Hi! I would really appreciate it if someone could read my essay and give me feedback cos I'm desperate
please? I have a exam in a week A WEEK A WWEEk okay I'll stop
Prompt: “People’s memories shape their understanding of themselves, their world, and others”
Often, memories are a fundamental retrieval mechanism in humans that help us to establish our understanding of ourselves, others and the world in which we live in. Too many times are we unable to interpret situations correctly, leading us to live in a falsified world until we align with the true reality much later using our memories. Many of these cases occur when we are children, as we have limited access to experiences and hinder us from interpreting things appropriately at the time. At other times however, memories can backfire, stopping us from understanding ourselves and the world. Such cases occur especially when they brutalise our sense of self to the point we must create alternative realities far from the truth as a cope mechanism to the harsh and unwelcoming society. Memories are fragments of the reality or experiences; however, it is important to know none of memories are propelled by the truth. Times come to distort our memories with far more emotional qualities than objective aspects. They are to be handled with care and purpose.
Memories are fundamental in aspects of understanding others. Similarities draw one to sympathy and understanding of the other, which arise from experiences. The novel, “The Shark Net” exemplifies how memories of Robert Drewe ultimately helped him understand Perth’s cold killer of the time, Eric Cooke. Seemingly two widely contrasting individuals, we are coerced into seeing later the two men with eerie similarities. The chapter, “The Saturday Night Boy” gives the readers into the insight of Eric’s personal life before he commits his murders. While this is a fictional aspect, the general idea that Eric was teased and scorned by his odd and incoherent speech from the “laughing bare-armed girls and superior drunk boys” is clear. Like Drewe who wanted to be seen as the “Masai-warrior” by his crush Roberta by killing the carpet shark, Eric pursues desperately to be seen as the “Cool Joe” from the posh girls. To compensate for the humiliation, he departs from the crowd with airy goodbyes and finally “showing them” by diving fully clothed into the river. We however, know Eric was only a subject of scorn and fun. While Eric is charged guilty of his murders by the court, Drewe also suffers emotionally of his guilt for having been instrumental in his mother’s death. Perhaps this was why Drewe “noted the time” of Cooke’s death when Cooke’s family was oblivious to the passing time. The sympathy that is evoked from Drewe is brought most likely by their similarities. Drewe’s similar memories of his life stages: from childhood to adulthood, brings him to understand and “wink” at nervous Eric at court, rather than seeing him as a cold-blooded, heartless and cruel monster. The message for us then is clear: memories can help us to understand and accept members of the public, even the most notorious outcasts, and our world with them.
Our memories can also help us understand ourselves through reflection in hindsight. As we become independent adults, we have the autonomy to see our true selves without being constrained by our parents in our younger years. Drawing from “The Shark Net” once again, we see Drewe, whose increasing curiosity for the opposite sex is being fettered by his parents who adopts a very high moral ground. He’s having to hide in his Saturday night out, rubbing his mouth “vigorously” to erase traces of lipstick or any “girl smells” from his “ever-vigilant” mother. However, Drewe’s “state of guilty anxiety” is a prominent sign of his upbringing, which grew while watching his mother’s “lips tighten” at even slightest signs of sexual promiscuity. When he was a little boy, he sang a mildly raunchy song called “Lady of Spain” to his mother which ended him being grounded. Words like “sex”, “breasts” and “rape” were “electric shocks” to him, but he was also “embarrassed” and ashamed when he had heard it in the presence of his mother. We know however, that Drewe is less guilty at the present moment who feels more comfortable sharing his personal and sexual feelings he had experienced as an adolescent. He writes that he had felt like “the country’s most loathsome sex-pig”-a hyperbolic term-when his failure to abide by the Moral Agent results in his girlfriend’s pregnancy. However, we know that Drewe is far from this overstated term as he strives to be a good father and a husband to both James and Ruth. While the present moment can position us on how others see us, ultimately, memories help to establish our true selves as we become more mature and experienced to reflect our own behaviour.
At other times however, memories can stop us from establishing an acceptable view of ourselves, others and the world around us. The play, “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams exemplifies how we resort to an alternative reality far from the truth when our memories haunt or contradict our present situation. Blanche du Bois believes herself to be a Southern Belle. She is cultivated and poise of all ladies and asks others to adopt her world of paper lanterns, away from the “naked light bulbs” because it “wouldn’t be make-believe if [one] believed in [her]”. However, Stanley ultimately crushes Blanche’s creation of her alternative reality where the rarefied but fading ante-bellum south is yet prevailing. Blanche creates this reality for herself because the world where her life of privilege, wealth and social distinction no longer exists is detrimental to her sense of being and identity. Because the fond memories of her “old world” at Belle Reve, she still upholds the image of social acceptability despite her stay at the Flamingo and is unable to see the vibrant and multicultural city of post-war New Orleans. She also cannot comprehend the new Stella who enjoys the thrill the city and Stanley offers. Sometimes, memories can further falsify our reality when they are high contradictory of the current world. The paining memory of what once used to be coerces some of us into creating an alternative reality for them so that they may cope with the unwelcoming and harsh world.
Memories can help us find our own reality rather than accepting the ones offered to us in childhood and adolescence, a stage where dependence towards the caregiver is dominant in our life. They also encourage us to connect and understand others because memories are fragments of our experiences and enable us to feel sympathy and empathy for others. However, despite their positive qualities, when memories are too painful to bear, it can push us into creating our own falsified world and hinder us from finding our true selves or the world around us. Without revision of thought and feelings, we may be confined in understanding ourselves with only spontaneous experiences. We may not be able to understand others at all. Despite their merits, however, cases surface again that warns us that they may destruct our sense of touch with reality. Ultimately, with power of overcoming difficulties, memories are truly beneficial in establishing who we are as a person among millions of others living with us.
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