Essay Example on Memoirs: Remembering Past Events and People

Memory is the ability of the human brain to retrieve and store information regarding past experiences, while a memoir involves a person's thoughts in writing past occurrences. A memoir may also be used in helping individuals to remember their past events or people. For example, prominent leaders that existed in the United States of America, like Abraham Lincoln, have defined locations for their sculpture to act as a memory to the people of America and to remind them about his contributions to the Americans. Memories serve as a significant event because they help people to remember what took place in their lives at some point in the past. The Diary depicts a lot of issues concerning human memory, which we are going to address in the paper. The good part of keeping memories is that they refer to real events that future generations can also refer to, especially when they happen to be historical. The lines in this piece of Diary put a lot of focus on the memories and precisely her memories from her childhood days to her life as a mother and the skeptic nature of her Diary, which she accepts for she does not remember everything all the time.

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Opening lines in the Diary reveal a compassionate soul that is keen and neurotic. 'I started keeping a diary twenty-five years ago. It's eight hundred thousand words long' she writes (Manguso)'. This acts as proof that she is giving her life excellent attention because, according to her, experience alone isn't enough, and the Diary is acting as her defense from the disappointments of waking up at the end of her life only to realize that she misses some parts of it. She trusts her records because she thinks that if she does not update her Diary, she feels like she has lost something that should not be forgotten in the future. To her, everything is a memory worth keeping. When she is still a little girl, her mother buys for her a diary book full of beautiful flowers, and she tells her to update it every night during their summer times, this shows that her mother wants her to keep the memories of good days that they are enjoying now for her future references. At the age of twelve, she realizes that photographs are ruining her memories because it forces her to forget things that are happening before the photo and keep only what the picture is depicting; she, therefore, she quits taking photographs. Although she has some pictures with her, she thinks they are just enough for the memories.

At twenty-three years, she decides to see a psychotherapist because she cannot accept the fact that after a closure of a relationship, she keeps the memories alone while the other party forgets the events taking place in their lives before the break-up. She accepts that her life exists mostly around the people she knows as a memory. She also remembers during her pregnancy how information entering her memory dissolves, making her not remember and declares that the Diary is of no help. These are instances of memories that show how the work is related to the word 'Memory'

The Diary is a skeptic in nature because even after updating it almost after every moment, she still confesses that she knows that the Diary is not working from the very beginning. She is also sure that she cannot make a replica of her whole life in writing and confirms that some parts of it, especially those that involve her body must follow her into oblivion. She accepts the fact that she cannot remember everything either and put it down on paper. The way she says, 'The trouble was that I failed to record so much' shows how skeptical the Diary is. In as much as she tries her best to record much of the work and events taking place in her life, she still misses better parts of it and even forgets about them entirely that she can't write anything about them. That shows a memory loss unless remembered by luck or chance but not on the records. When she gets pregnant, she suffers from amnesia and forgets everything that happens to her, and she then declares that even the Diary is of no help. This shows the skeptic part of the Diary.

At her young days, she used to take her Diary with her to the beach every summertime, where her mom reminds her to write at least something on it every night without fail. She does not enjoy this idea that very much considering her mother's monotonous guidelines with the use of standard lines that she finds more annoying. She thinks that she doesn't need a diary at this young age but slowly realizes that she is forgetting so much as she gets older. She then starts writing her Diary earnestly when she starts cherishing moments in her life. This acts as a personal example and lesson she learns to help her recollect the idea of keeping a diary for the sake of memories and remembrance. For instance, she says, 'I started keeping the diary in earnest when I started finding myself in moments that were too full (Manguso).' This depicts an action of recollection after experiences before her early life that she embraces now that she is old and probably enjoying the moments of her lifetime.

Additionally, after becoming a mother, she continues inhabiting time differently and even worries losing her memories starts to fade away. She emphasizes on the 'Nothing; nature of events, everything circulates her baby, and she can neither remember events during the day nor night-time but despite these feelings of 'nothing,' she reminds herself that she is the only pillar in her son's life as she describes that her body and experience are the landscapes of her son's world and she is now more than just an existing thing but also the world itself (Manguso).' It also gives a scenario of recollection and beating the vagaries of life after she suffers from memory loss for so long and even continues facing the same.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Diary describes its relation to memories so vivid since she trusts her Diary a lot. However, the work is skeptical because she does not record everything, and she has to die with some memories without recording and how keeping the Diary has helped her in self-recollection after experiencing amiss in life.

Work Cited

Manguso, Sarah. Ongoingness: The end of a diary. Graywolf Press, December 2014 <https://static1.squarespace.com/static/535958ade4b0bf5eba03a783/t/54bb43dfe4b06e38ad6636d7/1421558751104/O-excerpt.pdf>