Mr. Hadley is willing to spend big bucks on the finer things in life, even willing to spend an additional 30,000 dollars for another room just for his children. The Nursery. The nursery is a large room; 40 feet across by 40 feet long and 30 feet high; the room displays telepathic creations of the children’s minds and creates life to fill their every desire. “The children think of lions, so there were lions. The children think of zebras, and there were zebras. Sun-sun. Giraffes-giraffes.

In Hunger of Memory, Richard Rodriguez situates his individual experiences with education in such a way as to expose what he sees as the fallacious logic behind bilingual education and affirmative action. He uses arguments to propagate the systematic problems with such programs. His autobiography explains in great detail the entangling problems all American children face by instituting bilingual programs and affirmative action endorsements.

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?

The Longest Memory is a novel by Fred D’Aguiar, which has many different underlying themes and ideas communicated through it, but all relating back to two main themes of the book. These themes are Racial Superiority and the opposing ideas of Slavery and Christian Values. The date in which this novel is set (early eighteenth century) was a brutal and a seemingly amoral time. The white population at that time had deemed it just to enslave African peoples, whom they had caught or lured onto slave ships and brought back to America. In 1861, there were 15 slave states, which agreed and consented towards enslavement.

Bradbury portrays the children as characters who are inconsiderate of others and take advantage of their parent’s affection to obtain anything they want. After living in the technological house for a period of time, Lydia Hadley discovers that her position of being a mother is beginning to disappear since

The article “Dementia Study reveals Fond Memories First to Go” (June 16, 2015) published on Volume 51 issue 24 of The Onion informs readers about the effects of dementia and how dementia sufferers’ fondest and most positive recollections are nearly always the first to go. The author supports their claim with evidence from a five-year study conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University; the study followed a group of nearly 3,000 individuals suffering of dementia and found that the patients’ fondest recollections, such as one’s wedding day, are eradicated much more rapidly than other memories. The author’s purpose is to explain the cognitive effects of dementia in order to jolt the awareness of the reader and to prepare them for if and

Nevaeh’s future was changed. As tears ran down her face, words could not describe the way she felt. Who knew what destiny had in store for her at age 18. All she went through and when her life made a sudden twist, she was shocked. Not having someone her side was the hardest thing for her. She never really had anybody to guide her to the right path, protect her, love her, and support her. It's been so many years and she still couldn’t cope with it. But now all of a sudden she comes across 2 people.

Although the commands are done by the human voice of the father and mother, the computer-operated house takes care of every need for the family. “They walk down the hall of their soundproofed Happylife Home … this house which clothed and fed and rock them to sleep and played and sang and was good to them” (The Veldt, line10) . However in the end, the computer portion of the nursery addition to the house is overridden by the children’s voices, and the house cannot stop the fatal demise of the mother and father. Once again, Bradbury has used the fantasy of a computerized house, with a virtual reality room, to be the focus of this tragic

Furthermore, Bradbury develops the theme technology affects quality of familial relationships through the use of conflict between the parents and children. A conflict develops over the use of the Happylife Home’s nursery, which allows them to reenact any event they think of to the ultimate visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, and kinesthetic precision. Peter and Wendy want the machines to remain “alive” while

George and Lydia Hadley lives in a technological house that called a Happylife Home. They are so proud and happy with their purchase “which had cost them thirty thousand dollars installed” as they thought would solve all their problems. The house mechanizes to everything they need. It was dressing them, preparing their meals, brushing their teeth, and even rocking them to sleep. The Happylife Home also equipped with a high tech “nursery” that response to the occupants’ thought to create any environment such as an African veldt.

The moment Rabbit meets Lucy, he objectifies her. When Rabbit rings the doorbell at Eccles’ home, “A crisp little number with speckled green eyes opens the door” (122). His first thought is commenting on her appearance in a rather patronizing way. Rabbit then flirts with Lucy, attempting to be coy, but he just agitates her. Inside the house, Rabbit reflects on their brief interaction, “At once, absurdly, he feels in control of her, feels like she likes him” (122). Rabbit feels as if he was successful in wooing the married woman, and this makes him even more confident. This unsubstantiated success gives Rabbit the feeling of power and dominance he has been seeking. While he talks to Lucy, he again mentally comments on her figure. He thinks, “Her bare legs, crosses, show the blue dabs of varicose veins. Her face, when she sits, is not as young as at the door. Double chin when she relaxes, head tucked back. Smug little cookie. Firm little knockers” (123). Rabbit’s condescending tone further exemplifies the position of power he feels he has gained. Rabbit’s euphoria with his feeling of superiority causes him to react. Updike explains, “… in a mindless follow-through, an overflow of coordination, she having on the drop of his answer turned with prim dismissal away from him again, slaps! her sassy ass. Not hard: a cupping hit, rebuke and fond pat both, well placed on the pocket” (125). Rabbit abuses his perceived dominance, shocking Lucy into silence. Rabbit’s brief discourse with Lucy Eccles divulges some of the most prominent aspects of his personality. His thoughts, impulses, and actions demonstrate to the reader how quickly Rabbit takes advantage of power, whether or not it truly exists, to fulfill his

“She can’t be around my house anymore. I’m afraid of what I’ll do to her. She did this to him. Don’t you get it? She took his eyes.”

When I was a little kid we lived in Alabama.My dad had a job that involved moving around a lot. When we first moved I didn’t really like it, but I was also going excited because we were going somewhere new. Through out my life till now I have lived in seven different places. I visited many different towns and cities. I didn’t always agree/love moving. So here's my story.

Memory is defined as "the persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information." Our memory can be compared to a computer's information processing system. To remember an event we need to get information into our brain which is encoding, store the information and then be able to retrieve it. The three-stage processing model of Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin suggests that we record information that we want to remember first as a fleeting sensory memory and then it is processed into a short term memory bin where we encode it ( pay attention to encode important or novel stimuli) for long-term memory and later retrieval. The premise for the three step process is that we are unable to focus on too much