More on memory, there is a continuous motif occurring throughout the novel. One of pretending/fantasy and one of loss. Ultimately, after all the loss that she has suffered, Kathy’s only remaining fantasy is of seeing Tommy again. Her fantasy is to recover what she has lost but this leads back to the theme of memory. Only in her memory can she recover what’s been lost. As they grow older and lose the innocence of childhood, the fantasies wane, and the memories are all that remain. Kathy is both haunted by her past, her memories, and her future, as are the other organ donors who had wild imaginings of their future careers though their fates were inevitably decided. 

Memory will forever and always be a factor of haunting whether good or bad. In Alias Grace, Grace was haunted by her lack of memory, many details of events becoming construed until truths were lost and realities warped. There is a similar theme in Never Let Me Go except Kathy is simply haunted by her fragmented memories that allow her to hold onto everything and everyone she’s lost. These memories leave other characters ambiguous because we only see reflections of them throughout her detailing of past events. The more often we call up a memory, the more the details are changed because we’re often editing the memory each time we recall it. It becomes like a game of telephone until the memory is warped all together. But to us, it’s nothing but the truth. So while we. alongside Kathy. may often question the reliability of these memories to her they are also truthful. Same with Grace’s memories. She began reciting what she knew, what she didn’t, and what she believed so often that the details became the truth. That’s the power of memory. It’s fragile but it is also our truth.

In our group discussions on Monday my group discussed the theme of memory and found an interesting quote related to  that.

“A prison does not only lock its inmates inside, it keeps all others out. Her strongest prison is of her own construction.”

I had thought, perhaps she’s no longer aware of which truth is the truth because she’s constructed so many lies and new identities. She has constructed her own prison of lies. She was trapped in this subconscious trauma prison, trying to refute her beliefs of what happened because she doesn’t want to tell this part of her story, its easier if its forgotten. She’s trying to disassociate, to trick herself.

Now this quote holds a tinge of irony in relation to the end of the book. Grace becoming Mary’s outlet for murder, was locked inside but Mary was not kept out. And Grace held no memories of what happened because she wasn’t aware of what happened. Only holding context of the event from accounting’s of others she had to forcibly construct her prison to separate herself from something she had no idea about. 

1. Memories can be haunting. In Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa would be “haunted” by memories of her past because they lead her to one final conclusion. She was complacent in a system she no longer believed in but she knew she wasn’t going to do anything about it. She also realized she may not be the woman she wanted to be but this was her life now. She was no longer that woman from the past. However, in Alias Grace it’s a lack of memory that becomes haunting because Grace becomes haunted by what she cannot remember because the lack of memory is tied with serious consequences. The mind can be a strange place, and whether it lets memories flow or not, it haunts us. Not being able to remember something is just as haunting as never being able to let go of a memory because that little itch for trying to remember never goes away. It becomes a constant focus. One “dies” to know what’s going on, what can’t they remember, etc, etc. It can become an all consuming feeling. For Grace it’s the difference between Innocence or guilt. 

Rushdie through Saleem is attempting to write a new history of India, one that encompasses all that India has to offer, and takes all aspects of the nation into account. Saleem too is “writing” this new history of India. The way that Saleem interacts with India proves, or at least indicates, there is more than one way to interpret history. History doesn’t have to be written in one specific fashion but can be experienced in multiple ways from multiple perspectives. How we perceive our history is how it is written. Perception is important. All the facts in the world hardly alter our perceptions of it or history. Saleem is redefining language and therefore his reality, mashing it together just as his very identity is mixed with India’s political history. However in Revelations when Mary reveals the truth about his birth the history he once had freedom to warp becomes concrete in his “new” reality and affects his present. History is never dead, not as maleable as we and Saleem would like to believe, and that very same history can quite literally come back to haunt you. Here in this chapter it came back to haunt him. It came back to destroy his illusions. 

There is a theme of unrequited love in Midnight’s Children. Considering the chapter is titled “Love in Bombay” it’s ironic that the “love” shown is the opposite of what we as readers would be expecting. There is actually an absence of love in this chapter and most of what occurred is rather violent. Saleem’s love for instance remains unrequited and Evie pushes him into the crowd of marchers to “get rid of him.” The image of her and the bloody knife indicates this child perhaps has a violence streak. Evie’s affections for Sonny aren’t returned either nor are Padma’s for Saleem. Padma meant well but even her well meaning attempt to help  Saleem ends in a form of violence. This theme of unrequited love indicates an actual absence of love in a world so full of violence. 

