“Ah! what is not a dream by day / To him whose eyes are cast / On things around him with a ray / Turned back upon the past?” Edgar Allan Poe wrote in his poem “A Dream.” In his work, Poe suggests that the separation between dream events and real events is complete; dreams do not carry into reality and vice versa. However, if taking into consideration other cultural references such as the 2004 Michel Gondry film Eternal Sunsine of the Spotless Mind, one may infer that there is a merging between dream state and reality. Following the story of Joel and Clementine’s efforts to forget their failed relationship through memory-erasing technology, many questions are raised about our mind’s behavior while we are asleep. Is there a distinction between …show more content…
“But when things happen to me in such a way that I am distinctly aware of whence, where, and when they have come, and I connect the perception of them to the rest of my life, without any gaps, then I am well and truly certain they are happening and not in my sleep but when I am awake.” (Descartes & Moriarty, 2008) Such as when Joel recalls the night he and Clementine broke up, he chases her in his dream state as he apparently did that night. As the street is being destroyed by the demolition of that memory, Joel attempts to chase after Clementine but keeps finding himself on the same street corner. Descartes would use that as an example of knowing without a doubt that Joel is sleeping and dreaming; he notices a gap between what he is experiencing and what is physically …show more content…
Mierzwiak, a man she was still very much in love against the odds. She then releases the records of all of his patients, including Joel and Clementine. They are both presented with the knowledge of the heartbreaking end of their relationship just as they experience the euphoric stage of what they believe to be the beginning of their relationship. Learning that they have in fact known each other all along and that they have a shared history that they both elected to have removed from their minds flips a switch for both of them as they try to make sense of their obvious kismet attraction to each other. The characters in the film who undergo the procedure symbolize an enigma in the nature of humanity; moving on from past mistakes means being able to push them aside and not be trapped by them, while at the same time we need the memories of past mistakes as warning to keep us from repeating