The world is passing away (1 Jn 2:17)
Amnesia
is popular plot device. It takes two basic forms. One is where the protagonist
suffers from retrograde amnesia. In one common plot, the protagonist is out of
town or out of state on a business trip when he suffers a concussion from
traffic accidental. He wakes up in a hospital bed, not knowing who he is. And
he’s surrounded by strangers who don’t know who he is.
Eventually, through news coverage, someone recognizes his
name or face, and comes to the hospital to claim him. Back home, everyone knows
him, but he doesn’t remember anyone. He’s taken to old haunts to jog his
memory, which returns in fits and starts.
Films that exploit this plot device include Dark City, Past
Tense, Mulholland Drive, and the Bourne series.
As I’ve discussed in a previous post, this has an analogy
with the elderly:
The other form, which is more common to SF stories, is just
this opposite. The protagonist wakes up in what seems to be the same world
where he went to sleep, although he notices a few odd changes. At first,
everything is deceptively similar. Everyone is familiar. He knows everyone. But
no one knows him. He’s a total stranger to him. It’s as if he’s been deleted
from their memories.
A variant of this theme is that everyone knows him, but they
have a different past. The past he remembers is not the past they remember
sharing with him.
At first the protagonist confronts them. Challenges them.
When, however, he doesn’t make any headway, when he’s in danger of being
committed, he decides to play along with the role he’s been assigned in this
new realty.
But he doesn’t know what to make of it. It’s as if he was
suddenly transported to a parallel universe which is eerily similar, yet at
some point in the recent past it branched off in a slightly different
direction, resulting in jarring differences.
Or it’s as if their old memories have been erased and
replaced with false memories. Or maybe they are remembering what really
happened, and he’s the one suffering from false implanted memories. Or maybe
he’s been abducted and subjected to an elaborate simulation. Or maybe he’s just
going mad. What’s more likely–that he’s sane and everyone else is bonkers, or
everyone else is sane and he is bonkers?
Although this can only happen in SF stories, it does have a
real life analogue. And, once again, this involves the elderly. But unlike old
folks who forget the past, this is where old folks remember the past, but no
one else remembers.
Back around 1980, there was an elderly woman attending the
same church I was attending at the time. I think she was about 88. She suffered
a medical breakdown and was hospitalized. I visited her a few times in the
hospital.
She was a lifelong resident of Seattle. I believe she was
born in the 1890s. She would have been a teenager in 1910 or thereabouts.
The world she knew growing up changed rapidly and radically
in her lifetime. I guess she was a window. If she had grown children, they
never visited her in the hospital.
She was very much like a character in a SF story where the
character remembers a past everyone else has forgotten–or never knew (because
it wasn’t their timeline). The world she knew had been replaced. The people she
knew had been replaced. Like a stage set. There was a mismatch between the
world in her head, and the world outside. Between the world she remembered, and
the world in which she now found herself.
Although forgetting is a way of feeling lost, remembering
can be another way of feeling lost–if no one shares your memories. If the
present world no longer resembles your past world. You have a map, but all the
old landmarks are gone.
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