Reckoning Life Has Some Form of Development

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 are embedded with emotions and require context to sort through them to find meaning.

By hearing the Polish anthem it creates a realization that she is leaving the only life she has ever known behind. "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 associated with the words that work to give them more power. For example, some of that the words of Eva's used in childhood did not hold the same significance for her when she learned the word in a new language. She explains, "River' in Polish was a vital sound, energized with the essence of riverhood, of my rivers, of my being immersed in rivers. 'River' in English is cold -- a word without an aura. It has no accumulated associations for me, and it does not give off the radiating haze of connotation. It does not evoke."

In The Way to Rainy Mountain, Scott Momaday also illustrates a certain type of barrier to memories, but in an entirely different way. As opposed to a language barrier, the author depicts the barriers that are in place when trying to understand the culture of a people from their stories and thus be able to tap into more of a collective memory. In the story, a young man relives his grandmother's life by traveling to the grave of his grandmother along the same route that her people, the Kiowas, took on their journey to a new land.

Another interesting dynamic that also represents something of a barrier is the fact that the young man's grandmother did not actually experience the journey herself. However, she knew the stories so well that it seemed as if she had actually made the journey herself. Though she did not have the firsthand experience of the journey, she was able to effectively recreate it through the memories of others that had been passed down to her. Then she passed down this experience again from one generation to the next in the same way that it was taught to her.

Figure 1 - Portrayal of The Way to Rainy Mountain (Lanigan)

The way to rainy mountain represented a long and hard journey for the Kiowa people. Despite the hardships they experienced all the way, they became stronger, learned new skills, and gaining a new spirituality. Recreating this passage, the young man's way to rainy mountain revealed many insights about the memories his grandmother passed to him. Not only did the journey provide him a greater understanding pilgrimage undertaken by the Kiowa people but it also provided a mental picture of the places described by his grandmother; though she had never actually seen them herself with her eyes. "My grandmother had a reverence for the sun, a holy regard that now is all but gone out of mankind. There was a wariness in her, and an ancient awe. (Momaday)"