I agree with Ricoeur that, in order to refigure a better future, one should be liberated from the wounded memories via the authentic healing of them. Otherwise, those stings of the past continue to haunt his/her life. With Henri Bergson, Ricoeur speaks of an unconscious duration of memory, which amounts to forgetting. Yet this is fundamentally not a deletion of traces. Also, by referring to Sigmund Freud, Ricoeur points out that “blocked/sick” memories tend to result in the compulsion to continually express the memories in diverse counterproductive forms of action. For these reasons, Ricoeur asserts that this sort of unhealthy forgetting is detrimental. In the same sense, Gregory Jones also argues that remembering well should precede forgetting …show more content…
That is, through the conversation with Father James, the Spirit, who co-suffers in Fitzgerald’s life haunted by the inexplicable sense of emptiness, now liberates him through the ministry of Father James. The pathetic presence of the Spirit in Fitzgerald’s life now becomes liberative. The climactic moment of Father James’ embodiment of “the spirit of forgiveness” is when he faces Jack without his pistol. Before meeting with Jack, Father James is determined not to detach himself any longer from the devastating narrative of Jack’s life. He throws out into the waters the pistol that he bought from Stanton to defend himself. This action would show that Father James is now ready to live out the genuine embrace and forgiveness through following in the footstep of Jesus who sat and ate with the sinners, and eventually died on the cross to redeem them from the powers of death and sins. Jack has been looking for true grace devoid of sanctimony, but he could not find any such thing up to this point. Even though Jack does not realize it right at this moment, he is now facing that genuine grace that would bring his narrative of life into a new redemptive light. In that all-embracing love, Jack would be able to re-narrate his still-bleeding memories, so that he could be reconciled with himself and the perpetrator. However, Jack pulls the first trigger at the fit of anger about Father James’ past detachment from the children who were molested by priests. He makes a wrong