Momento Mori Short Story

Momento Mori is a short story written by, Jonathan Nolan in 2001. It published in the Esquire magazine and was largely accepted by the audience as well as accredited by the critics. The story revolves around a man named ‘Earl’ who is suffering from a disease known from the acronym CRS. This disease creates a situation of a short term memory loss (which causes Earl to lose his memories within ten to fifteen minutes), described in the story as “backwards amnesia”. Another element which complicates the plot further is the fact that her wife had been killed in front of her eyes and the driving point of the plot is Earl’s struggle to track down and assassinate the man responsible for his wife’s death all the while fighting the limitation that his …show more content…
Although language is the mode of representation chosen by authors and poets to convey their art, there are but a few of these pieces of art which actually use the “written medium” as an element to further the main plot let alone use it as the primary way in which the first person narrator communicates to the reader as well as with Earl. The reason for this high dependence on the written medium is both a choice on the part of Nolan and a compulsion of the plot. It is implemented in the story through the small note and tattoos which the first person narrator leaves for the present …show more content…
Earl's avows that his short-term memory loss is actually advantageous to him. He won't lose the meaning of his wife's murder. . Because he profoundly loves his wife, he is grateful that he will never be able to forget the horrible trauma of her looking at him for help and the face of her killer. And that he will always have the full and immediate experience of her loss. Just because he can't create new memories, he will be in a permanent state of anguish. Earl is saved from "living in the next moment" in which he will gently, moment by moment, lose his feelings for his