Multidirectional Memory Essay

While both in the novel and the short story concepts of remembrance in general as well as multidirectional memory can be detected, both also utilize a special tool of multidirectional memory, namely screen memory. As above-mentioned, screen memory has the potential to block out and suppress other memories; however, this sub-chapter will argue that in the case of Abeng and “Embassy”, genocides as screen memories give voice to other memories, namely slavery and colonialism. The authors of both writings therefore utilize the Holocaust and the genocide in Cambodia to articulate more personal memories of suffering of the protagonists. In Abeng, Cliff uses the Holocaust as a screen memory that the protagonist of the novel, Clare, is fascinated with

An important carrier of multidirectional memory in the novel is The Diary of Anne Frank (as of now only referred to as The Diary), which Clare reads and watches as a movie and which enables her questions about her own country’s history of

Cliff therefore uses Anne Frank as a vehicle through which her protagonist Clare develops her character and matures. Nevertheless, after killing her grandmother’s bull, Clare does not feel worthy of Anne Frank as a heroine anymore (Cliff 146). When Clare does something that is out of character, she also loses the link to Anne and the Holocaust is not mentioned anymore after this. However, The Diary and her research about the Holocaust itself helped Clare to further understand her own country’s history. Even though she is not of the same opinion as the people who despise Africans in Jamaica or who killed Jews in Europe, she traces the link between these events and “[i]n the end, the Diary serves as a narrative framework on which Clare maps her private and public experiences growing up in Jamaica” (Wilson