I have seen Memento before but when I watched it for the first time it was for a psychology class and we obviously viewed through a psychological lens. We analyzed Lenny’s psychological condition and things of that nature. Now, watching it in this class it’s almost like watching a whole new movie. Im no longer paying attention to his symptoms and behaviors but instead find myself focusing on how Lenny finds the truth in his everyday life. Because Lenny “has this condition,” he cant remember things for himself so he must rely on hand written notes to get by. As you can see, this can get kind of messy. People can easily manipulate Lenny into thinking something is true even when its blatant lies. Lenny’s truth is in his tattoos and hand written notes, a lot of which he got the information for from other people i.e. the license plate number given to him from Natalie. Lenny trusts that she is who she says she is and therefore takes the information as the truth. So Lenny’s truth is almost entirely dependent on other people.
In a way, this is similar to O’Brien’s truth in The Things They Carried. In his text, O’Brien changes his stories in order to “make the stomach believe” and cause his desired emotions in his audience. So O’Brien’s truth too is sort of dependent on other people. If they walk away from the water buffalo story with feelings of love, grief for human life, and an understanding of how close young boys get when they are in battle together then his story is perfect. If not, and they feel sorry for the buffalo and feel that war is brutal then he will change the details in his story in order to get them to feel the way he wants them to because “it wasn’t a war story. It was a love story” (O’Brien).
I like your comparison of Memento to O'Brien's The Things They Carried. Very interesting to realize that both stories are somewhat dependent on others and their reactions. In Memento, for all we know thus far, Natalie could be behaving in ways to emotionally manipulate Lenny and give her stories more credibility. That way when she offers the license plate number to Lenny he will trust that it is not a trick . Another interesting thought is how those tattoos ended up on his body and whether he was the one who put them there or if even those notes were constructed based on other people's advice/words.
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