Thinking further about Gregor’s memory, long-term memory can be broken up into two types: declarative memory and nondeclarative memory. Declarative memory is associated with explicit, declarable facts. Nondeclarative memory is for things you can’t explicitly state and include procedural memories, such as skills, habits, and behaviors. Gregor seems to have difficulties with both declarative and nondeclarative memory. However, his case appears to be complicated.
Walking, climbing stairs, pouring coffee, and putting on clothes are examples of procedural memory that are seen in the story. Gregor had to learn to walk after he adjusted to standing, and “walking on two legs amounted to a kind of torture” (p. 2) for him. Navigating the stairs was a true nightmare, and he held onto the bannister the whole way down. However, he appears to pick up a metal pot and pour coffee into a cup with no difficulties (p. 3). Not only was the idea of clothing unfamiliar and strange to Gregor, he also had no clue how to put clothes on or wear them: “too many buttons, for one thing, and he was unsure how to tell front from back, or top from bottom” (p. 5).
Within declarative memory is semantic memory, or memory of facts. This includes world knowledge, object knowledge, and language knowledge. A fact that Gregor knows is his name, although he is unsure how he knows it. Gregor also understands other facts, such as how the sound of a doorbell means someone is at the front door. The point of view of the story makes my analysis of Gregor’s memories difficult. For example, when the story discusses that Gregor pulled a walking stick out of the closet to help him move around by “grasping its sturdy handle,” I wonder whether Gregor actually recognizes the object as a walking stick and knows how to use it, orif he instinctively sees something that he could use to help balance himself as he walks. Another interesting aspect of Gregor’s semantic memory is his knowledge of language. He appears to have no trouble understanding language and speaking, although his knowledge of certain concepts, such as bras, God, and tanks, is limited.
Another type of declarative memory is episodic memory, or memory of events. He clearly does not remember many events from his past, and when he tries to think about it, “something like a black column of mosquitoes swirled up in his head” (p. 1). Although he does not explicitly remember that he was a bug before he woke up as a human, there are several things he says that allude to that fact. For example, he describes his body as having “no shell for protection” (p. 2) and throughout the story has a strange fear of being attacked by birds, even warning the woman to “look out for birds” (p. 11) when she leaves. Another interesting example is that he describes the woman as looking “as if she were crawling on all fours” (p. 9) as she was walking down the staircase. He later says that “walking the way she did made a lot more sense than wobbling around upright on two legs” (p. 11).
It's clear that he has some understanding of the world from his perspective as a bug in his previous life, as well as from his perspective as a human before he was a bug. There's no way to classify what type of memory loss Gregor is experiencing, since there are several contradictions that show his declarative and nondeclarative memory are not completely impaired. When Murakami wrote this story, it's evident that he didn't have a specific memory impairment in mind for Gregor Samsa after his metamorphosis, but it's still interesting to think about the ways his memory functioned after this strange event took place.
- Christa
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