Layers of touch, Layers of memory

I realize my blog entry is inexcusably late, but I wanted to put this out there anyway.

We determined that the purpose of Offred telling her story was twofold: to remember and to document. In her telling, we are presented with the overwhelming importance of her sense of touch.

Offred, clad in those heavy white wings that function as blinders, is unable to see the world around her except in glimpses. When a person is blind or visually impaired, their sense of touch is heightened in order to make up for the absence of sight. In Offred’s world, she is deprived of that option. She’s locked in.

Offred lives in a society where touch is forbidden. Offred has an intense desire to touch things. Offred needs to hold onto her past, and touch and tactile senses are incredibly crucial forces when it comes triggering memories. Yet doesn’t it seem as though the recollection of the way something feels is the first to go when a memory starts fuzzing over?

I was reminded of an episode of my favorite radio show, RadioLab, which investigated how memory works. Can one touch a memory? Can it be pinched between one’s fingers? While it’s unsurprising that memory is a very precarious thing, I was surprised to learn that every time you remember something, you are actually creating more and more distance between yourself and the original memory.

“Every time you’re remembering something, you’re recreating it. And so if you’re recreating it each time, then each time you’re remembering something, it’s a brand new memory. The act of remembering, on a literal level, it’s an act of creation. Every memory is rebuilt anew every time you remember it. Not only is it an act of creation, it’s an act of imagination. Every time you remember something, you change the memory a little bit. We’re always changing the memories slightly. You think you are remembering something that took place thirty years ago, actually what you are remembering is that memory reinterpreted in the light of today. All you’ve got is your most recent recollection of something. The more you remember something, in a sense, the more inaccurate it becomes.”

“[Suddenly remembering something] is a more honest memory than thinking about that memory every day of his life since [it happened]. The safest memory, the one that’s uncontaminatable, is the one that exists within a patient that has amnesia. If you have a memory, the more you use it, the more you’re likely to change it. If you’re never using a memory, it is secured.”

Initially I thought that Offred’s desperation to remember and re-remember was working against her. But then I remembered something—her sense of touch. In those sneaking moments, she is able to use her sense of touch to trigger, very suddenly, those memories that are locked away. And by immediately recording these stories and making note of the sensory elements therein, it seems as though she'd be awfully successful in preserving these memories in their purest form.

In class, we discussed Offred’s role as a narrator who is conscious of her audience. Another thing that has struck me throughout the text is that she is assuming the role of the listener as well. We see her dissecting her own diction, breaking words down into puns. We see her deconstructing her own language, giving feedback to her own, as a reader would, but the difference is that this isn’t her job. She is the narrator. She is the storyteller.

I wonder if this circles back around to her longing for touch or a sense of closeness. By bookending both sides of her stories by being both the storyteller and the audience, wouldn’t this allow her to reach through the bathroom wall and make a connection, so to speak? I see this as a means of not only making an intimate connection with her present self, but of making an intimate connection to her past as well.

If you are interested in downloading this episode of RadioLab, you can find it here. It’s equally as entertaining as it is informative, and the third story in the segment is incredible. I highly recommend it.