The Memories I hold

As I've been thinking quite belatedly about my final paper (is it really almost November?????), my musings keep on coming back to a few key ideas. What's mostly been on my mind is the mechanism of memory, i.e. why do we remember in a certain way? How are our memories organized and themed in our heads? This notion I have in mind of the otherworldly properties of memory, how it exists both within and apart from our lives... how memories can see to follow a pattern, a narrative arc, as if we are creating moving pictures of our past in the present.

Obviously there's a lot of stuff, idiosyncratic stuff, stuff that may or may not have any valid point, all jumbled up in my head, but I'm trying to sift through the madness, distill something concise and cogent out of all these incandescent ideas. So I think I will focus on the various ways in which memory is grounded in our lives, how we relate to those memories and the implications therein. Using the text of Never Let Me Go, I want to analyze how the memories of Kathy H., Ruth, and Tommy are fixed to their lives, what common threads seem to tie them together and how this relates to memory in general.

I will divide the paper into sections. The first will expound on the variety of ways that we engage in dialogue with our memories. For instance, MFK Fisher connects to her memories through tastes and the memory of shared meals in exotic locales. Then there is Kingston, who seems instead to connect her memories with stories and myths, the folklore that her life has been steeped in. There's Hemingway who uses the physical location of Paris as a stimulus for his recollections and Gorochova who seems to emphasize certain powerful characters (her mother, her teachers, young lovers) with periods in her memory.

Next, I will give orienting information about Never Let Me Go just for background.

Where Never Let Me Go is concerned, I think that Kathy relates her memories to physical places (Hailsham, the Cottages, Norfolk, etc.), possessions (the titular tape, art in the gallery, items at the sales and exchanges) and of course the complex relationships amongst friends--Tommy, Ruth, and her. I want to explore these three facets of her memory and relate it to my own life, perhaps also speculating about why she remembers along these lines. I will also incorporate the bulk of any textual evidence I want to employ in these sections.... such as excerpts from Kathy's contemplations of Hailsham, how she would drive aimless about the countryside, always unconsciously searching for Hailsham (her memories? the people she's lost? her youth?).

In the last section(s) I want to make some broad, analytical statements about memory and how we relate to our pasts. I'll also make the subclaim here that memory is inherently tied to humanity and that without memory we lose much of what makes us sentient. Obvious support for this claim is how the memories of Kathy and Tommy and Ruth--their intense bond and sense of a collective past--shows that they are human within the book.