Unreliable memories
The main character, Leonard Shelby, in the movie Memento suffered from memory loss after a major head injury when his wife was raped and almost killed. He could not remember anything that happened after the injury. Leonard relied solely on his notes and pictures for his memory and daily life. He only trusted his own handwriting. Susan Engel provides theories of memory in her essay "Then and Now: Creating a Self Through the Past" that confirms how Leonard has been able to remember things he has done or people he has met. Leonard Shelby has created a false identity by not remembering certain things he has done after his head injury and by choosing to write down certain information that does not give him enough knowledge to know the whole truth. Leonard is not the same person he used to be before the incident happened with his wife. He believed that his wife had died that night and a man named "John G." had killed her. After this happened, he turned his life around to get revenge for his wife and hunted down John G. "We all use the past to justify who we are" (193). In his case, Leonard uses his wife's death to justify who he is but that is not who he was. His life after his injury was dedicated to find an
Leonard turned into a different person after his head injury. It is so easy to change events and information based only on your memory. He trusted Natalie when she told him about Dodd hitting her when the truth was that he hit her but did not remember. Engel says that "we reconstruct reality in a way that restores our self-concept" (199). Since he did not put a note saying that the car he is driving isn't actually his, he believes that he has the money to drive that jaguar and wear the expensive clothes he has on. Engel also states that "it is also true that this self-creation through selective memory is done with and for other people" (198). Engel says that "we are always remembering in the company of others" (193) and that is true in Leonard's case because even though he knew certain things from his notes and pictures, he trusted the people fully if the notes say so. According to Lenny, even though he can't remember his actions, doesn't make them meaningless. He had managed to forget the fact that she had diabetes. Leonard reconstructed reality when he burned the picture of Jimmy Grantz and hid the picture that Teddy had taken of him after he had killed the first John G. He was living off of false information and living in the past and for the past. Leonard's "self-creation" was to get revenge for his wife's murderer. When Teddy brings up the fact that he won't remember killing John G, Leonard responds with "the world doesn't disappear when you close your eyes. Engel states that people use their memory to "create a persona that may turn out to be far different from whom they used to be" (198).
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Acceptance Essays
