Reckoning
Life has some form of development through a range of events that could be considered rites of passages for every person. These experience that individuals face during their lives is substantial different yet contains many similarities at the same time. This essay will look at two accounts of different experiences by two famous authors that tackle aspects of what it means to face different stages in one's life. Both stories offer insights as to how our identity is shaped by our memory and our memory can be shaped by a plethora of individual and cultural experiences. Memory certainly serves as a "catch-all" term that encompasses a widespread range of factors that occur in the human experience.
Eva Hoffman's memoir, Lost in Translation, illustrates events from her life as she emigrated from Cracow, Poland to Vancouver, Canada. N. Scott Momaday's, The Way to Rainy Mountain is also about a journey about a young man that journeys to the grave of his grandmother along the same route that her people, the Kiowas, took as the migrated across the land to eventually settle down in a more permanent fashion and tell stories of the Kiowa people passage. Both stories contain an element of how memories that are acquired during childhood can stay with us until adulthood. Despite the longevity inherent in some memories, they are not exactly static in nature. Rather they can evolve dynamically by either becoming stronger with the retelling of stories and use or oral histories or by becoming weaker with neglect from mind.
Eva Hoffman begins her memoir in the midst of her voyage on a boat from Europe that is already in progress to Canada. The author quickly describes the situation and establishes memories of the home she is leaving. However, she also establishes the idea of memory itself. For example, after hearing the Polish anthem after departing, Eva comments, "I am suffering my first, severe attack of nostalgia or tesknota -- a word that adds to nostalgia the tonalities of sadness and longing (Hoffman)." This establishes another dynamic found between language and memory. Memories are more than just words as they...
"I'm filled to the brim with what I'm about to lose -- images of Cracow, which I loves as one loves a person, of the sun-baked villages where we had taken summer vacations, of the hours, I spent poring over passages of music with my piano teacher, of conversations and escapades with friends." In a later section Eva later comments, "How absurd our childish attachments are, how small and without significance. Why did the one, particular, willow tree arouse in me a sense of beauty almost too acute for pleasure, why did I want to throw myself on the grassy hill with an upwelling of joy that seemed overwhelming, oceanic, absolute? Because they were the first things, the incomparable things, the only things. It's by adhering to the contours of a few childhood objects that the substance of ourselves -- the molten force we're made of -- molds and shapes itself. (Hoffman)."
This story illustrates the complex nature of memory and its development through childhood. Memories are entangled with objects, language, experiences, and emotions which can help us define ourselves as people. These forces come together in certain situations to make some memories stronger and more meaningful than others. Scientists study memory and can offer various insights into how the biological mechanisms of memory work, such as the fact that neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that the amygdala plays a fundamental role during the encoding of emotional information (Kensinger and Schacter). However useful such pursuits may be, they lack the power to encompass the full ramifications for memories on our development of character. Stories such as Hoffman's however offer a vivid interpretation of how powerful memories interact with the development of our character.
Another significant theme in the memoir is the language barrier. Eva explains how it is not only the words that get lost in translation but some of the memories that are…