The word haunting sounds well, haunting. But haunting doesn’t have to carry the negative connotations associated with it. To be haunted could also mean to be nostalgic. And as the author works to remember and reclaim a place she once knew as home, she’s definitely full of nostalgic moments. There was genuine amazement at how much the author could still perceive. These past experiences, this “broken mirror” as was said, did carry with it certain valuable treasures which could be utilized alongside what was considered unflawed.  I think this broken mirror of perception the author spoke of ties closey with this quote mentioned later on human beings lens of perception. “But human beings do not percieve things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capable only of fractured perceptions” (Rushdie 1310). But as was said, perhaps these fractured pieces are important to piece together the cracked lenses so that we may begin to percieve through different lenses and thus stop being haunted by what wounds us, our morals, and the perceptions that divide us. 

In both The Demon Lover and The Happy Autumn Fields, characters Mrs. Drover and Mary respectively, have returned to old homes (or in Mary’s, case is leaving an old home) seemingly war torn and no longer safe for living. Another thing both stories have in common is their trunks full of memories. I don’t believe Mrs. Drover ever delves into the contents of her box, for she is distracted by whether there’s a stranger in her home. This is her ghost, or rather the ghost of a past love; this is her haunting. So haunted is she, that she cannot remember his appearance, can hardly remember her time with this fiance but does remember that everyone say she was vastly different in that period of her life. Mary’s trunk of memories however is full of old junk, letters, diaries, photographs. Her ghost is not forgotten memories but haunting ones. It’s still unclear to me if she is Sarah or believes she’s an ancestor of Sarah but these dreams or memories she has of this family’s past seem to leave her disoriented in a way that Mrs. Drover’s haunting left her disoriented because she couldn’t remember.

Both stories also involve a Taxi but Mrs. Drover’s using of her Taxi as an escape seemingly led her right into the hands of whatever was haunting her, as the hour struck. Mary’s taxi was also to be used as an escape, but as an escape away from those haunting memories not towards them. So, as one cannot remember and is being driven towards her haunting memories, the other is haunted with memories she’s unclear of, but also seems to be steering away from them.

There are many forms of being haunted. Some are mystical and others can be psychological. Aziz is haunted by his arrest, the bitterness still clouding his judgement. His overactive imagination overpowers him and leads to a lot of his less than savory choices. He’s made assumptions, had suspicions, and relied on his own beliefs for so long that this false narrative he’s created has one upped him. Still plagued by the damage dealt to his reputation, Aziz holds on to that bitterness and his past actions haunt him in part 3 of this story. 

Until he can let go of his assumptions, or officially have them proved false, such as learning that Fielding did not marry Adela, he’s weighed down by his bitter attitude, his past mistakes, and his assumptions. Of course, when he does learn the truth, he’s freed of this haunting bitterness but still torn between his new range of emotions that he experiences when he learns he’s embarrassed himself by making assumptions in the first place. I suppose he will always be slightly haunted by the situation if not mostly free from it in the end. That does not mean neither he nor Fielding do not suffer from making the same mistakes nor that they do not make new ones. Again, I suppose that if you cannot learn from your mistakes they will always truly haunt you. These two characters are victims of circumstance. They can try to have new, well intentions, but they are going to have to truly work for them, and their are many outside circumstances waiting to sway them. It’s like being haunted by your own cultural differences. 

In my last post I noted that an important theme and symbol in Mrs. Dalloway was the use of Flowers. Many of the settings in Mrs. Dalloway are places where the characters can be immersed in flowers. In the beginning it was Miss Pym’s flowers shop. There were also flashback scenes where she and Peter walked through gardens; another where Sally handed her a flower before kissing her on the cheek. Septimus, a character who finds himself disassociated with the world after his experiences with far finds himself when surrounded by the tress in the park. It’s believed by both that there’s a connection with trees, that it shows the very reaches of the human soul. Virginia is showcasing aspects of Clarissa and Septimus’ characters by making this connection with nature.  Nature is no stranger to Woolf novels. She’s always connecting humanity to nature in one form or another. 

Clarissa and Septimus might seem like two entirely different characters but they reflected one another. Their souls were the same. They fought the oppression of the class system, only Clarissa’s soul was more heavily tainted by the weight of her identity. Clarissa seemed the saner approach and Septimus the more insane and yet Septimus is the one who escaped. Clarissa believed that souls survived in trees and Septimus, who believed the trees were alive in a way, has been given the opportunity to merge with mother nature herself.

Septimus found his courage to deny the class system and Clarissa simply accepted her place in it.