Week 1 Blog Question Schacter & Milton



Question:

Drawing from (quoting) a passage from Ch. 7 of Schacter and Milton (or Borges), what connection can you make between loss and memory or loss and emotion? Said another way, what does Milton allow us to say about Schacter, or Schacter about Milton, that we couldn’t get reading either alone?

Response:

Ch. 7 of Schacter deals with the pain associated with the persistence of a terrible memory. One that for example Donnie Moore wished he could forget, however the mechanisms of his brain would not allow for. 

“With the passing of time, Angel’s players and fans eventually recovered from the deflating loss. But Donnie Moore never did. He was haunted, sometimes overwhelmed, by the memory of Henderson’s home run.” 

If only he could have forgotten the moment completely, the feeling of shame, regret and utter confusion attached to this seemingly impossible loss. It appears that Moore’s emotional connection to the memory was so powerful; that it would not allow for him to see that most everything in life is in some degree dictated by chance. For many, a false sense of control and a mental representation of who we are is thought to control the outcomes of novel or important events in our life.

“Experiences that we remember intrusively, despite desperately wanting to banish them from our minds, are closely linked to, and sometimes threaten, our perceptions of who we are and who we would like to be.”

In some way, Moore thought he alone was responsible for losing the game, and yet also felt capable of winning that game. He did not place this burden on his team mates, nor pose the question of why was the score so close in the 9th? Why did the Angels even lose such a commanding lead to begin with? In this instance Moore viewed himself as the perpetrator of this grand mistake that only he could remedy.

In Milton’s Paradise Lost, however the character dealing with the pain of loss is Satan. His loss being his place by the side of God, and the pain associated with that loss:

To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquisht, rowling in the fiery Gulfe
Confounded though immortal: But his doom
Reserv'd him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain [ 55 ]

Unlike Moore, Satan does not wish to take responsibility for his fall, he establishes himself as the victim in this story. Satan believes it was God’s infatuation with his new creation (humans) that was truly to blame for him being cast from heaven. His loss of home, family, and cosmic purpose, meant he had to create a new purpose. In this case, that purpose was to undermine God, and his creations (humans). 

In both readings, loss and pain are the main themes; however it is the response to this loss that differs in each case. Moore feels solely responsible for his pain; he accepts this burden even though he is reminded by others that it is not all his fault. However, in Paradise Lost, Satan does not wish to accept responsibility for his fall; he does not feel regret, but rather pure anger.

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