We All Need Mirrors to Remind Ourselves Who We Are

Leonard Shelby might be the most unreliable narrator I’ve encountered in this course (and beating out Tim O’Brien is quite a feat). At the end of Memento—which is really the beginning of the story—Lenny wonders, “Will I lie to myself to be happy? ...[Y]es, I will.” Earlier in the movie –which is actually later in his life—he asks, ” Doesn't make a difference whether I know about it. Just because there are things I don't remember doesn't make my actions meaningless. The world doesn't just disappear when you close your eyes, does it?” This is not a result of memory loss, but instability in Lenny’s personality. He is taking two fundamentally different views. What makes something true: belief or actual events? It seems, to experience truth we need a frame of reference. Because of Lenny’s condition, we are not given one and are left confused. This forced me to make my own truth. In order to analyze the film I needed some grounding. I chose to believe Teddy’s story that Lenny’s wife died after the assault from the insulin he administered, and that Lenny had killed the second assailant.

Lenny states that physical things and actions in the world are all that matter. He wants his wife’s “murderer” dead, even if he cannot remember it. In itself, this idea makes little sense because people extract revenge to give themselves a sense of closure and consolation. Throughout the film we learn that Lenny has mixed the details of his own life with that of Sammy Jankens, this could have been done subconsciously, but in Lenny’s one lucid moment at the end of the film, he admits that he would lie to make his life bearable. The detective game he is playing is the only tie he has to his previous life. It gives him a sense of purpose. It is also comforting because his condition does not allow time for coping with the loss of his memory and wife. I believe that by admitting he would rather live a lie than in the real world he is admitting that belief is more essential to truth than actual happenings. This means that Lenny is lying to himself about more than just Sammy Jankins. He’s lying to himself about his entire world view. Without these falsehoods conditioned in, he wouldn’t be able to go on living.