Memory by definition is: the power or process of reproducing or recalling what has been learned and retained especially through associative mechanisms (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/memory), but it is also a lot more. Memories are the most important things in your mind because the memories are events that have happened in your life and by their importance you will remember them forever. Memories can also kill a person or make their life have some importance. A memory that could kill a person is the image of a loved person dying but a memory that can make a person's life be better is a happy moment with friends. In The Road both types of memories appear constantly in the father's life. Agreeing with the definition most memories are triggered by another event or object. One example of a memory is when the character's wife says: "A person who had no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost. As for me my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart." (pg.57) This memory of his wife was triggered because his son had said that he wished he was with mom. The memory in this case is shown to the character by the means of his dreams. This is a memory that the character must be hurt when he sees it. Fighting for the life of three persons is really hard and the worst thing you can hear from one of them is that they don't want to live anymore and make you feel that all your hard work has been for nothing. I haven't personally had this experience but an example would be that when you are in a soccer team and you are constantly giving it your all for the whole team to win and everybody else in the team isn't trying and showing to you that they don't want to win. What probably happens next is that you lose hope and the desire to fight because the team you are sweating for isn't returning you the same amount of sacrifice. I really think that in that moment the mother had to be in an extreme degree of desperation to even think of abandoning her kid. Mothers are willing to risk their own life for that of their kids and in this case she is just abandoning his life.
The other kinds of memories are the ones that keep you positive and always hoping for a better future and outcome. The other memory he has of his wife is a more positive one and it is shown by the object that reminds him of her. The narrator says in one moment: "He pitched the sweatblackened piece of leather into the woods and sat holding the photograph. Then he laid it down in the road also and then he stood and they went on." (pg.51) Normally when a person has another person's picture in his wallet it is because the picture reminds him of this person and this person gives him hope and power to keep on going. The memory of his wife could have kept him going for a while, when he looked her picture. The moment when he leaves the picture in the road two different meanings came to my mind. One is that he has completely lost hope of his life and he just wants to give up. I think this is rather unlikely because he still gets the motivation to keep on going from his son which is the thing he loves most. The second meaning is the wanting to forget a memory that brings him down. I think the second meaning is more likely is that he wants to completely forget about her so he can look into the future and stop lamenting his past.
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