Remember Sammy Jankis

I have read a few posts written this week that have addressed the ending of Memento and the possible entanglement of Leonard’s own story with that of Sammy Jankis. Throughout the novel, Leonard repeatedly comes back to his tattoo, “Remember Sammy Jankis”. He claims that he uses the story of Sammy Jankis so other people can relate to his, Leonard’s, condition. However, I think the more important role of Sammy Jankis is for Leonard to have an external means of portraying his condition to himself. He often compares his own lifestyle to Sammy’s. He assures himself that his conditioning, his tattoos and his drive to find his wife’s killer will allow him to do something that Sammy never could do, continue living his life. Of course, his constant contemplation of his Sammy tattoo is, itself, a conditioning technique. This close comparison of his own story with Sammy’s may help explain the entanglement. Leonard has preexisting memory of Sammy yet preexisting memories can often be distorted, especially when there used to illustrate another story. They are highly unreliable. Leonard tells us this bit of knowledge early in the movie, something he picked up during his career in insurance. This means that to fully understand the movie, we have to consider flaws not only in Leonard’s short term memory but also his long term memory. Hence the confusion regarding if his wife had diabetes or the fast shot of Leonard in the chair where Sammy is sitting.

We know now that Leonard was not able to keep the facts straight. He is a victim of his own emotions that drive him to write lies that allow him to continue his search long after his wife’s murderer is dead. Essentially, he is setting himself up for a cyclical adventure of tracking down John G’s until he gets caught. There is only one flaw that will get in his way. It’s his tattoos. Some of his tattoos like the license plate are very concrete pieces of evidence that Leonard will not be able to ignore in the future, yet they are sure to contradict with any further investigation. The first time I watched this movie, the realization that Leonard had planted false information and killed an innocent man trying to help him made me believe that Leonard is the bad guy in this film. However, I think closer consideration leads me to find this realization much more morally ambiguous. It is certainly wrong for him to plant lies that eventually kill Teddy. However, I think many people would go to extremes to feel they have avenged the death of their wife. Leonard’s short term memory loss also means that he never has enough time to rationally walk himself through the moral complexity of his actions. We all have the advantage of being able to rethink our decisions in the future. Leonard, however, will never come back to the morals of his decision because he will remember what he did. What I’m trying to get across is that we all make bad decisions sometimes but we can change the outcomes. Leonard cannot and so his decision to harm an innocent man is carried out because he doesn’t feel the guilt that he should.