Memories can be as short-lived as the moments that created them. The recollection of events and the deterioration of memories over time is a constant process that cannot be stopped. This inevitable passing of memory is fused to the inevitable passing of human life. Emily Davis’s still life photograph of wineglasses is reflective and fragmented, allowing the image to act as a metaphor for this fleeting aspect of memory through its own memory-like qualities. The photograph is also symbolic of the transience of human life through the use of the traditional symbol of the wineglass, ultimately serving as memento mori.
The word reflection refers to the production or return of an image that is created through light or through thought. This connection to the act of remembering is set up by Davis through the presence of actual reflections within her photograph. The surface the wineglasses sit upon is reflective which creates a duplicate set of wineglasses. Light is picked up within the lustrous crystal of the glasses and they partially reflect within each other. The light bouncing of...
Reflection, as explained by Moon (2013), is the process of looking back on an event or experience and thinking about it and learning from it. Reflection, which is learning through experience, is not a new concept. As humans, we naturally reflect on our surroundings and experiences on a day to day basis in order to make sense of them. (Norman, Vleuten and Newble, 2002). In a professional context, reflation is vital for a practitioner to learn and improve their practice. By using their own experiences, practitioners are able to analysis, and in turn, adapt or improve specific areas of practice
Dandelion Wine is a novel that examines life and death, youth and age, factuality and the realities we invent for ourselves. Amongst these themes, there is an exploration of the importance and reality of memory. Through characterization Ray Bradbury shows that memory influences both who we are and who we will become, consciously or unconsciously, depending on whether we focus on the past or the future.
Joshua Foer’s “The End of Remembering” and Kathryn Schulz’s “Evidence” are two essays that have more in common than one might think. Although on two totally different topics, they revolve around the central point of the complexities of the human mind. However, there are some key elements both writers have contemplated on in differing ways.
Where are the memories of our pasts held? In scrapbooks full of photographs, or perhaps written on the pages of a locked diary? Picture though, something as simple and ordinary as a closet full of clothes. Think about its contents, where they have been worn, what they have been through, the stories attached to each item. The nameless protagonist of Diane Schoemperlen’s short story Red Plaid Shirt does this as she recalls a snippet of her past life with each article of clothing she picks up. Red plaid shirt, blue sweatshirt, brown cashmere sweater, yellow evening gown, black leather jacket…each item has a tale of its very own, and when combined they reveal the full story of the main character’s life.
Through this short story we are taken through one of Vic Lang’s memories narrated by his wife struggling to figure out why a memory of Strawberry Alison is effecting their marriage and why she won’t give up on their relationship. Winton’s perspective of the theme memory is that even as you get older your past will follow you good, bad or ugly, you can’t always forget. E.g. “He didn’t just rattle these memories off.” (page 55) and ( I always assumed Vic’s infatuation with Strawberry Alison was all in the past, a mortifying memory.” (page 57). Memories are relevant to today’s society because it is our past, things or previous events that have happened to you in which we remembered them as good, bad, sad, angry etc. memories that you can’t forget. Winton has communicated this to his audience by sharing with us how a memory from your past if it is good or bad can still have an effect on you even as you get older. From the description of Vic’s memory being the major theme is that it just goes to show that that your past can haunt or follow you but it’s spur choice whether you chose to let it affect you in the
The poems facilitate the investigation of human experience through illustrating life’s transience and the longevity of memory.
Reflection is a key element of the human learning process. It can be used to justify aspects of practice and legitimise the knowledge gained from it, as opposed to traditional forms of learning.
The civil rights movement in the 1960’s was a very powerful time period in this country. Birmingham, Alabama was in the heart of the struggle for equal rights. African Americans protested and fought for what they believed in through peaceful and violent protests. In this picture the struggle is shown on how difficult it was for African Americans to gain equal rights. The photo was taken in the midst of a protest which adds dramatic effect, the people in the photo show pain and the people not pictured make them a faceless foe and the lack of colors in the picture helps send a powerful message.
Dali, Salvador. “The Persistance of Memory.” A World of Ideas. 9th ed. Ed. Lee A.Jacobus. Boston: Bedford/St.Martins, 2013.Print
“We didn’t know we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun.” This quote by an unknown author gives us a unique vision of memories; it shows that memories are powerful. The most powerful can be made without recognition. The most powerful are made with excitement. Annie Dillard clearly portrays this idea in “The Chase,” a chapter in her autobiography. She tells the story of her rebellious childhood and one of the most heart-pumping events of her life - a redheaded man giving her a chase. With this, she demonstrates the need for excitement, fearlessness, and recklessness in one’s childhood. In order to convey this idea, Dillard not only employs fierce and vivid description, but she impassionedly transitions from spine-chilling tone to thrilling.
...mirror revealing the dual natures within her femme fatale, by the intimate conversation she holds with Leonard by confiding in him of her loss in order to gain his trust. Another notable symbolism used in the film is the photographs which Leonard uses to recreate his short term memory. The fact that he is forced to rely on his old memories to survive turn out to be difficult because Leonard can't realize the true meaning of the photos he carries and therefore is not capable of reaching the same ending every time he sees them. In other words, his dependance on the photos to remember only helps him remember an alternate reality. Thus, as seen by Leonard’s dialogue, “We don’t need mirrors to remind ourselves of who we are”, Nolan explains that the deception of one’s memories cannot be justified whether it be for the better good for it can only lead one to harm’s way.
“Still Memory” by Mary Karr is a poem that depicts the distant, childhood memory that the author fondly recalls. Karr’s nostalgic diction and word choice is evident when she says, “…till it found my old notch in the house I grew up in…” In this section, Karr is dreaming, hoping to find a happier time in her life, her childhood. Throughout the poem, Karr is recalling a time when she was only ten years old, and shows how each of her family members’ mannerisms influenced her and her future in writing. What may only appear to be the family performing their daily routine, is much more beneath the surface. According to the lines, “My ten-year-old hand reaches for a pen to record it all as would become long habit,” these actions are what influenced her writing. For writers, inspiration can come from the simplest of elements, and for Karr, this happened to be her family.
In his 1917 poem, “La Figlia che Piange,” translated from Italian as “The Girl Who Weeps”, T.S. Eliot explores the relationship between a traumatic, regretful event and the speaker’s idealized memory of it. The speaker describes a beautiful woman standing on a stair posing like a model for a classical work of art. The speaker describes a man who leaves the woman for other, leaving her utterly crushed. As the poem progresses, however, it becomes apparent that the woman exists not in reality, but in the speaker’s memory. In an attempt to cope with the regretful emotions that he associates with the event, he attempts, like an artist, to alter his memory to fit a classical ideal. The creation and interpretation of memory, he discovers, is like the creation of a work of art.
In his sonnet “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles,” John Keats uses Greek art as inspiration for a reflection on the inevitability of death and how in the end even his best memories may not feel good enough. The impending role that mortality has on his existence is shown through Keats’s careful use of similes, diction, and a quirk to the rhyme scheme. The generalized images that the words create and the cluttered meter contribute to Keats’s theme that memories crumble over time like the Elgin Marbles, and eventually, the memories may not seem like anything better than a waste of precious time.
Reflection itself is not an exceptional strategy in writing, and it ends up being a feasible and profoundly successful device. The possibility of reflection can fit a think once again into the past, to think back or to recall; however reflection has an intrinsically more