An Analysis of the Story, Memento Mori by Jonathan Nolan Essay

Helena RandolphProfessor GarciaEnglish Composition 2January 30, 2012Memento Mori Central IdeaE.M. Forster says that plot is a "mystery is essential to a plot, and cannot be appreciated without intelligence. To the curious it is just another "and then" -To appreciate a mystery, part of the mind must be left behind, brooding, while the other part goes marching on." In that excerpt Forster defines plot and explains that in order to make a plot effective the readers must use their intelligence seeing the story from two sides of the overall picture, and is able to relate the information from the previous pages to the present page. In Jonathan Nolan's story "Memento Mori" the main character Earl suffers from amnesia, due to an incident that involved his wife being killed and him suffering his injury. Earl is unable to remember after a certain amount of time, so he constantly reminds himself, leaving around notes. But, the memory of his wife's killer stays on his mind, going to extreme extents to finding and killings his wife's killer getting the face of the killer tattooed on his chest along with the message "I RAPED AND KILLED YOUR WIFE." In the end Earl kills a man, leaving the readers not certain of if the man he killed was really his wife's killer or how he got out the institution and ended up in several different places. The central idea is that memory is the key component to intelligence and the idea of revenge."Memento Mori" is structured with letters and third person narrative throughout the story, with big amounts of time unaccounted for. As Earl writes these letters to his self, they make it possible for him to remember the things he wants to still know. The letters in "Memento Mori" symbolize Earl's lost memory helping remind him of all the events he can't recall. Every letter holds a key to his memory, still being able to comprehend from his prior knowledge...

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