Self-Manipulation

In Leonard’s quest for revenge, the possibility of manipulation by others is fairly obvious to the audience (and even Leonard himself), and speculating who around Leonard is manipulating him is an interesting and necessary conversation.  Let us not, however, ignore another important form of manipulation that occurs in this movie, self-manipulation.  Every time Leonard loses his memory, he has to, in a sense, recapture his identity, and he tries his hardest to make sure that he will always remember his wife’s death. 

They say everything heals with time, but with Leonard, his rage will never go away.  After every memory lapse, he will “wake up” clueless, and as he gains bearings of his surroundings, something, whether it is the tattoo inked across his chest or the documents in his hands, will trigger those same feelings of anger.  Perhaps the tragedy of the situation is that the desire for revenge will never get old.  Imagine feeling intense feelings of anger every 15 minutes or so, and one can get a sense of Leonard’s life.  Even when he fulfills his revenge and gets another tattoo to remind him of that, every memory lapse results in new feelings of grief for the woman that revenge cannot bring back. 

Although, the decision to make the unfortunate moments of his life salient forever by tattooing them to his body may seem foolish in hindsight, one must still appreciate how Leonard has taken advantage of his own memory loss.  He has made himself the perfect avenger.