Amnesia - by Douglas Cooper. Needs to be edited a bit more.

Essay by amnesiaHigh School, 11th gradeA-, April 2004

download word file, 6 pages 5.0

Amnesia

Some books are straight-forward stories of day-to-day life in the past or present; such stories are easy to understand because their subject is the surface of things. Reading Amnesia, a book written by Douglas Cooper and published by Random House, is like moving through a dream. Cooper's style suggests waking and dreaming states by discussing situations which seam normal and concrete on the one hand and magical and unrealistic on the other. Discussed in this essay is how the author makes this book useful to the reader by exploring values, emotions, and situations in a way that causes one to reflect on one's own life.

Three values this book promotes are the importance or influence of family as a whole on the individuals of the family; history, both personal and that of society; and the significance of below-the-surface-meanings. How a family interacts has a significant influence and effect on the members of the family and how they grow up and function as individuals.

"We do carry our families with us, until death; and if our families are broken we carry the breakage in our soul." (page 91). A person's history will affect them as they get older whether it be a negative affect, a positive affect, or both. The history of society also has a profound effect on individuals; for instance, in this book the holocaust casts it's shadow. Hopefully a person will take away the lessons history has to teach. Intertwined in the lessons history has to teach us there are the lessons of religion and beliefs systems. Religion and how a person views it can define that person.

Orthodox Saying: `May his name and memory be erased'

Modern Jewish saying: `We shall never forget'... How you stand in regard to these two sayings will determine who you...