MDDM Ch. 72 Dixon and the slave driver

[Otto]

> Perhaps the passage was written to create in the readership, individually
> and collectively, a feeling of confusion and uncertainty, a la what Dixon
> was feeling. So, rather than reading a description of the complexities of
> Dixon's reaction to the slavedrivermaster, we experience them. Sort of
> like that movie Memento.

That would fit to what the Rev'd says about family memories on p. 695/696.

Are our memories facts or interpretations?

"Memory can change the color of a car, memory can change the words you said.
It's all interpretation, which is nothing compared to the facts"
http://www.filmfacts.de/film/gastkritik/memento_vincent.htm

Memory, Autobiography, History
John F. Kihlstrom
"Psychologists usually define memory as knowledge stored in the mind, a
storage that is physically implemented somehow in the brain. Memory is an
extremely important cognitive faculty, because it forms the cognitive basis
for learning. Without a way of storing mental representations of the past,
we have no way of profiting from experience. But more important, memory
frees us from the tyranny of perception, allowing behavior to be guided by
the past as well as the present. J.M Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, once
wrote that God gave us memory so we could have roses in December. Along with
consciousness, intelligence, and language, the ability to represent and
reflect on the past is the basis for human freedom and dignity.
(...)
Elaboration: Memory improves when an event is related to pre-existing
knowledge.
Organization: Memory improves when events are related to each other.
Time-Dependency: Memory fades with time.
Interference: The cause of forgetting is competition among available
memories, not the loss of memories from storage through decay or
displacement.
Cue-Dependency: Memory improves when the environment provides richly
informative retrieval cues.
Encoding Specificity (also known as Transfer-Appropriate Processing): Memory
is best when information processed at the time of retrieval matches
information processed at the time of encoding.
Schematic Processing: Memory is better for events that match our
expectations than for events that are irrelevant to them, but memory is best
for events that violate our expectations.
But it's not the only way to look at things."
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/rmpa00.htm

So prepared by what we've read before, know about slavery, whips, Quakers
and pacifism determines how we read the scene.

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