The Memory Combination: An Essay From Collabrative Works Of Daniel L. Shacter, Scott Russell Sanders, And Loren Eiseley

The Memory Combination
I find a lot of truth in the crazy Marcel Proust"s theories on memories that Daniel L. Schacter, the author of Building Memories: Encoding and Retrieving the Present and the Past had included in his essay.   Proust was considered crazy because of his obsession with memory and his decision to restrict himself from society for 15 years in order to write about personal recollections and the nature of memory (Schacter 173). I value Proust"s ideas because he took so much time to look deep into his own mind and memory, even if it was only one mans opinion versus a researched explanation. In this time, Proust discovers that memories can be both fragile and powerful to understanding oneself, especially when evoked by tastes and smells (174). From that experience, he implies remembering depends on combining information from the present and the past (175). I feel without the connection of information from the past and the present joined with the connection of the senses would make it nearly impossible to remember anything and learn anything about ourselves.   To further examine this I will analyze the essays Inheritance of Tools by Scott Russell Sanders and Brown Wasps, by Loren Eiseley.
Sanders starts off his essay by telling us a story of hitting his thumb with a hammer. From this encounter, including the recent news of his father"s death, a flood of memories of his father and grandfather come into play.   Sander reflects, "It took the better part of a year for the scar to disappear, and every time I noticed it I thought of my father" (143).  
The touch of the hammer and other tools evokes emotions of generations who passed down these tools to him.   Talking about the handle of the hammer, Sanders relates, "The grain in hickory is crooked and knotty, and therefore tough, hard to split, like the grain in the two men who owned this hammer before me" (143).   He explains how the used handle shows the hard work the men before him put into their work for...