"Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy."
After watching the end of Memento, I now understand how the film relates to our class. First and foremost, this line reminded me of Cat's Cradle, where the San Lorenzans choose to base their lives around lies in order to make themselves happy and avoid facing the misery of their dismal conditions. Leonard also lies to himself in order to escape the depressing truth: that he accidentally killed his wife, and that he killed the man who raped her and no longer has anything to live for. Without the goal of revenge, Leonard has no motivation to keep track of his life. He would fall apart and become disorganized and empty, the way Sammy Jankis did (according to Leonard). Leonard understands the truth but chooses to reject it, taking advantage of his condition to manipulate himself the same way others manipulate him. He believes that keeping himself busy will keep him sane, so he creates his life's trajectory as an endless cycle in order to maintain the illusion of sanity, at least to himself.
The irony of Leonard's story is that he actually does remember what happened to his wife, but he projected it onto someone else. Leonard's wife was convinced that she could make him remember, if only he would allow himself to. So in the end, she was right about Leonard's condition; he made the memory of killing his wife with insulin, but he would not allow himself to associate it with his own life. But it was her obsession with discovering the truth about Leonard that caused her misery and lead to her death. If she had made herself believe that Leonard could not recover, perhaps she could have found a way to cope with his condition and continued to live happily, or at least not miserably. This also has a parallel in Cat's Cradle: when people cannot or no longer want to lie to themselves in order to cope with their desolation, they kill themselves.
This definitely was my first reaction to the film as well! I noticed the connection to Cat's Cradle and wondered whether Christopher Nolan might have read some Vonnegut before writing the script. Leonard brings purpose to his life by utilizing his ignorance effectively. Given this condition, revenge becomes an act of ignorance because there is no possible way it will ever bring real happiness to Leonard.
ReplyDeleteAnother book from our curriculum that I noticed a strong connection to was O'Brien's The Things They Carried. Both The Things They Carried and Memento address the question of "truth" and how memories are ultimately subjective and can thus alter how we register/perceive events as "true."
ReplyDelete"Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy."
ReplyDeleteI think Leonard is anything but brave, kind, healthy, and happy. His hunt for "John G." gives him a reason to live, and he consciously chose to target an unreachable target. Vengeance fuels his desire to live and he is well aware that without such a goal there are no other memories strong enough for him to have a distinct purpose. I found it frightening how alert he was when he made Teddy his target and created a complex crime to busy himself with. In that scene, I couldn't believe that I once believed he was like a ghost in a shell just trying to find peace with the past.