The texts The End of Remembering by Joshua Foer and “The Ordinary Devoted Mother” by Alison Bechdel, while are stylistically very different, addresses the same themes of the memory and one’s self-identity. Foer, while not as cold or detached as a scientific paper, uses a more formal and traditional tone when compared to Bechdel who approaches these themes through the lens of a graphic novel. The result of this gives two very distinct perspective on how memories affect one’s self identity. Foer’s theoretical framework of how memory functions and Bechdel’s more anecdotal approach of the effects of her personal memories on her life, provides two very distinctive perspectives on how the prioritization of memories are connected with the creation
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Throughout the short graphic novel, the reader is introduced to the narrator’s childhood through a series of flashbacks. In the graphic novel these memories are playing a part in the author’s inability to progress in her life, a concept that this essay will go more in depth in the coming paragraphs. One of the narrators more telling flashbacks that reinforces this claim, that past memories govern current behavior, is a memory the narrator has of her father. In the closing pages of the chapter the audience is shown a group of pictures of the narrator as a baby. The narrator then puts them in order, based on her interpretation of the context of what she think happened. The order in which she listed the photos is one of the more telling pieces in the story that explains the relationship between the narrator and her father. “At three months, I had seen enough of my father’s rages to be wary of him” (Bechdel 105). This is the caption the narrator put on the last photo, which is the baby looking frightened by the man taking the photo. What this does is shed some light on how the narrator might have seen her father. From this passage the logical conclusion that can be made is, the relationship between the narrator and her father was one that was govern by fear. Even when in a happy
Throughout the short graphic novel, the reader is introduced to the narrator’s childhood through a series of flashbacks. In the graphic novel these memories are playing a part in the author’s inability to progress in her life, a concept that this essay will go more in depth in the coming paragraphs. One of the narrators more telling flashbacks that reinforces this claim, that past memories govern current behavior, is a memory the narrator has of her father. In the closing pages of the chapter the audience is shown a group of pictures of the narrator as a baby. The narrator then puts them in order, based on her interpretation of the context of what she think happened. The order in which she listed the photos is one of the more telling pieces in the story that explains the relationship between the narrator and her father. “At three months, I had seen enough of my father’s rages to be wary of him” (Bechdel 105). This is the caption the narrator put on the last photo, which is the baby looking frightened by the man taking the photo. What this does is shed some light on how the narrator might have seen her father. From this passage the logical conclusion that can be made is, the relationship between the narrator and her father was one that was govern by fear. Even when in a happy