I Have This Condition...

In all of the stories that we have been assigned to read so far in class, we have stumbled across the question of whether or not the narrator is trustworthy or not. To me, whether or not the narrator is truthful or not has never been an altering component. That is, until we had to watch Memento.

See, when you normally watch a movie, the narrator or main character is the point of view that becomes the viewers’, because that is how we (the viewers) are watching the movie. Thus, whatever the main character is going through, so are we. In Memento, though, it is confusing to try and figure out what is happening in the plot because the main character (Lenny), himself, has trouble figuring out what is actually happening in life.

Constantly having to look at his tattoos or notes written on his photos, Lenny has to live life based on what is put in front of him, whether it is the truth or not. This is what happens to the viewers too – we have to follow what is going on in the story, initially believing exactly what Lenny believes, whether or not it is the truth. However, to our advantage, we are able to decided for ourselves what we feel is the truth in the plot after watching a few minutes, something Lenny is never able to do himself.

That is why I feel that Lenny, the main character of this movie, is not someone who can be trusted in regards to the truth of the movie’s plot. Though his condition is medical and not something he can control, he has to live his life day by day finding a reason or goal (in this case, finding and killing “John G”), not knowing if he is continuing the same goal he was the day before. So for Lenny, there is not an actual truth or finite goal (just as there is never one specific “John G,” just who he chooses it to be for the day at hand), thus making the plot of the story hard to decipher for the readers when looking at it from Lenny’s point of view.

But hey, just as in any other book we have read and the million similar others out there, maybe the amount of trust readers can put into the narrator doesn’t matter. After all, Lenny is perfectly happy living day to day finding his “John G,” so doesn’t that make a valid plot for the story? To me, if the narrator/point of view is “successful” in what he/she is attempting to do, then it is a successful story/novel/movie/etc. It just happens to make getting to the end result complicated to the viewers, just like Memento had to askew the order of events and confuse us.