Close Reading

"Your memory is a monster; you forget- it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you-and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have memory; but it has you!" (36).

John is talking about how he wants to forget how his mother died, the people who were there and the ones who saw it happen. He does not want to remember that Owen left early, most likely taking the ball he hit with him. He does not want to remember the sound that the bat made or the detective wondering where the murder weapon went. But he is realizing that he has almost no control over what his mind decides to remember and what it does not.

John refers to memory as a monster. Memories disappear, so we think, from our minds to reappear at times we may not want them to. They can be triggered by other events and they come back to haunt us. They come back to scare you, to try and show you what happened. Sometimes our memories change, and it makes us believe that what happens actually happens even if it never did or happened a different way.

Memories have us. Irving describes the memories of having control of us. Our minds are the ones who decide what we think and when it comes about. We are not the ones in control of our memories, they come back to haunt us when we least expect them to. They come about when they are triggered and not when they are called.

John realizes that the memory of his mother comes back at certain times, different pieces come back at different times. When he wants to forget what happens, he remembers it. He has no control over what happens and what does not. In a way, that seems to scare John. He is not sure when the memory of his mother's death is going to be triggered by something, forcing him to relive the tragedy once again. And this is the reason he mentions how the memories have a hold of him. It forces him at different times to relive parts of the death. In addition, John also must realize how his grandmother remembers the sound of Owen's high pitched voice. She can remember the voice and not who he was, with her memory only being triggered by a sound that is similar to Owen's voice.

When Irving talks about how memory has us, he is trying to convey the idea that memories are what hold us. They allow for us to reminisce, and without them, we would not be able to recall the past. But, our mind is the one in control of when exactly we get to know our memories. We might remember tidbits at different times, and not really get the full picture because it is stored somewhere in our sub-conscious mind, a place we cannot reach. Those deeply hidden memories do not come force when we summon them, but rather either bits and pieces, the things we want to remember, suppressing sometimes the things we want to forget.