Expanding on Tyler Shores’ Essay: “Memory and Muchness”: Alice and the Philosophy of Memory

Samantha Mendes Da Costa

Philosophy 17

12/6/2011

Expanding on Tyler Shores’ Essay:

“Memory and Muchness”: Alice and the Philosophy of Memory

Memory is a very important part of our lives, without it we do not have identities. As Alice goes through Wonderland, she questions “who am I?” as if she can not remember who she is, or is trying to figure out who she is today. As we go through our lives, there will be many times where we might find ourselves asking the same question. Philosophers seem to have some interesting views on the matter of memory and forgetting. I am here to evaluate the philosophy of memory and figure out whether memory in fact does mold us into who we are and who we will become.

Alice, Who Am I?

Everyone is constantly in search of finding out who they are, whether it is a conscious or subconscious thought.

‘Who are you?’ said the Caterpillar…Alice replied, rather shyly, ‘I- I

hardly know, sir, just at present- at least I know who I was when I got up

this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ said the Caterpillar sternly. ‘Explain

yourself!’ ‘I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir,’ said Alice, ‘because I’m

not myself you see.’ ‘I don’t see,’ said the Caterpillar. (Carroll, 55-56).

Alice consciously is searching for who she is, but she is not sure, because she has experienced so much since she entered Wonderland. Her memory has stored so much information in one day, that she can not comprehend herself. Alice is still Alice, she has just undergone some changes that have made her perception of herself different. The memory she has of her old self, has just been modified a little to adjust to the present. “Our memories form the basis of who we are, and the accumulation of our past experience in turn determines our capacity to relate our past to our present”(Davis, 200). Self-identity is something we all must find, but it is also something that is constantly changing. In the case of Alice, she just happened to undergo a lot of changes in a very small period of time.

I know from my personal experience that I, myself, have changed from who I was yesterday to who I am today. Yesterday I was late to class because I overslept, so I did not go, but stayed on campus and worked on some homework. I then talked with some friends and saw some cool paintings in the art building, then went to philosophy class. I saw some video clips that had some interesting content, that made the whole class think. I then went home in the rain, ate dinner, and headed back to campus to for a meeting. When I finally returned home, I stayed up until four in the morning before I decided to finally go to bed. The memory of these things has already changed my self-identity ever so slightly. Today I woke up late due to my choice to stay up until four, and I in turn missed my first class of the day and feel like I have become a different person due to my sleeping habits. All in one day’s time, a person can change based on the recollection of what happened the day before.

Philosophers’ Opinions

Many philosophers have thought about memory. It is a very important part of our lives according to most of them. John Locke thinks memory “is the means by which we can ensure continuity of consciousness and thus continuity of the self”(Davis, 201). I think what he means by this, is that if we did not have some sort of continuity, we would be lost in ourselves, and not really know who we are. The continuity of our consciousness allows us to look back on past events, to assure ourselves that we are in fact living day by day, but yesterday still happened.

Friedrich Nietzsche “suggests that we need to strive for a balance that enables us to have the right perspective toward our past and present, and subsequently our future as well”(Davis, 205). Nietzsche is suggesting that forgetting is sometimes a good thing, and that it is an inevitable part of human life. I think that if we have the perfect balance of remembering and forgetting, we would be as well off as we should hope to be.

Martin Heidegger suggests that “‘Complete forgetting… is forgetting the forgetting, disappearance of the very disappearance, where the covering over is itself covered over’”(Davis, 205). I would have to say I agree with this statement, because you can say that you are forgetting to do something, but you still remembered that you were forgetting something. Therefore, you have not completely forgotten, you just can not remember exactly what it is you needed to remember.

Dreams and Imagination: Are All Our Memories Real?

Dreams and imagination have quite a bit to do with memory. Most dreams are formed by some sort of memory we subconsciously pulled out while we were sleeping. Sigmund Freud called forgetting an instance of “alienated memory”, dreams can also go into this category. Alienated memory is “memory that is both a part of us, but somehow separate from our everyday conscious experiences”(Davis, 206). Since we can not always remember what happened in our dreams, they also considered alienated memory, because once we wake, our memory of these dreams tend to be forgotten.

Memory is also subject to change. A person might remember something completely differently than the person who was standing in the room beside them. This is where perception and imagination can interfere with the reality of memory. This could possibly be the case with déjà vu. Perhaps when we experience déjà vu, we are just having a sudden recall of a dream we once had, or perhaps it is a false memory created by our imagination.

Dreams and imagination are an important part of Alice’s adventures, because she is dreaming. As a child, she has a very vivid imagination, and she takes it all in as a life changing experience. In Through the Looking Glass, the Red King is sleeping, and Tweedledum and Tweedledee tell Alice that he is dreaming Alice into existence, but she insists that she is real, and the readers know that this is all Alice’s dream. Alice does not know that she is dreaming, and believes that all that is going on is real, but when she wakes up, all she will have left is a memory of Wonderland, and it could be skewed by alienated memory. Poor Alice is just trying to figure our who she is, but her imagination is running too wild to allow her to find herself.

The Experience or The Memory of the Experience?

When Alice meets the White Queen, memory takes a whole new spin. The Queen lives backwards, which dumbfounds Alice.

“ ‘--but there’s one great advantage in it, that one’s memory works both

ways.’ ‘I’m sure mine only works one way,’ Alice remarked. ‘I can’t

remember things before they happen.’ ” (Davis, 208).

This is a strange concept to think about. Imagine if we did remember things before they happened. “If such were the case, we might ask ourselves which we valued more: the experience or the memory of the experience? Or to invert the question-- what is an experience to us without the memory of it afterward”(Davis, 208). These questions are quite intriguing to me. I believe that the memory of the experience is more important, because you can only experience something once, but you can remember it over and over again. But what if we did experience things after we remembered them? We would always know what was coming, and it would almost be like knowing the future. It would kind of be know fun to experience things, because you would already know what was going to happen, and it would dampen the emotions that follow the experience. I am glad we live forwards and not backwards, because life would be quite dull.

In Conclusion

In conclusion I would like to say that I believe that memory is a very powerful thing. Without it we would not have self-identities. With it we can have the advantage of remembering experiences that happened in the past. We would have nothing without memory, because we would not know how to handle the future without remembering the past. Without memory, I would not have remembered how much I love the stories of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and consequently would not remember to write this paper either. On a plus side, without memory, my professor would not have remembered that he even assigned this essay, and we would not have had to go through all of the trouble of me researching, typing, and printing this paper, and him reading all five pages of this (along with a hundred other papers) to figure out whether or not he should give me an A (even though we would forget it the next day). But I am glad that we have memory, because I would hate to see how this world would work if we had to start over every day.

Works Cited

Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Collins Design: 2010. Print.

Davis, Richard Brian. Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy: Curiouser and Curiouser.

Hoboken: Wiley, 2010. Print.